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Oregon activists behind an initiative to legalize psilocybin mushrooms for therapeutic purposes announced on Monday that they have secured more than enough valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot. While the secretary of state’s office hasn’t yet verified all of the signatures, the Yes On IP34 campaign said it has independently determined that they’ve gathered enough to make the cut ahead of a July 2 submission deadline. Last week, the state verified that the team had turned in 106,908 of the 112,020 needed signatures to make the ballot. At a virtual press conference, the campaign revealed it has collected a new total of 164,782 signatures, and will submit the additional petitions on Monday, giving them “great confidence that Oregon’s psilocybin therapy initiative will qualify for the statewide ballot.” “Now, we’ll get the official word from the secretary of state sometime next month, but our submission of signatures today will put us comfortably above those requirements,” Tom Eckert, chief petitioner, said. The campaign’s prior petition submissions were validated by the state at an 80.2% approval rate. Of the new 31,209 signatures filed, only 5,112 (or 16.4 percent) must be deemed valid for the measure to officially qualify for ballot access. “This initiative is about giving Oregonians safe, legal, regulated access to psilocybin-assisted therapy in licensed settings, with trained and competent facilitators,” he said. “That’s what the science supports. That’s our approach in Oregon. And that’s why we believe Oregonians deserve access.” If it ultimately qualifies and voters approve it, Oregon would become the first jurisdiction in the U.S. to implement a therapeutic legalization model for so-called magic mushrooms. There wouldn’t be any specific conditions that make people eligible for the therapy.
This development is one of the latest examples of the success of the psychedelics reform movement after Denver became the first place in the U.S. to deprioritize enforcement of laws against psilocybin last year. That was followed by a unanimous Oakland City Council vote in favor of a measure to make a wide range of entheogenic substances among the city’s lowest law enforcement priorities. The Santa Cruz City Council followed suit, and activists in more than 100 cities are now exploring ways to enact the policy change. Washington, D.C. advocates are also in the final stages of collecting signatures for a psychedelics decriminalization initiative after being temporarily set back by the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s a status update on other drug policy reform campaigns across the country: Also in Oregon, a campaign working to put a measure on the ballot that would decriminalize currently illicit drugs and make investments in substance misuse treatment submitted more than 147,000 signatures last month, and it’s continued the gathering process as the deadline approaches on Thursday. Washington State activists had planned to pursue a similar measure through the ballot, but citing concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak, they announced last week that they will be targeting the legislature instead. Idaho activists behind a medical marijuana legalization initiative could get a second wind after a federal judge said last week that the state must make accommodations for a separate ballot campaign due to signature gathering complications due to the coronavirus pandemic. Montana activists recently turned in more than 130,000 signatures to qualify a pair of legalization initiatives for the November ballot. Nebraska activists are approaching a deadline next month to submit signatures for a proposed medical cannabis initiative. In Arizona, the organizers of a legalization effort asked the state Supreme Court to instruct the secretary of state to allow people to sign cannabis petitions digitally using an existing electronic system that is currently reserved for individual candidates seeking public office. That request was denied, but advocates are still optimistic about the chances of making the ballot. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak and stay-at-home mandates, measures to legalize marijuana for medical and recreational purposes qualified for South Dakota’s November ballot. The New Jersey legislature approved putting a cannabis legalization referendum before voters as well. And in Mississippi, activists gathered enough signatures to qualify a medical cannabis legalization initiative for the ballot—though lawmakers also approved a competing (and from advocates’ standpoint, less desirable) medical marijuana proposal that will appear alongside the campaign-backed initiative. A campaign to legalize cannabis in Missouri officially gave up its effort for 2020 due to signature collection being virtually impossible in the face of social distancing measures. North Dakota activists said they plan to continue campaign activities for a marijuana legalization initiative, but it’s more likely that they will seek qualification for the 2022 ballot.
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Colorado Governor Signs Marijuana Social Equity Bill Letting Him Expedite Possession Pardons6/30/2020 Members of a criminal justice task force created to inform presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign have been discussing marijuana legalization—a policy the former vice president continues to oppose. Most of the group—which consists of advisors appointed by both Biden and former primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)--support ending cannabis prohibition, and advocates have held out hope that they would recommend that Biden adopt the policy platform in the run-up to the November election. While some members have publicly talked about the issue since joining the task force, including Linn County, Iowa Supervisor Stacey Walker, who recently commented on the need for reform in light of racial disparities in marijuana criminalization, a new report from Politico appears to be the first confirmation that the group itself is actively considering a formal recommendation on the policy change. “Multiple people said marijuana policy has been discussed on the criminal justice panel, one of the policy groups of the unity task force,” the outlet reported. “Sanders appointees have advocated for legalization. Some Biden appointees personally support legalizing pot and have debated putting the policy in the panel’s recommendations to the former vice president, according to two people familiar with its deliberations.” A majority of panel members appointed from both camps have previously gone on record in favor of legalization. That includes Tennessee Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D), former federal prosecutor Chiraag Bains, former Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Walker. “There’s an opportunity to advance a really bold agenda on criminal justice,” Bains, a Sanders-appointee to the task force, said. “This is part of envisioning a completely different future, not returning to a pre-Trump era. I say that as someone who served proudly in the Obama administration. We just have to be much more aggressive about rooting out systemic racism and injustice in the legal system.” Biden should “end the War on Drugs, including by legalizing marijuana,” he told Politico. Walker, whose position on the issue has been lesser-known than other members, also talked about the need for reform during an interview with Little Village that was published on Wednesday. The Iowa official said he knows many white people, including those from prominent families in the state, who consume cannabis and travel to legalized states to obtain it without concern about potential criminal penalties. “It is no secret that African Americans use marijuana as a substance, recreational substance, just as much as everybody else. I often say, I operate in professional spaces. I know most of my white professional friends in this state use marijuana,” he said. “They do it without ever, ever, ever thinking they will face some sort of legal consequence. It doesn’t even cross their mind. They talk about it openly.” Watch Walker talk about racial injustices in cannabis criminalization below: “They don’t ever think about a legal consequences because it’s not real to them— because they can’t conceive of it because they’ve never faced a consequence,” he added. “We’ve just created a system that over-criminalizes people by their race and by their economic situation. That is not right. It is not fair. It’s an aberration of justice.” He went on to say that decriminalizing cannabis would minimize police encounters that lead people, particularly from communities of color, to be incarcerated and enter the criminal legal system. Biden has backed the modest reform of decriminalizing marijuana and said that people should be diverted to treatment instead of facing jail time for possessing drugs, but he’s declined to get on board with the majority of Americans, particularly Democrats, who embrace fully legalizing cannabis. He’s opted instead to draw the line at legalization for medical use, expunging prior records, allowing states to set their own policies and federal rescheduling. Bains said earlier this month that decriminalization is not sufficient, as it “typically means that you don’t have a criminal penalty, but you could still be issued a civil fine. And then there are other kinds of consequences that could follow from that.” “It’s still illegal conduct,” he said. “If possession of marijuana is just decriminalized and that is the hook for extensive police involvement in people’s lives, and if you haven’t addressed the underlying systemic problems in policing and the justice system overall, then people could continue to be stopped and searched and frisked and so forth.” It’s not clear whether the task force will ultimately recommend that Biden adopt a pro-legalization platform—or if he would accept that recommendation even if they did. Pressed repeatedly on the issue, Biden has continued to argue that more research should be done before enacting broad reform. He also recently indicated that his personal experience knowing individuals who consume cannabis has not convinced him that the plant should be legal for recreational use. For what it’s worth, Sanders doesn’t seem especially optimistic that the former vice president will evolve further, declining in an April interview to list the policy among those from his own platform that he feels Biden will come around to. That said, as President Trump’s reelection campaign pushes to frame the incumbent as the criminal justice reform candidate, there may be added pressure on Biden to align himself with more progressive policies such as legalization. Here’s an overview of where members of the Biden-Sanders criminal justice task force stands on cannabis policy: Akbari, the Tennessee senator, has filed legislation to legalize marijuana in his state and he’s said the reform move is necessary both to promote social equity and to generate revenue that can be used to fund public schools. Bains, who also serves as the director of legal strategies at Demos, has voiced support for Sanders’s cannabis legalization plan and emphasized the need for racial equity in the legal industry. Justin Bamberg, a South Carolina lawmaker, has cosponsored legislation to decriminalize marijuana and legalize medical cannabis. Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Right, backs legalization and has strongly condemned harsh criminalization policies for non-violent drug offenses. Holder, the former top prosecutor in the U.S., has said that he’d vote in favor of legalizing marijuana if he was in Congress and claimed to have internally tried to convince the administration to reschedule cannabis. Symone Sanders, senior advisor to Biden, doesn’t have a clear public stance on legalization, but she’s characterized Biden’s modest marijuana reform plan as being progressive. Scott, a current member of the House, has cosponsored legislation that called for marijuana descheduling and reinvestments in communities harmed most by prohibition. Walker’s views on the issue became clearer in the recent interview, where he stressed that cannabis laws have been enforced in a racially discriminatory manner.
Photo courtesy of Flickr/Marc Nozell. Marijuana Moment is made possible with support from readers. If you rely on our cannabis advocacy journalism to stay informed, please consider a monthly Patreon pledge. Original Article Source: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/colorado-governor-signs-marijuana-social-equity-bill-letting-him-expedite-possession-pardons/ via Tumblr Colorado Governor Signs Marijuana Social Equity Bill Letting Him Expedite Possession Pardons The founder of the popular Christian-themed children’s show VeggieTales recently gave a thorough lecture on the role of the war on drugs in the racial injustices fueling protests across the country. Phil Vischer, whose voice many could recognize as Bob the Tomato from the animated biblical series, hosted a 17-minute “Holy Post” video that examines the history of policies in the U.S. that have marginalized and disenfranchised black Americans. It includes an analysis of how communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by anti-drug laws that criminalize substance use, despite the fact that white people use drugs at comparable rates. While numerous advocates and policymakers have been stressing the need to end drug criminalization as a means to promote racial equity, it’s notable coming from a figure most commonly associated with a show that generally puts biblical stories in a context palatable for a younger audience. In the video, Vischer makes clear that Republicans and Democrats alike have enacted discriminatory drug war policies over a period of decades that have directly contributed to racial injustices being protested today. Watch Vischer discuss the racial justice implications of the drug war below: Here’s an excerpt from the drug policy-related conversation: “Then came the war on drugs. Inner city blacks were extremely vulnerable economically. The overwhelming majority of African Americans in 1970 lacked college degrees and had grown up in fully segregated schools. In the second half of the 20th century, factories and manufacturing jobs move to the suburbs. Black workers struggled to follow the jobs. They couldn’t live in many of the new suburban developments. And as late as 1970, only 28 percent of black fathers had access to a car. When a white man in Cicero, Illinois, just outside Chicago, sublet an apartment to a black family, the white community rioted, setting fire to the apartment building and smashing windows until the National Guard had to intervene. “The result of all of this: In 1970, 70 percent of African-American men had good blue collar jobs. By 1987, only 28 percent did. As unemployment skyrocketed in African American communities, so did drug use. As drug use increased, so did crime—a dynamic today that we see playing out in white rural communities hit hard by unemployment and opioid addiction. Throughout the 1970s, white America became increasingly concerned by images of black violence shown on TV and in magazines. Drugs were the problem. Drug dealers and drug users were the enemy. “So we decided to treat the drug epidemic not as a health crisis, but as a crisis of criminality. And we militarized our response. During the Reagan-Bush years from 1981 to 1991, how we invested money in anti-drug allocation completely changed. The anti-drug budget for the Department of Defense went from $33 million in 1981 to more than $1 billion in 1991. The Drug Enforcement [Administration’s] budget to fight criminality and drug use went from $86 million to more than a billion dollars. “Then we came to the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which carried mandatory minimum sentences much harsher for the distribution of crack cocaine, which was associated with blacks, than powder cocaine, which was associated with whites. Mandated evictions from public housing for any tenant who permitted a drug-related criminal activity to occur on or near premises. It eliminated many government benefits, including student loans for anyone convicted of a drug crime. The 1988 revision set a five-year minimum sentence for possessing any amount of crack cocaine, even if there was no intent to distribute. Previously, it had been a one-year maximum sentence for possessing any amount of any drug without the intent to distribute. “Now it might seem like we’re picking on Republicans, so now it’s time to pick on some Democrats. During the Clinton presidency, the funding for public housing was cut by $17 billion. At the same time, the funding for prisons increased by $19 billion. The number of Americans imprisoned for drug crimes exploded. In 1980, there were 41,000 Americans in prison for drug crimes. Today, there are more than a half million—more than the entire 1980 prison population. Most arrests are for possession. In 2005, 80 percent of the arrests were for possessing drugs, not selling drugs. “In a bizarre twist, we also militarized our police forces. Between 1997 and 1999, the Pentagon handled 3.4 million orders for military equipment for more than 11,000 police agencies, including 253 aircraft, including Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, 7800 M-16 rifles, 181 grenade launchers—grenade launchers for the police—8,000 bulletproof helmets, 1,200 night vision goggles. We also changed policing tactics. A no-knock entry is when a SWAT team literally breaks down your door or smashes in through the windows like in E.T., when the cops come flying in from every direction looking for ET. So back to Minneapolis. In 1986, Minneapolis SWAT teams performed no-knock entries 35 times. Ten years later in 1996. they performed no-knock entries 700 times. That’s two every day. “There were financial incentives for arresting more drug users. Federal grants to local police departments were tied to the number of drug arrests. Research suggests the huge surge in arrests from increased drug enforcement was due more to budget incentives than to actual increases in drug use. So what was the result? An explosion of our prison population. In 25 years, the U.S. prison population went from 350,000 to over 2.3 million. The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. We imprison a higher percentage of our black population than South Africa ever did during apartheid. Data shows that the increased prison population was driven primarily by changes in sentencing policy. “There was no visible connection between higher incarceration rates and higher violent crime rates. If you are a drug felon, you are barred from public housing, you are ineligible for food stamps, you’re forced to check the box on unemployment applications marking yourself as a convicted felon. A criminal record has been shown to reduce the likelihood of getting a call back or job offer by as much as 50 percent. The negative impact of a criminal record for an African-American job applicant is twice as large as for a white applicant. In 2006, one-in-106 white men was behind bars. For black men, it was one-in-14. For black men between the age of 20 and 35—the age where families are built—it’s one-in-nine. Overall, African Americans and white Americans use drugs at roughly the same rate, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is almost six times that of whites. “It may be true that there isn’t explicit racism in our legal system anymore, but it doesn’t mean justice is blind.”
Photo courtesy of YouTube/VeggieTales Official. Marijuana Moment is made possible with support from readers. If you rely on our cannabis advocacy journalism to stay informed, please consider a monthly Patreon pledge. Original Article Source: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/hbo-teams-up-with-marijuana-companies-to-sell-thc-gummies-promoting-new-tv-series/ via Tumblr HBO Teams Up With Marijuana Companies To Sell THC Gummies Promoting New TV Series A bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to attach marijuana and CBD research language to a large-scale defense spending bill that’s on the Senate floor this week. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the amendment, which would promote studies into cannabis and its derivatives, provide protections for doctors that discuss marijuana with their patients and encourage the development of Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs based on cannabinoids. The senators are seeking to include the proposal—titled the Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion Act—in the annual renewal of the National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment, which is mostly identical to a standalone bill of the same name that the Senate trio introduced last year, would streamline the process of applying to become a federally authorized marijuana manufacturer for research purposes or becoming registered to study cannabis. The attorney general would be given a 60-day deadline to either approve applications or request supplemental information from applicants. The bill would also create an expedited pathway for researchers who request larger quantities of Schedule I drugs under already approved investigations. These changes would address an ongoing concern among advocates and scientists, who have expressed frustration that there is currently just one cannabis cultivation facility that can provide material for studies. The qualify of the products the manufacturer produces has been widely questioned, with one study finding that its marijuana is chemically more similar to hemp than commercially available cannabis. Further, the amendment contains a provision that would encourage the development of FDA-approved drugs derived from marijuana. Part of that involves requiring the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to approve applications to be manufacturers of these drugs. Manufacturers would also be allowed to import cannabis materials to facilitate research into the plant’s therapeutic potential. DEA said last year that it is taking steps on its own to increase the number of licensed cannabis cultivation facilities, but it said doing so required new rulemaking. A public comment period on its most recent proposal ended last month. Finally, the amendment stipulates that it “shall not be a violation of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) for a State-licensed physician to discuss” the risk and benefits of marijuana and cannabis-derived products with patients. Last year’s standalone version of the bill stated more broadly that it “shall not be unlawful” for doctors to have such conversations. It’s not clear why the language was revised to more narrowly protect physicians from penalties under the CSA alone. In any case, federal courts have already ruled that discussing and recommending medical cannabis is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment. “Many parents have had success treating their children with CBD oil, particularly for intractable epilepsy, but there are still too many unknowns when it comes to the medical use of marijuana and its compounds,” Feinstein said when the original bill was filed last year. “Current regulations make medical marijuana research difficult and stifles the development of new treatments.” Justin Strekal, political director of NORML, told Marijuana Moment that “it is encouraging that Senator Feinstein is interested in engaging in marijuana policy reform,” but “there are much more substantive efforts that could be addressed than a narrow research amendment.” “It’s my hope that I can soon refer to the senator as a supporter of ending federal marijuana criminalization,” he said. The standalone bill the amendment is modeled on has been endorsed by mainstream medical organizations like American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and American Society of Addiction Medicine, as well as pro-legalization groups such as Americans for Safe Access, Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies and NORML. “The medical community agrees that we need more research to learn about marijuana’s potential health benefits, but our federal laws today are standing in the way of that inquiry,” Schatz said last June. “Our bill will remove excessive barriers that make it difficult for researchers to study the effectiveness and safety of marijuana, and hopefully, give patients more treatment options.” It’s unclear if the newly filed measure will actually be considered on the Senate floor. As of last week, more than 400 amendments to the defense spending bill have already been introduced, and leaders will have to decide which ones warrant spending the body’s limited time on. On the House side last year, lawmakers filed an amendment to the appropriations legislation that would allow military branches to issue waivers to service members who admit to cannabis consumption when applying to reenlist. It was approved in committee but did not make it into the enacted version of the legislation.
Photo by Aphiwat chuangchoem. The post Bipartisan Senators File Marijuana And CBD Research Amendment To Defense Spending Bill appeared first on Marijuana Moment. Original Article Source: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/bipartisan-senators-file-marijuana-and-cbd-research-amendment-to-defense-spending-bill/ via Tumblr Bipartisan Senators File Marijuana And CBD Research Amendment To Defense Spending Bill Members of a criminal justice task force created to inform presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign have been discussing marijuana legalization—a policy the former vice president continues to oppose. Most of the group—which consists of advisors appointed by both Biden and former primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)--support ending cannabis prohibition, and advocates have held out hope that they would recommend that Biden adopt the policy platform in the run-up to the November election. While some members have publicly talked about the issue since joining the task force, including Linn County, Iowa Supervisor Stacey Walker, who recently commented on the need for reform in light of racial disparities in marijuana criminalization, a new report from Politico appears to be the first confirmation that the group itself is actively considering a formal recommendation on the policy change. “Multiple people said marijuana policy has been discussed on the criminal justice panel, one of the policy groups of the unity task force,” the outlet reported. “Sanders appointees have advocated for legalization. Some Biden appointees personally support legalizing pot and have debated putting the policy in the panel’s recommendations to the former vice president, according to two people familiar with its deliberations.” A majority of panel members appointed from both camps have previously gone on record in favor of legalization. That includes Tennessee Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D), former federal prosecutor Chiraag Bains, former Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Walker. “There’s an opportunity to advance a really bold agenda on criminal justice,” Bains, a Sanders-appointee to the task force, said. “This is part of envisioning a completely different future, not returning to a pre-Trump era. I say that as someone who served proudly in the Obama administration. We just have to be much more aggressive about rooting out systemic racism and injustice in the legal system.” Biden should “end the War on Drugs, including by legalizing marijuana,” he told Politico. Walker, whose position on the issue has been lesser-known than other members, also talked about the need for reform during an interview with Little Village that was published on Wednesday. The Iowa official said he knows many white people, including those from prominent families in the state, who consume cannabis and travel to legalized states to obtain it without concern about potential criminal penalties. “It is no secret that African Americans use marijuana as a substance, recreational substance, just as much as everybody else. I often say, I operate in professional spaces. I know most of my white professional friends in this state use marijuana,” he said. “They do it without ever, ever, ever thinking they will face some sort of legal consequence. It doesn’t even cross their mind. They talk about it openly.” Watch Walker talk about racial injustices in cannabis criminalization below: “They don’t ever think about a legal consequences because it’s not real to them— because they can’t conceive of it because they’ve never faced a consequence,” he added. “We’ve just created a system that over-criminalizes people by their race and by their economic situation. That is not right. It is not fair. It’s an aberration of justice.” He went on to say that decriminalizing cannabis would minimize police encounters that lead people, particularly from communities of color, to be incarcerated and enter the criminal legal system. Biden has backed the modest reform of decriminalizing marijuana and said that people should be diverted to treatment instead of facing jail time for possessing drugs, but he’s declined to get on board with the majority of Americans, particularly Democrats, who embrace fully legalizing cannabis. He’s opted instead to draw the line at legalization for medical use, expunging prior records, allowing states to set their own policies and federal rescheduling. Bains said earlier this month that decriminalization is not sufficient, as it “typically means that you don’t have a criminal penalty, but you could still be issued a civil fine. And then there are other kinds of consequences that could follow from that.” “It’s still illegal conduct,” he said. “If possession of marijuana is just decriminalized and that is the hook for extensive police involvement in people’s lives, and if you haven’t addressed the underlying systemic problems in policing and the justice system overall, then people could continue to be stopped and searched and frisked and so forth.” It’s not clear whether the task force will ultimately recommend that Biden adopt a pro-legalization platform—or if he would accept that recommendation even if they did. Pressed repeatedly on the issue, Biden has continued to argue that more research should be done before enacting broad reform. He also recently indicated that his personal experience knowing individuals who consume cannabis has not convinced him that the plant should be legal for recreational use. For what it’s worth, Sanders doesn’t seem especially optimistic that the former vice president will evolve further, declining in an April interview to list the policy among those from his own platform that he feels Biden will come around to. That said, as President Trump’s reelection campaign pushes to frame the incumbent as the criminal justice reform candidate, there may be added pressure on Biden to align himself with more progressive policies such as legalization. Here’s an overview of where members of the Biden-Sanders criminal justice task force stands on cannabis policy: Akbari, the Tennessee senator, has filed legislation to legalize marijuana in his state and he’s said the reform move is necessary both to promote social equity and to generate revenue that can be used to fund public schools. Bains, who also serves as the director of legal strategies at Demos, has voiced support for Sanders’s cannabis legalization plan and emphasized the need for racial equity in the legal industry. Justin Bamberg, a South Carolina lawmaker, has cosponsored legislation to decriminalize marijuana and legalize medical cannabis. Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Right, backs legalization and has strongly condemned harsh criminalization policies for non-violent drug offenses. Holder, the former top prosecutor in the U.S., has said that he’d vote in favor of legalizing marijuana if he was in Congress and claimed to have internally tried to convince the administration to reschedule cannabis. Symone Sanders, senior advisor to Biden, doesn’t have a clear public stance on legalization, but she’s characterized Biden’s modest marijuana reform plan as being progressive. Scott, a current member of the House, has cosponsored legislation that called for marijuana descheduling and reinvestments in communities harmed most by prohibition. Walker’s views on the issue became clearer in the recent interview, where he stressed that cannabis laws have been enforced in a racially discriminatory manner.
Photo courtesy of Flickr/Marc Nozell. The post Biden-Sanders Task Force Discusses Marijuana Legalization Recommendation For Former VP appeared first on Marijuana Moment. Original Article Source: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/biden-sanders-task-force-discusses-marijuana-legalization-recommendation-for-former-vp/ via Tumblr Biden-Sanders Task Force Discusses Marijuana Legalization Recommendation For Former VP U.S. Attorney General William Barr ordered investigations into 10 proposed marijuana industry mergers – a move that a career Justice Department prosecutor charged was “not even close to meeting established criteria” for such reviews. That prosecutor, John Elias, agreed the reviews amounted to industry “harassment.” MJBizDaily takeaway: The episode stands as a warning to the U.S. […] Week in Review: AG Barr blasted for marijuana merger reviews, more M&A deals altered, L.A. shifts course & more is a post from: Marijuana Business Daily: Financial, Legal & Cannabusiness news for cannabis entrepreneurs Original Article Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/week-in-review-attorney-general-william-barr-blasted-for-marijuana-merger-reviews-los-angeles-shifts-course-more/ via Tumblr Week In Review: AG Barr Blasted For Marijuana Merger Reviews, More M&A Deals Altered, L.A. Shifts Course & More The cannabis industry is gathering digitally next week for Marijuana Business Daily‘s first virtual conference – MJBizConNEXT Direct and Hemp Industry Daily Conference Direct – as businesses adapt to the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic. Previously scheduled to take place in New Orleans, the three-day, immersive and interactive event begins June 29 with keynote […] MJBizConNEXT goes virtual for marijuana, hemp business conference is a post from: Marijuana Business Daily: Financial, Legal & Cannabusiness news for cannabis entrepreneurs Original Article Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/mjbizconnext-goes-virtual-for-marijuana-hemp-business-conference/ via Tumblr MJBizConNEXT Goes Virtual For Marijuana, Hemp Business Conference New Jersey’s 11 medical marijuana dispensaries are now allowed to deliver products to patients at home, provided they fill out a state waiver. According to NJ.com, the state department of health has issued paperwork for MMJ shops to fill out so their employees can begin performing home deliveries. That options may well result in a […] New Jersey medical marijuana dispensaries can now deliver is a post from: Marijuana Business Daily: Financial, Legal & Cannabusiness news for cannabis entrepreneurs Original Article Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-jersey-medical-marijuana-dispensaries-can-now-deliver/ via Tumblr New Jersey Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Can Now Deliver An internal document from the U.S. Department of Justice’s misconduct office found nothing wrong with Attorney General William Barr’s decision ordering antitrust prosecutors to review 10 proposed marijuana business mergers. Politico reported the agency’s Office of Professional Conduct found that it was “reasonable” for the DOJ’s antitrust division to “seek additional information from the industry through […] DOJ memo defends marijuana merger scrutiny ordered by Barr is a post from: Marijuana Business Daily: Financial, Legal & Cannabusiness news for cannabis entrepreneurs Original Article Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/doj-memo-defends-cannabis-merger-scrutiny-ordered-by-barr/ via Tumblr DOJ Memo Defends Marijuana Merger Scrutiny Ordered By Barr The Los Angeles City Council gave its initial approval to sweeping changes to the city’s marijuana business licensing and social equity program, ending months of delays that had held up the permitting process and sparked widespread frustration among stakeholders. The proposals – which range from minor tweaks to major changes such as awarding retail licenses […] Los Angeles City Council backs major changes to marijuana licensing, social equity is a post from: Marijuana Business Daily: Financial, Legal & Cannabusiness news for cannabis entrepreneurs Original Article Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/los-angeles-city-council-backs-major-changes-to-marijuana-licensing-social-equity/ via Tumblr Los Angeles City Council Backs Major Changes To Marijuana Licensing, Social Equity |