This is WeedWeek, because cannabis news is everywhere. 

Like  it on Facebook ,  follow it on Instagram  and Twitter and share it with the link  weedweek.net . Subscribers’ names and contact info are confidential.  You can also list  your conferences, festivals and parties for free on the site. 

Recommended readings: How to Build an Autocracy by David Frum in the new Atlantic. Nothing is True Everything is Possible: The surreal heart of the new Russia by Peter Pomerantsev. 

Here's the news:

Politics
President Trump nominated Colorado judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. Tom Angell examines the conservative judge’s record for clues on how he views legalization. While Gorsuch has expressed a degree of impatience with the discrepancies in state and federal law, it’s not clear which he believes should take precedence.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Sen. Jeff Sessions for U.S. Attorney General in an 11-9 party line vote. He is expected to win confirmation from the Senate. Though Sessions is a prohibitionist who made no promises about allowing the industry to function, the National Cannabis Industry Association, did not oppose his nomination. I criticized NCIA in Slate a few weeks ago.

The L.A. Times asks if cannabis has grown “ too big to jail”?

Here are the first marijuana reform bills proposed in the new Congress.

Cannabis executives aren’t too concerned about a crackdown, USNews reports. And Canada’s liberal government says it’s moving forward with plans to legalize.

Oakland’s new “ czar of race and equity” has a report due out this month on the city’s cannabis industry. Last year, I wrote about Oakland’s attempt to create an equitable industry for California Sunday.

Pew examines the regulatory hurdles state-legal cannabis businesses face. The Cannifornian digs up nine ways federal cannabis laws limit the rights of legal state residents.

An Ohio panel questioned proposed license fees in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Maryland may award more MED licenses to promote diversity. Minnesota’s strict MED program is strapped for cash.

A bill in Oregon would ban marijuana tests as a condition of employment.

Massachusetts is exploring social use initiatives. So is Nevada. Alaska regulators rejected social use.

A bill would postpone Arkansas’ MED program until 180 days after it’s federally legal. There’s pushback in North Dakota as well.

Drug Policy Alliance founder and executive director Ethan Nadelmann is stepping down from the organization. In his farewell letter he writes that the Trump administration, “Will surely hamper our progress at the federal level but do little to undermine our progress and prospects in the states and cities where so much of our work has focused. And there are always, as we've learned from experience, unique opportunities that arise when our opposition is clearly defined and when it overreaches, as it inevitably will.

In 2013, Rolling Stone called Nadelmann “ the real drug czar” and “the most influential man in the battle for legalization.”

The Dutch may be on their way to formal legalization.