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In home news, WeedWeek excerpts have started appearing at
Toke of the Town, a site from Voice Media, parent company of L.A. Weekly, Westword (Denver) and other alt-weeklies.
Here we go:
The Democratic Party Platform
states “We encourage the federal government to remove marijuana from its list as a Class 1 Federal Controlled Substance, providing a reasoned pathway for future legalization.” The Washington Post describes the language
as a nod to Bernie Sanders.
For its platform, the Republican Party
rejected language supporting MED. It was proposed by Dale Jackson, a GOP delegate from Georgia with an autistic son. Another delegate said
mass-shooters are, “young boys from divorced families, and they’re all smoking pot.”
Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick,
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) opposed reducing marijuana penalties in 2013.
The Cannabist released its
2016 election guide.
The industry-loathed “
potency amendment” will not be on the Colorado ballot. Frank McNulty (R), a former speaker of the Colorado House and supporter of the measure said the industry paid signature gathering firms to
not gather signatures. “Without [signature gathering companies] we didn’t have the ability to get it to the ballot,”McNulty said.
An industry spokesman
denied the accusation andThe Denver Post editorial page finds it “dubious.” “
Big marijuana trashes democratic process,” the Colorado Springs Gazette editorializes.
Campaign filings released on August 1 will clarify what happened. (An email query from WeedWeek was not returned.)
The Amendment would have banned products with higher than 16% THC, which account for 80% of cannabis products in Colorado. “Make no mistake,” the Post writes, “139 was an anti-pot measure designed to gut the industry. And it’ll be back.”
With industry support, California plans to
regulate water use by growers.
Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association,
explains his ambivalence about California’s upcoming Adult Use of Marijuana Act vote: "The initiative is decidedly more friendly to big business and will lead to rapid consolidation of the industry. This is an avoidable and undesirable outcome.
"
(See the initiative’s exact language
here. California’s upcoming REC vote is also known as Proposition 64 and AUMA.)
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Montanans will
vote on a measure to expand the state’s MED program. L.A. County voters will decide on a
marijuana business tax to benefit the homeless. The L.A. Times
tells government officials, “Legal marijuana should not be seen as the solution to your revenue problems.”
A federal judge
rejected the claim that current federal laws are "so arbitrary and irrational as to be unconstitutional." The complaint was brought by Charles and Alexander Green, two Californian brothers accused of trafficking.
A proposed MED measure in North Dakota would be
too expensive, the state health department said. The Pennsylvania legislature
approved growing hemp for research.
The big move by Scotts Miracle-Grow into cannabis is
dividing the industry.
Buzzfeed makes the case that Facebook and Google’s
cannabis policy enforcement is a mess.
The U.K.’s GW Pharmaceuticals which has seen its stock soar on data from its cannabis-based drug Epidiolex,
plans to raise $252 million on the Nasdaq exchange with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch shepherding the deal.
Business attorney Hilary Bricken lays out
six weed scams
for investors and others to watch out for.
Compliance at Millennium Bank, a community bank in Des Plaines, Ill. is
reportedly under scrutiny from state and federal authorities for working with marijuana companies.
Whitney Hobbs, a founder of Oregon distributor Highly Distributed, has
sued CEO Christopher Mallott for sexual harassment that led to her departure from the company. She says he groped and smelled her. The company declined to comment but an employee refuted Hobbs’ claims.
Cannabis sales
continue to climb in Colorado and
support the state’s economy. See
here for more.
A glimpse of the future? A group of
Colorado’s largest craft breweries, led a break-up of the Colorado Brewers Guild to form a new group called Craft Beer Colorado. The split follows an overhaul of state alcohol laws.
Analyst Alan Brochstein writes that Canada’s pot policies
make more sense than America’s.
Former NORML head Allen St. Pierre
joined a publicly-traded consultancy called Freedom Leaf.
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Cannabis allergies are climbing.
LA Weekly
asked cops why they oppose AUMA. "This is not a law-enforcement jihad or
Reefer Madness," Ken Corney, Ventura’s police chief and president of the California Police Chiefs Association said. “Proposition 64 isn't about green, leafy marijuana that people smoke at home or pass across the aisle at a concert. It's a for-profit play to bring the commercialization of marijuana to California."
The piece continues: “[Corney] subscribes to the theory, so far unproven, that the proposition's biggest financial backer, Holmby Hills tech billionaire Sean Parker, is in it to open the door to Big Marijuana profits for rich folks like himself.”
The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
endorsed AUMA.
Three Santa Ana, Calif. cops who were
caught on video last year snacking and mocking an amputee (“I was about to kick her in her fucking nub”) during a dispensary raid are no longer with the department. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has filed petty theft charges against the three officers.
The three
had argued that they believed police had already disabled all of the cameras and therefore “had a reasonable expectation that their conversations and actions were no longer being recorded.”
Art Way, Colorado state director for Drug Policy Alliance
writes:
Those with vested interest in the devaluation of black life and the criminalization of black communities need the drug war for political cover. Those who want to end state sanctioned murders should consider joining forces to end the drug war.
This is a war waged to keep the black, brown and poor disenfranchised all while using their bodies as commodities for a prison industrial complex similar to the human commodification witnessed during slavery. (
H/T Word on the Tree
)
A small but growing number of Canadian RCMP officers (the equivalent of FBI agents) are
getting their MED reimbursed by the government.
Kayvan Khalatbari, a prominent activist and businessman in Denver, discussed the
industry’s lack of diversity with Vice.
In the Philippines, imprisoned
drug lords have raised a $21 million reward for whoever kills the country’s new president Rodrigo Duterte. For his part, Duterte offers bounties of $1 million for drug lords killed and $600,000 for drug lords captured. According to his administration, 75 percent of the drugs in the country were manufactured inside its largest prison.
Industry hub Pueblo, Colo. has seen
quite a few drug busts.
A Pennsylvania man has been
charged with abuse of a corpse after blending weed with brain embalming fluid.
The activist known as New Jersey Weedman will be able to argue in court that
raids on his Trenton, N.J. “cannabis temple” violate his religious freedom.
Sports Illustrated
travels to Humboldt to ask about the industry’s impact on high school and college sports there. “There are probably no other public schools in the world that have ever offered clipping trays—trays for clipping marijuana on—as part of their auction for the PTA fair,”
local journalist Kym Kemp says.
NFL running back turned cannabis investor Ricky Williams is the subject of a
new Sports Illustrated documentary. He estimates that 70 percent of NFL players smoke marijuana.
Harper’s Bazaar visits the annual
Spirit Weavers Gathering, a getaway for New Age-inclined women, that the article calls “the world’s chicest cult.” There, author Marisa Meltzer hears of a California pot farm that has fertilized the plant with menstrual blood for two generations.
A Canadian known as Marijuana Man
makes $78,000 a year getting high on Youtube. He told an interviewer that he’s had internet “since 1984.”
There’s a
crowdfunding campaign to bring “industrial hemp building and farming ambassador,” Klara Marosszeky, to California for a visit. She’s based in Australia.
Wired
visits high-end edibles maker Défoncé Chocolatier. (
Défoncé means ‘
wasted’.)
Netflix will make “
Disjointed
,
” a weed sitcom starring Kathy Bates.
Some pot journalists to follow on Twitter:
@_cingraham,
@jacobsullum,
@msamandalewis,
@Julie_Weed,
@WallandBroad,
@WillYakowicz,
@ryannerz,
@Germanrlopez,
@matthewferner,
@bruvs,
@Imyourkid,
@noellecrombie,
@PotReporter,
@aliciawallace,
@joelmwarner,
@osacirbey,
@badlin,
@BruceBarcott,
@pinestbomber,
@cbloggy,
@keegan_hamilton,
@davidrdowns,
@ZhangMona,
@EmilyBrosius,
@pot_handbook,
@jm_bos. I’m
@alexhalperin and
@WeedWeekNews.
Click
here to subscribe to the whole list. I’ll be adding to it.
More social media lists are coming! Executives, activists, opponents etc. Send your favorites to [email protected]. Self-nominations welcome.
Want to reach a devoted audience of top cannabis professionals? Advertise in WeedWeek. Contact Adrienne Nascimento at
[email protected]
for details.
Bye,
Alex
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