A Brief History of Marihuana in Mexico

Pancho Villa (center) smokes a joint on his ranch in Chihuahua.

Mexico has been key in the worldwide spread of marijuana use and cannabis culture. It was through Mexico that the plant found its way to North America’s jazz vipers, beatniks and hippies. But the absurd policy of attempting to suppress cannabis in the same way as truly dangerous drugs like cocaine and heroin is a large part of what has propelled Mexico into a crisis of relentless, nightmarish narco-violence.

The legacy of the 500-year Moorish occupation of Spain was critical in Mexico’s rise as a global cannabis hub. The Moors brought hashish and the Maghrebi tradition of kif-smoking to Spain. It survived in the shadows among the Moriscos (crypto-Moors) even after the 1492 Catholic Reconquista and the Inquisition. Cannabis first entered the New World on Spanish galleons bound for New Spain (Mexico).

It caught on with both peasants and the higher classes in Mexico over the centuries. The iconic anthem of the Mexican Revolution, “La Cucaracha,” is about Pancho Villa’s peasant army getting high (“marihuana que fumar”) as they marched through the desert.

Mexico banned cannabis in 1920. When Harry J. Anslinger launched his successful campaign to have marijuana outlawed in the U.S. in the 1930s, demonizing Mexican immigrants was a decisive tactic.

In the 1960s, American hippies headed south of the border to Mexican states like Michoacán that grew large quantities of cheap mota. The explosion of cannabis use in those years prompted President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Operation Intercept, which paralyzed traffic at the border crossings with car searches for hidden stashes. This prompted diplomatic protests from Mexico. But in 1978, the DEA began aiding Mexican police by spraying pot crops with the defoliant paraquat.

Cannabis was how the notorious Mexican drug cartels got started. The embryonic cartels initially brokered exports for independent campesino (peasant) growers in Michoacán, taking the biggest share of the profits, of course. But they soon consolidated control, forcing small growers out of the export market. The new heartland of cultivation became the “Golden Triangle” in the remote, rugged Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, where the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa meet. This territory is now virtually colonized by the crime lords, with the Tarahumara and Huichol Indians forced to grow cannabis (and now opium too).

When Harry J. Anslinger launched his successful campaign to have marijuana outlawed in the U.S. in the 1930s, demonizing Mexican immigrants was a decisive tactic.

As marijuana and opium production took hold in Mexico’s mountains, these criminal networks established themselves as middlemen for cocaine coming up from Colombia. The emergence of Mexico’s first narco syndicate, the Guadalajara cartel, was actually overseen by the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), Mexico’s answer to the CIA.

The role of the DFS in the Guadalajara cartel was revealed in Mexico’s press (some reporters paid with their lives) after DEA agent Kiki Camarena was tortured to death in 1985 on orders from the cartel’s co-founder Rafael Caro Quintero in retaliation for the bust of his huge marijuana plantation in Chihuahua. Caro Quintero was sentenced to 40 years after his capture, and spent 28 years in prison before he was released on a legal technicality in 2013.

Guadalajara cartel co-founder Rafael Caro Quintero

The Guadalajara cartel was eventually absorbed into the Tijuana cartel as newer, bigger cartels emerged in the border cities. Then, in the ’90s, the middle-level syndicates in Mexico’s interior began to revolt, demanding a bigger share of the pie. The most successful was the Sinaloa cartel, which started out as a satellite of the Tijuana cartel, but soon eclipsed it.

For Mexicans, the old cannabis heartland of Michoacán now evokes the severed heads left around the state as a warning by the cultish crime machine known as La Familia. Urban warfare in the border city of Matamoros, mass graves along the south bank of the Río Grande, and mutilated bodies left hanging from highway overpasses in Ciudad Juárez all reflect the grisly struggle for control of Mexico’s narco trade. Since 2006, when then President Felipe Calderón sent the army in to fight the cartels, an estimated 200,000 people have been killed. Mexico’s “drug war” became a real war.

The legacy of the 500-year Moorish occupation of Spain was critical in Mexico’s rise as a global cannabis hub.

While cannabis now plays third fiddle to cocaine smuggling and heroin production (with methamphetamine not far behind), it remains a significant factor in Mexico’s narco economy. That marijuana has come under the control of these ultraviolent criminal organizations is a bitter fruit of prohibition.

However, all this drug-related violence has sparked a reckoning. Ex-president Vicente Fox, who prosecuted the drug war aggressively while in power, has become an advocate for cannabis legalization. His successor, Calderón, signed a decriminalization law in 2009. While the maximum amount one can possess is five grams, activists are pressing to increase that, and also to expand the CBD-only medical-marijuana program that was launched last year.

It will take years to undo the damage wrought by prohibition in Mexico, even as cannabis-law reform moves in the right direction, albeit at the pace of a cockroach.

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Vicente Fox’s Global Vision: Legalization of All Drugs

In order to end the cartel violence in Mexico, former president Vicente Fox thinks all drugs should be legalized, what he calls “the whole enchilada.”

Don’t get Vicente Fox started on Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. Oh, why not?

“I just don’t like those two guys,” he says during a phone interview from his home base in the village of San Cristobal, in the state of Guanajuato about four hours northwest of Mexico City. “I don’t think the United States should be in the hands of those two guys. The November midterm elections are a great opportunity for the people of the United States to stop Trump from doing crazy things, to stop him through a strong liberal Congress, a Congress that looks to the future, not this blinded position of Trump looking at the past. He wants a very strong government that controls the borders and decides the fate of society and people. Your citizens should never accept that. The United States is the vanguard, the leader on developed thinking, on freedom of choice, on unity of purpose. This guy should be kicked out.”

Vicente Fox at press conference announcing the Canna Mexico World Summit on May 30-31.

The Canna Mexico World Summit, the international cannabis conference that Fox’s company Centro Fox is presenting on May 30-31 in San Cristobal, is just weeks away. This is the main reason for the phone call, to get the word out to the U.S. industry.

“It’s going to be a global event with people from Israel, Europe, South America, Mexico, the United States and Canada,” Fox explains. “The whole purpose is to push forward the process of legalization. Medical use has been approved, but we have yet to see the regulation. We have to take the step to move forward to total legalization that includes responsible recreational use. We’re going to have 1,500-2,000 people here. It’s going to be a high-impact event.”

But in the same sentence, he rails against his government’s plan to not allow local production and processing for medical cannabis, which he calls “absolutely stupid. How can you open an industry that’s going to generate income and jobs, and you don’t allow it to produce in Mexico? We are fighting against that.”

FOX: “The War on Drugs is useless. It has not produced the benefits that President Nixon envisioned 60 years ago.”

On June 19, 2017, Mexico’s Congress legalized medical cannabis, but like many U.S. states, it permits only products containing less than 1% THC. Since Mexican farmers are not permitted to grow it, low-THC cannabis has to be imported. Several months later, in August, HempMeds became the first foreign company to sell CBD oil to Mexico.

“It’s going to be on the market,” Fox says. “The retailing will be here, but not the production. That’s wrong on the side of Mexican authorities. But the rest is wide open.”

Fox is referring to the prospects of both overall cannabis legalization in Mexico and ending the prohibition of other illegal drugs. “One step we’ve already taken, which is medical,” he notes. “Now we have to move forward to recreational use. We have witnessed in the rest of the world that it works, and it works well. We see a lot of blood on the streets of Mexico today because of the criminals. It’s a profound change in policy. You can’t go with pieces, that’s where the authorities are wrong. We have to take the whole enchilada.”

Vicente Fox in his Centro Fox office in San Cristobal, Mexico.

The violence and mayhem caused by the drug cartels are a foremost concern for the former president. “When I was president we had the lowest crime rate in Mexico ever, historically,” Fox recalls. “Today, the crime rate has gone up 400%! Legalization is a strategy that will result in a very significant collateral benefit of reducing violence, crime and the killings in Mexico. With that argument, we’ve been able to sell the public that this can be the best solution to something we have not been able to solve. The War on Drugs has been growing and growing not only here, but in the world. It’s useless. It has not produced the benefits that President Nixon envisioned 60 years ago. That has not worked. So, we have to come up with a new solution, not only using this plant for medical use and to solve many health problems that many people have, but also to solve the crime and violence that we have in Mexico.”

FOX: “The market in Mexico is not that wide or significant. The problem is the huge, mammoth drug-consumer market in the United States.”

In 2017, 25,340 people were murdered in Mexico, mostly by drug-cartel violence. That figure is expected to exceed 30,000 this year. Would legalization put the cartels out of business? “Not immediately, and not necessarily,” says Fox. “But certainly, it will be very helpful. It will take away a lot of the money they enjoy today.”

Bricks of pressed marijuana seized from a cartel in Mexico.

Additionally, he points out that “all the money from the Mexican cartels is raised in the States. The market in Mexico is not that wide or significant. The problem is the huge, mammoth drug-consumer market in the United States. Public opinion is confused thinking that Mexicans are invading the market, but the Mexicans are the ones distributing the drugs. The drugs today are produced down south in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. Mexico is only the transit place. The drugs come through Mexico to reach the U.S. market. Yet, here in Mexico we’re killing ourselves trying to prevent the drugs from getting to the U.S. market.”

Fox says legalization, like what’s happened with marijuana in nine U.S. states, “is the way to go. This change of policy would bring in many positive new things, like becoming an industry, jobs, paying taxes, creating entrepreneurs and improving farmers’ incomes. At the same time, it’s a big hit against criminal cartels.” He also favors giving “criminals that are trafficking to the United States the opportunity to participate in an open, legal business” as a form of an equity program.

“The best two examples of legalization are Holland and Portugal,” Fox continues. “They really sold the whole package—total legalization for all drugs for all uses. This leaves the responsibility of consuming to the person, the consumer. The state won’t be able to prevent people from falling into this trap. We are each created free and we must make ourselves responsible to exercise that freedom.”

FOX: “Let anybody have a little smoke of marijuana. Let them do it!”

One other country in the Western Hemisphere that has radically altered its cannabis policy is Uruguay, which Fox says is “one step ahead of Mexico.” Uruguay legalized marijuana in 2013 and started selling to registered residents via pharmacies last year. “It’s not a total open market yet, it’s not this philosophy of ethics and moral behavior that I’m pushing for, the new industry, but it’s one step further than Mexico is. I think Uruguay is doing well, a solution is being implemented.”

Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador favors marijuana legalization.

That is foremost on Fox’s mind: Solving the crisis in Mexico. This will largely be up to who’s elected president on July 1. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidate of the five-year-old left-wing MORENA (National Regeneration Movement) Party, favors marijuana legalization. The other two major-party candidates—José Antonio Meade Kuribreña (from the governing PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party) and Ricardo Anaya Cortés (like Fox, from PAN, the center-right National Action Party)—don’t.

“If it’s a conservative government, it will take a little bit more time,” Fox says. “Or it could be a liberal government respectful of freedom of choice. It depends on the election, but sooner or later Mexico will go for the whole enchilada. I’m absolutely sure, and I am already pushing for a total legalization of all drugs. Look at the incredible problem the United States is having with opioids now. What’s wrong with a plant like marijuana? It is not evil. We have to think differently. Human beings don’t respond to prohibitions. We respond to information and what is good for our health. Governments will never stop that.”

FOX: “Human beings don’t respond to prohibitions. We respond to information and what is good for our health. Governments will never stop that.”

The interview concludes with a question about Fox’s own cannabis use. Does he smoke mota?

“No, I have not tried it, because I don’t feel like it,” Fox replies. “I have tried a lot of things, but not that one. My position is based on reason, science and humanism. That’s what I believe in. I don’t need to take the product to change my convictions. So, my beliefs are those. That’s why I’m associated to this movement.

“And I also believe most importantly in peace and harmony. Peace and harmony is maybe the highest value we human beings can have. Pursuing that is my purpose. Let anybody have a little smoke of marijuana. Let them do it! It might make him more peaceful, it might bring harmony with himself. Those veterans coming back from war affected psychologically, let then have that. Me? I have a tequila. When I’m at a conference I have a tequila before I speak. I get myself very nice and smooth. It opens my mind.”

Register for the Canna Mexico World Summit here.

This article appears in Freedom Leaf Issue 32.

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Gutierres Urges UN to Follow Portugal’s Lead on Drugs

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Weekly Legislative Roundup 5/18/18

Welcome to the latest edition of NORML’s Weekly Legislative Roundup!

Good news – on Thursday the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee for the first time heard and passed language, known as the Joyce amendment, to restrict funding for the Department of Justice to prosecute state-legal medical marijuana programs.

At the state level, Governor Jeff Colyer (R) of Kansas signed a bill exempting CBD from the definition of marijuana. Until then, Kansas was one of the four states in the US that had not reformed it’s marijuana laws to any extent. Now, it’s just down to three – South Dakota, Idaho, and Nebraska.

Additionally, Governor Doug Ducey (R) of Arizona signed hemp legislation into law, the Illinois Senate sent a bill allowing medical cannabis at schools to the desk of Gov. Bruce Rauner (R), and Michigan’s House speaker said the legislature won’t take up marijuana legalization and will instead leave it up to the voters this November.

At a more local level, district attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn announced that with limited exception, low-level marijuana-related offenses would no longer be prosecuted. And The Allentown, Pennsylvania City Council approved a marijuana decriminalization proposal.

Following are the bills from around the country that we’ve tracked this week and as always, check http://norml.org/act for legislation pending in your state.

Don’t forget to sign up for our email list and we will keep you posted as these bills and more move through your home state legislature and at the federal level.

Your Highness,
Carly

Priority Alerts

Federal

End Prohibition: Representatives Tom Garrett (R-VA) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) have introduced bipartisan legislation, HR 1227, to exclude marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, thus leaving states the authority to regulate the plant how best they see fit.

The “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017” eliminates federal criminal penalties for possessing and growing the plant. This legislation gives states the power and flexibility to establish their own marijuana policies free from federal interference.

Click here to e-mail your Representative and urge them to support this important legislation

Rhode Island

Senator Joshua Miller introduced legislation, SB 2895, to regulate adult use marijuana possession and provide for adult use retail sales.

The measure would allow adults 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and cultivate up to two marijuana plants in private, and establish a tightly regulated system of licensed marijuana retail stores, cultivation facilities, and testing facilities.

RI resident? Click here to email your elected officials in support of legalization

Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

SB 20-62 seeks to legalize, tax, and regulate cannabis in the US territory of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

If passed, the bill would legalize the personal use and cultivation of small amounts of marijuana for adults age 21 or older, and establish a licensing scheme for its commercial production and retail sale. The tax revenue would be used to fund the implementation of the program and other government services.

Update: SB 20-62 was approved by the Senate on 5/15.

CNMI resident? Click here to email your elected officials in support of legalization

Louisiana

HB 579 and HB 627 seek to expand the state’s nascent medical cannabis program.

The measures would expand the pool of patients eligible for medical cannabis by permitting physicians to authorize cannabis therapy to those suffering from chronic pain, post traumatic stress disorder, severe muscle spasms, autism or glaucoma.

Update: HB 579 was approved by the House on 5/16 by a 55-33 vote. HB 627 was also approved by the House on 5/16, by a 59-27 vote. Both bills now await action from Governor John Bel Edwards.

LA resident? Click here to email your Governor in support of medical expansion

New Jersey

S 10, to expand the state’s medical cannabis program. The measure would increase the number of licenses the Department of Health can issue to new providers in order to meet New Jersey’s increased patient demand.

Other provisions in the bill would protect medical cannabis patients from employment, housing, and education discrimination.

NJ resident? Click here to email your elected officials in support of medical expansion

California

AB 2069 seeks to strengthen employment rights for medical cannabis patients.

The bill would explicitly bar employers from discriminating against workers solely because of their status as a medical cannabis patient, or due to testing positive for medical marijuana use on a workplace drug test.

Update: AB 2069 was supposed to be heard by the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee on 5/16, but the hearing was postponed by the committee.

CA resident? Click here to email your elected officials in support of employment rights for patients

 

Additional Actions to Take

California

Taxes
AB 3157 seeks to temporarily reduce tax rates imposed on the retail sale and commercial cultivation of cannabis.

Update: AB 3157 was supposed to be heard by the Assembly Appropriations Committee on 5/16, but the hearing was postponed by the committee.

CA resident? Click here to email your elected officials in support of lower taxes

Banking
SB 930 seeks to assist financial institutions in safely conducting transactions with licensed cannabis businesses.

Update: SB 930 will be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee on 5/22 at 10am in the John L. Burton Hearing Room.

CA resident? Click here to email your elected officials in support of banking access

That’s all for this week, check back next week for more legislative updates!

Source: http://blog.norml.org/2018/05/18/weekly-legislative-roundup-5-18-18/

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Blumenauer’s Canna-PAC Raising Money for Pro-Pot Candidates

Rep. Earl Blumenauer surrounded by High NY’s Mike Zaytsev (left) and Todd Hinden.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) talked up de-scheduling marijuana on a May 11 visit to Brooklyn to raise money for his new Cannabis Fund political action committee.

Blumenaeur, known for the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment that prevents the federal government from prosecuting states with  legal medical cannabis programs, touched on a wide range of issues at the High NY event at WeWork in South Williamsburg.

Rather than changing cannabis’ current federal classification as a Schedule 1 drug to another schedule, Blumenauer advocates removing it as a controlled substance altogether. “This is within our capacity,” he told about 100 attendees. “If we get the politics right, have hearings and experts come in, it would probably not be scheduled at all within the course of the next five years. It can happen sooner. We’ll see states be allowed to treat cannabis the way they treat alcohol.”

Blumenauer’s Cannabis Fund PAC is backing pro-pot candidates in the upcoming mid-term elections. “I’m raising money to give to candidates who have the courage to say the right thing and to make it a little easier for them to step up,” he explained.

Unseating pot opponent Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tx.) is the PAC’s No. 1 priority. “There are some special targets for me of people who have been serious impediments. One happens to be Pete Sessions – Jeff Sessions’ remote distant cousin. He chairs the House Rules Committee and has prevented us from having votes on some of these key issues. I want to make his life more interesting this year in a district that Hillary Clinton actually carried.”

Two Democrats – former NFL player and civil rights lawyer Colin Allred and former Obama staffer Lillian Salerno – are in the run-off on May 22 to face Sessions in November. Whoever wins will receive support from the Cannabis Fund.

REP. EARL BLUMENAUER: “There are some special targets for me of people who have been serious impediments. One happens to be Pete Sessions – Jeff Sessions’ remote distant cousin.”

Blumenauer encouraged people to get involved, put pressure on anti-pot politicians and vote them out of office. “In the last Congress, legislation I had to permit VA doctors to talk to veterans in states where medical marijuana is legal passed both House and Senate. The Republican leadership stripped it out. Actually, it was ex-Senator Mark Kirk chair of the Conference Committee.”

Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth defeated Kirk in 2016. “I’d like to think that one of the reasons he is ex-Senator Kirk is because people in the cannabis space reacted. We donated thousands of dollars to Tammy, wrote letters to the editor and had people campaigning and kicking up dust.”

The Congressman spoke at length about the hot topic of paying reparations to African Americans and Latinos unjustly persecuted by marijuana laws. “If you deal with things like reparations, you’ll find that there are 50 different groups that have 50 different ideas. There will be some that say where will this end because there are lots of things we’ve done as a nation that we probably should try and deal with some kind of recompense. Each degree of complexity that we add makes it harder to achieve and will take longer.

“For me, I want action and progress. I want to take care of the criminal justice issues and not just with records. I want to get people out of jail. Certain things we can do relatively quickly, like the expungement of records. That ought to move in a heart beat. Being able to grant access to this emerging industry to populations, particularly the African American community, where they get a piece of the action guaranteed – these are things that can happen faster and more smoothly.”

Playing to he the local crowd, Blumenauer praised recent gains made in the Northeast. “What’s going on with Gov. Phil Murphy in New Jersey is also exciting. And New York seems to be kind of on the verge of taking another big step. If New York does that, it’s going to be extraordinarily significant.”

Related Articles

A 4/20 Message from Rep. Earl Blumenauer

Schumer Calls for Federal Decriminalization

Four Major Marijuana Bills on Capitol Hill

Cannabis Caucus Takes on Trump Administration

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Medical Cannabis Patients, Medical Professionals, Advocates, and Industry Leaders Converge at National Medical Cannabis Unity Conference in D.C.

May 22 - May 25, 2018
Contact: Debbie Churgai | 202-857-4272 x.8 | debbie@safeaccessnow.org

WASHINGTON, DC — Starting on Tuesday, May 22nd and running until Friday, May 25th, medical cannabis patients, advocates, medical and legal professionals, and industry business leaders will gather at Americans for Safe Access’ (ASA) Annual National Medical Cannabis Unity conference in Washington, D.C. to learn and exchange ideas about how to navigate and steer medical cannabis policy in this ever-changing political landscape.

What: 6th Annual National Medical Cannabis Unity Conference
Where: Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC,
When: Tuesday, May 22nd through Friday, May 25th

This year's conference will focus on the life-saving role that medical cannabis can play in the fight against the Opioid Epidemic. In 2017 ASA launched the End Pain, Not Lives campaign, to help protect current medical cannabis programs, remove barriers for people with pain, chronic pain, and Opioid Use Disorder, and to educate medical professionals, service providers, and patients about medical cannabis and pain.

Source: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/unity18_press

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How Massachusetts Became a Leader in Regulating Marijuana

While much of the nation was reeling from Donald Trump’s upset victory in the 2016 election, cannabis advocates were cheering when recreational-legalization initiatives passed in four states: California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada.

By 2017, marijuana would be officially legal for adult use on the entire West Coast, as well as in Colorado and Nevada. The New England victories finally gave East Coast legalization supporters something to crow about.

While Maine’s legalization process has been beset by delays (in part thanks to its reefer-mad governor Paul LePage), Massachusetts filed its final regulations on March 7. Starting July 1, the Bay State will be home to the only legal recreational marijuana market east of the Mississippi River.

In addition, residents will be able to grow up to six plants. However, they can’t be visible to the public “without the use of binoculars, aircraft and other optical aids,” according to the FAQ at mass-cannabis-control.com.

Starting July 1, Massachusetts will be home to the only recreational marijuana market east of the Mississippi River.

Several recent compromises on regulation included no delivery or cannabis cafes (at least for now) and not allowing felons who’ve been convicted of certain hard-drug offenses to work directly with cannabis plants. Also, 35% of the state’s cannabis supply must be portioned off for medical use.

A hard-won highlight is the social-equity program intended to help remedy some of the injustices caused by the War on Drugs. City-level equity programs like the one in Oakland, California helped regulators in Massachusetts craft the first statewide cannabis equity program in the nation.

“Our team’s first step was to examine all other [equity] programs and see how we could incorporate their best elements,” Shaleen Title, one of five commissioners on the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, tells Freedom Leaf. The commission’s goal is, she says, “to promote and encourage the inclusion of people from communities disproportionately harmed by prohibition.”

Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commissioner Shaleen Title

Equity applicants must meet one of the three criteria: Live in an area that’s been disproportionately affected by drug enforcement; been convicted of a drug offense; or be the spouse or child of someone who has a drug conviction. Those applicants will receive priority for licenses, employee training and technical assistance.

“People from these communities will get various benefits,” notes Title. “We’re required by law to keep track of the levels of participation by different groups. That will help us to improve our own programs as well as provide information for other states when they make their decisions about equity.”

For Title, who made the transition from cannabis activist to regulator, engaging with the public has been one of the most rewarding parts of her new job. “It’s enormously gratifying that the public was so informed and engaged with our process,” she says. “I enjoyed hearing from farmers seeking to grow outdoors and people in the underground market seeking to transition to the legal market, because there are clear policy benefits to working with those communities.”

SHALEEN TITLE: “Our goal is to promote and encourage the inclusion of people from communities disproportionately harmed by prohibition.” 

Settling into her new role as a government official has gone more smoothly than she expected. “My goals are very similar to what they were before,” she explains.

As an attorney as well as the co-founder of THC Staffing Group, Title sought to help create a fair and equitable cannabis industry. “Now I’m working towards the same goal, but from a regulatory perspective.”

Kris Krane, cofounder and president of 4Front Ventures, thinks the regulators “did a great job” in fashioning Massachusetts’ new cannabis rules. “They held a lot of listening sessions, comment periods and accepted written comments and testimony. They probably took more feedback than anywhere else in the country.” 4Front’s subsidiary Mission Partners owns a dispensary in Worcester.

However, Krane, whose company is based in Boston, warns that “the hard part is still ahead of us.” Many other legal states have run into problems implementing regulations. In some states, applicants who lost out on licenses have delayed the rollouts.

Kris Krane (center on couch) with the 4Front Venture team

In Massachusetts, businesses will have other hurdles to overcome, such as a regulation that limits indoor cultivation operations to 36 watts per square foot of canopy. That rule effectively limits cultivators to using only LED lights.

“Trying to cut down the carbon footprint in the industry is a really laudable goal,” Krane explains. “But I think there are other things they could’ve done to reduce the carbon footprint,” such as considering total energy used at the facility rather than just focusing on lighting.

Another requirement that businesses will have to contend with is the host community agreement. By requiring agreements with municipal officials—who have no set criteria for accepting or rejecting potential marijuana establishments—it effectively allows towns to ban cannabis businesses.

Perhaps the most worrisome part of the process, however, is whether or not there will be enough supply to meet the demand. “There will be shortages come mid-July,” predicts Keith Saunders, a sociologist who researches drug policy and sits on NORML’s board. Given the timeline for evaluating applications, awarding licenses and building cultivation facilities, and then growing, harvesting, and curing the marijuana, “new cultivators’ products will not be available until December.”

KEITH SAUNDERS: “There are about 25 million people within a day trip of Massachusetts.” 

Some advocates were also displeased with the delay in social-use licensing. Cities such as Denver and San Francisco have established municipal licenses for social-use businesses, and Massachusetts could’ve become the first state to license social use. “Lounges or cafes would be really impactful for the tourism industry,” says Krane.

Other avenues to consumption are available, though. Saunders says when he was working with a cannabis trade show last year, he was able to find a venue that allowed cannabis consumption. “For the time being, those of us who would like to run a cannabis-consumption event just have to be sure to do it on private property.”

NORML board member Keith Saunders speaks at Seattle Hempfest

Even without allowing social use, the state is set to become a tourist destination for cannabis. “Massachusetts will be the only state east of Colorado with a legal market, come July 1,” Saunders boasts. “There are about 25 million people within a day trip of Massachusetts.”

The fight for equity in the industry will no doubt be a tough one. “Do not expect cannabis legalization to address the problems of capitalism, and of greater racial problems,” Saunders says. “Banks are not going to suddenly offer business loans to poor people just because a section of law says they get first dibs on obtaining a business license.”

Although the equity program will offer “assistance with identifying or raising funds or capital,” it’s no secret that sources for capital in the marijuana industry are hard to come by. Most institutional investors are barred from entering it, leaving a small pool of family and individual investors.

But Shaleen Title is up for the challenge. She’s looking forward to making the state’s legalization measure “manifest into reality” and to continued activism around the country. “Social-justice improvements such as sentencing reform, clemency for people incarcerated for marijuana offenses, expungement of past records and treating people who use drugs like human beings will be priorities for future generations.”

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The post How Massachusetts Became a Leader in Regulating Marijuana appeared first on Freedom Leaf.

Source: https://www.freedomleaf.com/massachusetts-marijuana-regulations/

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Historic House Appropriations Committee Vote On Marijuana

Today, the House appropriations committee for the first time heard and passed language, known as the Joyce amendment, to restrict funding for the Department of Justice to prosecute state-legal medical marijuana programs.

“Today marks a victory for medical marijuana programs and a loss for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Passage of this amendment through regular order in the appropriations committee represents another big step in the normalization of state level marijuana reform in the Congress of the United States,” said NORML Political Director Justin Strekal

Previously, the amendment had not gone through the committee process and was inserted into the appropriations bill on the floor of the House, yet was blocked in 2017 by Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, a militant marijuana prohibitionist. The amendment was offered by Representative David Joyce (R-OH).

“We thank Representative Joyce for his leadership to protect the 46 states that have reformed their marijuana policies and the over 2 million patients that they serve,” said Strekal.

Since 2014, members of Congress have passed annual spending bills that have included a provision protecting those who engage in the state-sanctioned use and dispensing of medical cannabis from undue prosecution by the Department of Justice. The amendment, previously known as the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer, maintains that federal funds cannot be used to prevent states from “implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

Last year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter to Congressional leadership to remove these restrictions, writing: “I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of a historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.”

According to recently released nationwide survey data, the majority of Americans are on our side. A whopping 94 percent support the medical use of marijuana. Perhaps most importantly, 70 percent of voters — including strong majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents — say that they “oppose the government enforcing federal laws against marijuana in states that have already legalized medical or recreational marijuana.”

To send a message to your Representative in support of maintaining these protections, click here.

Source: http://blog.norml.org/2018/05/17/historic-house-appropriations-committee-vote-on-marijuana/

Historic House Appropriations Committee Vote On Marijuana was originally published on gigglesndimples.com

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