The Politics of Pot!

The new year brings with it a new age of legal marijuana: As of Monday, the growing, sale and use of recreational cannabis in California is now legal for individuals over the age of 21. But will it change much in the state?

Implementing the new law requires an impressive amount of regulation, and the new rules—many of which have yet to be finalized—are extensive. But the changes are unlikely to have much of an immediate impact on California’s robust illegal marijuana production. While the legal market for marijuana will grow, it's not clear the criminal market will shrink: Marijuana businesses may decide more profits can be made operating illegally.

A recent economic analysis prepared for the California Department of Agriculture estimated that legal recreational and medical use in California will account for only 19 percent of the total production. In Washington state, cannabis regulators estimated a similar figure for legal sales in the first years after it passed its recreational use law in 2012.

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JackLuis said:

Will legal pot change the criminal marijuana market?



I doubt that many growers will put up with the tracking regulations to grow legal weed. Even fewer will pay the taxes required. Only "Big Weed" will put up the capital to support the overhead costs. The legalization of six plant grows will mean a lot of people will just grow their own.

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phrodeau said:

They had to limit it to six because potheads can't count any higher.

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Top Democrats are calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ plans to crack down on marijuana policy “draconian” and “outrageous,” saying that the move will “take America back to the 1920s.”

“AG Jeff Sessions apparently wants to take America back to the 1920s. Prohibition didn't work then, and it will not work now,” Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote in a tweet on Thursday. “Congress needs to pass sensible laws to prevent a monumental waste of precious federal resources chasing Americans who use #cannabis.”

Sessions has long viewed marijuana as a dangerous drug, and been skeptical of its medicinal properties. At a Senate hearing in November, when confronted with questions about the extensive research into the claims, he said he would look at the evidence, but that he was not optimistic.

Twenty-nine states (and the District of Columbia) have legalized medical marijuana, and 94 percent of Americans support that trend, according to an August 2017 Quinnipiac Poll. Sixty-one percent believe all marijuana should be made legal, according to the same poll. Recreational marijuana is sold legally in six states, since California joined the club this week and opened its dispensaries' doors. Others have legalized and will begin sales soon.

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The bill—if given final approval by Scott—would allow adults over the age of 21 to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and grow two mature marijuana plants at home. Vermont would be the first state to legalize recreational weed from the top down, rather than waiting for a citizen-driven ballot initiative.

The Vermont House decision came after Sessions reversed an Obama-era policy known as the Cole Memo which could allow the Department of Justice to prosecute marijuana sellers and customers despite its legality on a state-by-state basis. Eight states and Washington D.C. have enacted recreational marijuana laws.

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Massachusetts’ top federal prosecutor will not rule out prosecuting businesses dealing in marijuana, he said on Monday, less than a week after the Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era policy easing enforcement in states that legalized the drug.

Massachusetts is one of eight states whose voters have legalized use of recreational marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law. Legal retail sales of the drug were to begin in Massachusetts this year under the terms of a voter initiative passed in 2016.

“Deciding, in advance, to immunize a certain category of actors from federal prosecution would be to effectively amend the laws Congress has already passed, and that I will not do,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a statement posted on Twitter. “The kind of categorical relief sought by those engaged in state-level marijuana legalization efforts can only come from the legislative process.”

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday rescinded a policy put in place under Democratic President Barack Obama that limited enforcement of marijuana laws where the drug had been legalized, currently California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Nevada and Maine. Maine has not yet cleared the way for retail sales.

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According to a new study by a three-member team of economists, the introduction of medical marijuana has helped bring down violent crime cases in states that border Mexico.

The study, titled “Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime,” said violent crime fell by 13 percent on average in states located on the Mexican border that have legalized medical use of cannabis.

“These laws allow local farmers to grow marijuana that can then be sold to dispensaries where it is sold legally,” said economist Evelina Gavrilova from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), one of the authors of the study. “These growers are in direct competition with Mexican drug cartels that are smuggling the marijuana into the U.S. As a result, the cartels get much less business.”

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Vermont became the ninth U.S. state and third in the Northeast to legalize recreational marijuana use on Monday when Republican Governor Phil Scott signed a bill passed by the legislature earlier this month.

The law legalizes possession of up to 1 ounce of the drug, two mature plants and up to four immature plants by people 21 and older beginning on July 1. It does not legalize trade in the drug.

“Today, with mixed emotions, I have signed H. 511,” Scott said in a statement, referring to the measure by its legislative number.

He noted that he had vetoed an earlier version of the bill that would have opened up sales of the drug, saying that a state commission would have time for further study before allowing a retail trade in recreational pot.

Neighboring Massachusetts, nearby Maine and six other states have legalized marijuana use as a result of voter initiatives.

New Hampshire’s House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a similar bill to legalize recreational marijuana use. That state’s governor, Republican Chris Sununu, has said he opposes legalization.

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Posted with permission from Newsweek

Bipartisan lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to back off of marijuana, they wrote in a letter on Thursday.

The letter, an effort spearheaded by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts and Representative Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado, urged the president to stand in Attorney General Jeff Sessions' way as he attempts to roll back protections for marijuana in the United States, focusing on the president's campaign promises to leave marijuana alone. Fifty-four members of Congress signed.

"As a candidate, you stated: 'I really believe we should leave [marijuana] up to the states' and that 'it's got to be a state decision.' We trust that you still hold this belief, and we request that you urge the Attorney General to reinstate the Cole Memorandum," the letter read.

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States can legalize marijuana all they want, but it’s still a federally prohibited Schedule I drug. This presents legal marijuana dealers with a problem: where do they keep their money? Banks are under federal supervision, and few of them want to take the chance of knowingly accepting drug money that might later get them in trouble with the feds. California, as always a bellwether for the nation, thinks it might have an answer:

California’s treasurer and attorney general will study whether the state should create its own publicly owned bank to serve the state’s now-legal cannabis industry….There are numerous obstacles to creating such an institution, especially if the plan is for the bank to openly work with cannabis companies.

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Oregon's marijuana industry has a "massive" overproduction problem, according to U.S. Attorney Billy Williams.

Williams told a summit of law enforcement and cannabis industry representatives on Friday that he wants to do something about the amount of Oregon marijuana that has ended up on the black market. The state is producing producing about three times more pot than can legally be consumed, former Oregon State University Professor Seth Crawford told the Associated Press.

"This lucrative supply attracts cartels and other criminal networks into Oregon and in turn brings money laundering, violence, and environmental degradation," Williams wrote.

After Sessions announced that he would roll back the Obama-era policy, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum called the move an "overreach" by the Trump administration in a tweet, adding that Oregon collected $60 million in state taxes from the marijuana industry last year. Governor Kate Brown wrote in a statement that the cannabis industry had created 19,000 jobs for the state.

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Papa-Joe said:

Marijuana is gonna be legal in Canada starting July 1st of this Year
they like the Taxes they collect from it

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More than a month after California's regulation of marijuana began, only a small number of the tens of thousands of cannabis businesses have joined the system — threatening the state's shift to a regulated market and the promise of a billion-dollar tax windfall.

Less than 1 percent of the state's 68,120 cannabis growers have been licensed, according to a report published Monday by the California Growers Association, the state's largest association of cannabis businesses.

Growers can't meet the cost of complying with regulations, or are prohibited from growing because of local land-use policies, the report says.

"Without broad participation, legalization will look a lot like prohibition," with many illicit growers, the report concludes. "The current system will not achieve its goals without fundamental and structural changes that allow small and independent businesses to enter into compliance."

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Monterey County, for example, is issuing licenses to high-tech greenhouse growers, mostly owned by well-funded outsiders, on the edge of urban Salinas — but is rebuffing small traditional farmers on parcels in the more remote reaches of the county such as Big Sur and Carmel Valley.

As of Feb. 7, merely 534 of the state's growers, or 0.78 percent, are licensed, according to the new report.

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JackLuis said:

California’s cannabis growers are still staying in the shadows

The Black and Gray Markets will always be bigger than the legit market because of the ease of growing a weed.

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JackLuis said:

The Black and Gray Markets will always be bigger than the legit market because of the ease of growing a weed.

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Hypoxia said:

Now they'll need tax and license specialists, corporate account whizzes, etc. Welcome to regulated capitalism, the finest kind.

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So apparently people who work in media smoke a lot of weed...

Cough. Puff. No comment.

But we're not the profession most likely to light up.

A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked Colorado occupations by how much their workers use marijuana, which was legalized in the state in 2012 and became available for purchase two years later.

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3. Production
Percent marijuana users: 20.8 percent
Age-adjusted rate: 21.3

Production is a broad occupational category that includes manufacturing, car machine shops and administrative services such as temp agencies.

2. Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports and Media
Percent marijuana users: 27.5 percent
Age-adjusted rate: 25.3

1. Food Preparation and Serving
Percent marijuana users: 32.2 percent
Age-adjusted rate: 19.1

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JackLuis said:

This profession smokes the most weed. See where yours ranks.

See the article for the lower ranked professions.

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Harvard University
Published on Apr 4, 2017
California, Massachusetts, Maine, and Nevada became the latest states to legalize recreational marijuana, bringing to 28 the number of states that have okayed the drug for medicinal use, recreational use, or both. Even more states have rules that allow certain kinds of cannabis extracts to be used for medical purposes. At the same time that state legalization is increasing, the Trump administration is signaling that it may ramp up enforcement of federal drug laws, even when they come into conflict with state laws allowing recreational marijuana use. State and local governments may find themselves on uncertain legal ground. Meanwhile, policymakers navigating this new landscape are also working largely without the benefit of a solid foundation of scientific evidence on the drug’s risks and benefits. In fact, a new National Academy of Medicine report describes notable gaps in scientific data on the short- and long-term health effects of marijuana.

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On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his plans to introduce legislation decriminalizing marijuana, calling the bill "simply the right thing to do" in light of the number of people serving long jail sentences for possessing small amounts of the drug.

"The time has come to decriminalize marijuana,” Schumer said in a statement. "My thinking—as well as the general population’s views—on the issue has evolved, and so I believe there’s no better time than the present to get this done."

Just this week, former House Speaker John Boehner wrote on Twitter that, whereas he was once staunchly opposed to legalizing the drug, he now believes removing cannabis from the government's list of substances with "no accepted medical use" could help veterans and fix the opioid epidemic. (Of course, this statement also came with an announcement that Boehner was joining Acreage Holding, a company that invests in the cannabis industry.)

A recent Gallup poll found that a majority of Democrats have supported legalizing the drug since around 2009. As of October, 72 percent of Democrats, along with 67 percent of Independents and 51 percent of Republicans said they would support marijuana legalization. These findings make marijuana legalization "one of the least polarizing issues of our time," FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten wrote, adding in parentheses: "and one that some political party might be smart to take advantage of."

"It would be hard to imagine any serious presidential candidate would be able to oppose legalization marijuana...and silence is not longer acceptable on this issue," Altieri said.

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JackLuis said:

Senator Chuck Schumer now supports legal marijuana

Who said "Big Weed" was a bad thing? Now that the LLC's are taking over, suddenly it's a good thing?



Or... It could be that Democrats are looking for a new source of funds to cultivate for political purposes?

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