Vince is an award-winning business lawyer, problem solver and dealmaker. His clients run the gamut from individual investors and entrepreneurs to widely held domestic and international corporations. Based in Portland, Oregon, he is Managing Partner of Harris Sliwoski and Editor of the Canna Law Blog and the Psychedelics Law Blog.
The 2023 Oregon legislative session kicked off yesterday. It’s a regular session this year, meaning we’re in for a longer stretch– a 160 day calendar, versus the 35 day affair we see in even-numbered years. Following November’s elections, the state government also looks quite different than the last few years, from the Governor’s office on
Happy MLK Day! Time to catastrophize just a bit. Last year at this time, I kicked off this post by writing: If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would almost certainly advocate to end the War on Drugs. Dr. King never spoke publicly about drugs or cannabis in particular: he was assassinated in
Welcome to the seventh annual “State of the State” post on Oregon cannabis. For the first year since program launch, regulated cannabis sales fell in the state. We also saw significant legislative and regulatory changes, further contraction of the hemp industry and a myriad of interesting odds and ends. Overall, it has been a rocky
Last month, my Portland colleague and cannabis business litigator extraordinaire Jesse Mondry authored a post titled Oregon Cannabis: Drive-Thru Marijuana Sales Ending? On Friday, December 16, we got an answer to that question. The answer, I’m glad to report, is “not at this time.” That determination came via the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission’s (OLCC)
We have been reviewing a raft of Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) proposed rules that could significantly affect the Oregon marijuana industry. These proposed rules have implications for licensees, potential licensees and even people doing business with industry like landlords and lenders. Everyone, really. You can find the first three posts in our series
I have a bunch of thoughts actually, none of them so flattering. I’m going to break them down by category. The pardons themselves don’t do much President Biden pardoned 6,500 people previously convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law. The pardons don’t release anyone from prison, as no one was in federal prison
Oregon doesn’t want any new cannabis businesses. This turnabout happened rather quickly. Until this spring, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) issued most types of cannabis licenses to anyone who qualified under relatively broad parameters, through a cheap and simple licensing process. Oregon was even the first state to open its program to non-resident
Election season is coming. This means that cannabis ballot measures, initiatives, initiated proposals, legislative proposals, etc. are moving to the fore. I won’t set out to explain the differences among the several state protocols. You’d leave. In the cannabis context, suffice it to say that “ballot measures” are somehow convoluted and dramatic all at once.
I like being a cannabis business lawyer. It took a while for me to get there. I certainly didn’t think I would be doing this while I was in law school, or at the start of my career. Like a lot of things in life, it just sort of… happened. And I’ve learned a lot
Listen up friends. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) plans to drop the hammer on bad actors in the regulated Oregon market. Or so the Commission announced in a stern news release on Friday, July 29 (the “Release”). The Release is titled “Commissioners plan to tighten ‘change of ownership’ option.” For good effect, it is subtitled
