As Minnesota approaches the legalization of marijuana, the Minnesota Supreme Court has just ruled on a case we covered in September 2021. The case involves the difference between hemp and marijuana and a state prosecutor’s burden to prove what side of the line a leafy or liquid cannabis substance falls. As we explained two years
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
The OLCC rulemaking process continues after a public hearing on October 25 and the close of the public comment period on October 31. You can read our prior coverage here, here and here, and you can read the proposed rules here. The public hearing lasted about 35 minutes and a hot topic was whether retailers may
President Biden’s recent announcement of a pardon for federal cannabis offenses has caught the attention of observers abroad. In fact, I was quoted in an article by Brazilian journalist Anita Krepp on the subject. Unfortunately, the example being set by Biden for other countries is, in part, a bad one. To be clear, we are
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
Mike Tyson wants to market cannabis edibles shaped like ears with bite marks in them. Love him or hate him, you have to admit it’s clever. He’s apparently having a hard time getting his “Mike Bites” to market, due to regulators who apparently can’t take a joke or regulations that don’t seem to make any
On August 4, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden published a formal statement concerning the sentencing of U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner. Griner was just sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony and fined one million rubles. We’ve written about Griner’s case before (here and here), but to summarize, she could be spending the
The Los Angeles Social Equity Verification period came to an end at 4pm on Monday, July 25th. Recall that verification is required to enter into the Social Equity Retail Lottery this Winter. The verification period will be followed by a 90-day review period. Then, the Department of Cannabis Regulation (DCR) will notify qualified applicants of
In May 2021, we wrote about the injustice of the Mississippi Court of Appeals affirming a life sentence without eligibility for probation or parole in the case of Allen Russell. Mr. Russell was found in possession of 43 grams (1.5 ounces) of marijuana. A legal basis for Mr. Russell’s brutal sentence was the fact that
Complying with cannabis business regulations presents a challenge for start-ups and smaller firms. Corporate and regulatory attorneys often help clients understand and comply with complex regulations. This is especially true in the cannabis industry. In the United States, many industries lack well thought out regulatory policy. Some industries, like cannabis, suffer from over-regulation, overwhelming smaller
