Dan Harris in South China Morning Post

Still, the government’s Covid policy shift and its efforts to reassure foreign investors have not swayed American manufacturers to reconsider exiting China, according to Dan Harris of the law firm Harris Bricken.

“They want out of China because they do not believe China is any longer good for business, and they are also worried about China’s relations with the rest of the world,” said Harris, who advises American companies doing business overseas.
Even companies that have profited handsomely in China were trying to reduce their footprint in the country to minimise their risks, he added.

Harris painted a bleak picture next year for foreign entities with China-based manufacturing, saying the country’s immunity to the coronavirus was not strong and that it lacked “good vaccines” for it.

Dan Harris in The New York Times

“If you look at the people who draw the analogies between Google and Facebook and TikTok, they’re either unsophisticated or they have an ax to grind in favor of TikTok,” said Dan Harris, a lawyer who works with foreign companies in China and writes the China Law Blog. “Most serious people see a difference. It doesn’t mean they’re all great or all bad, but there is a difference.”

Vince Sliwoski in DoubleBlind

The recent election has added some friction to the implementation of Measure 109. In November, more than twenty Oregon counties voted to opt out of (i.e., prohibit) the state’s psilocybin services program. Some of the counties’ bans are temporary; others are permanent. Still, according to attorney Vince Sliwoski, individual cities in Oregon can circumvent their county’s ban by going in a different direction. In other words: If a county opted out of Measure 109 this past November, a city within that same county could have voted to allow psilocybin services. The reverse is also true (i.e., a city can opt out even if its county opted in.)

Vince Sliwoski in The Zoe Report

“Decriminalization is where a state [or municipality] says we are going to move this to a very low law enforcement priority status,” says Vince Sliwoski, Managing Partner at Harris Bricken LLP, a firm that specializes in controlled substances work. “It’s treated somewhere on the misdemeanor continuum, [meaning] you’ll get a citation that’s almost tantamount to getting a parking ticket. So you’re still doing something that breaks the law, but it’s no longer a criminal law.”

Fred Rocafort in World IP Review

Fred Rocafort, an attorney at Harris Bricken in Washington, advises that, while cannabis brands cannot avail themselves of all the tools at the disposal of brands operating in more established spaces, they should act like those brands as far as possible.

“This means, among other things, monitoring the marketplace, educating consumers on how to identify genuine products and on the risks of using counterfeits, ensuring that proper protocols are in place to protect confidential information, and having proper contracts in place.

“Brands should fully exercise their rights at the state level and prepare—to the extent possible—for different federal legislation scenarios. They should also remember that a legal status quo that is not challenged is one that is unlikely to change.”

Dan Harris in Fast Company

The whiplash is just part of doing business with Beijing. “What China giveth, it can taketh,” says Dan Harris, a lawyer whose firm, Harris Bricken, has counseled U.S. companies on business in China for nearly two decades. (Harris advised Fast Company’s parent company, Mansueto Ventures, on a matter several years ago.)