Cannabis laws give landlords a unique amount of control and bargaining power over tenants. This usually translates to above-market rent and one-sided lease agreements. Fighting with landlords is no fun, especially for cannabis tenants who cannot simply relocate to a new property and must deal with their lessor for the life of a license. In […]
California, Business Basics June 27th, 2020
Cannabis supply chain agreements (e.g., manufacturing agreements, distribution agreements, license agreements, supply agreements) can be difficult enough to draft and negotiate when there are just two parties. The immense amount of over-regulation in the cannabis world can make contract drafting a headache, and even more difficult for attorneys who are not well-versed in cannabis. That […]
California, Ketamine, Psychedelics June 11th, 2020
Recently, we’ve been writing about ketamine-infusion clinics, which are increasingly popping up across the country (see a list of our past coverage at the end of this post). Over the coming weeks, we’ll dive deeper into individual laws and regulations governing clinics. Today, we focus on some of the high-level requirements of the Drug Enforcement […]
The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill) legalized hemp by removing the crop and its derivatives from the definition of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and by providing a detailed framework for the cultivation of hemp. The 2018 Farm Bill gives the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulatory authority over hemp […]
Health and Wellness, California, Psychedelics May 29th, 2020
Ketamine clinics are increasing in number in the United States and globally. As we described previously, ketamine is a Schedule III drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for certain medical uses, and may in some cases be used for off-label uses (such as anxiety […]
Employment Law, Federal law and policy May 22nd, 2020
Cannabis isn’t federally legal. Companies who operate in the cannabis space really only have the protection of the state’s laws in which they operate. Even full compliance with state laws is no shield to federal penalties or enforcement. Also, there is always a risk that cannabis contracts may not be upheld in court because they […]
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called “Cannabis Business Litigation: What’s the Point of a Demand Letter?” If you didn’t read that post, the gist is that demand letters can sometimes spur early settlement talks or the correction of improper conduct and avoid costly litigation or arbitration. Today, I want to talk about […]
California, Coronavirus May 14th, 2020
On May 14, 2020, the three California cannabis agencies, the Bureau of Cannabis Control, Department of Food and Agriculture CalCannabis Division, and Department of Public Health’s Manufactured Cannabis Safety Branch announced that licensed cannabis businesses with “licenses expiring between now through June 30, 2020 may request 60-day deferrals of their license fee payments.” The announcement […]
Business Basics, California, Litigation May 9th, 2020
In this post, I want to explore something very significant that a lot of people gloss over when reviewing contracts: non-compete clauses. Non-compete clauses are exactly what they sound like: they prohibit one party from competing with another. A common example of a non-compete is in an executive employment agreement, where an executive of a […]
It’s no secret that there’s been a huge uptick in cannabis disputes in 2020. If anything, financial pressures due to COVID-19 have made a lot of these disputes more pointed. With the rise in cannabis disputes this year, we thought we’d do a deeper dive into something that’s taken for granted in a lot of […]
