Cannabis

The government is in talks with bank regulators to see whether financial institutions in states that have approved recreational marijuana use can do business with drug dispensaries there, a top Justice Department official said Tuesday.

The announcement came nearly two weeks after the Justice Department decided it won’t take legal action against Colorado and Washington, which approved recreational marijuana use last year.

Banks, worried they could be violating federal laws, have been hesitant to provide services to state-authorized marijuana dispensaries, forcing the dispensaries to become mostly cash-only enterprises. And “that’s a prescription for problems,” potentially including armed robberies, according to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I don’t want to see a shootout somewhere and have innocent people or law enforcement endangered by that,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said during a committee hearing Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s number two agreed, saying it’s “an issue that we need to deal with.”

“Obviously there is a public safety concern when businesses have a lot of cash sitting around,” Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole told the committee. “There is a tendency that there are guns associated with that, so it’s important to deal with that issue.”

Cole said offices within the Treasury Department, namely the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, are “bringing in bank regulators to discuss ways that this can be dealt with in accordance with the laws that we have on the books today.” And subsequently, Cole said, the Justice Department is in talks with the Treasury Department about the efforts.

The banking industry’s reluctance to do business with marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and Washington, based primarily on federal money-laundering laws, was an issue governors from both states raised with Attorney General Eric Holder when he informed them Aug. 29 that the federal government would not be filing lawsuits against the states’ recent marijuana laws, according to Cole.

Marijuana use remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act, which describes marijuana as a dangerous drug. But, as Holder told Gov. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., and Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., federal prosecutors are now operating under new enforcement guidance, aggressively pursuing prosecutions only in eight “priority areas.”

Among other things outlined in a memorandum from Cole two weeks ago, the new Justice Department guidance tells federal prosecutors to focus on preventing marijuana from getting into the hands of children, preventing gangs or cartels from making money through marijuana, preventing marijuana from being exported to other states, and preventing “drugged driving.”

“We are going to aggressively enforce the Controlled Substances Act when it implicates any of the right priorities,” Cole said Tuesday, “and I think that’s a pretty fulsome list of priorities and important public safety issues that are present and associated with marijuana.”

Cole said his department “has not historically devoted our finite resources to prosecuting individuals whose conduct is limited to the possession of marijuana for personal use on private property.” And, he insisted, the department is not “giving immunity” to anyone or “abdicating our responsibilities.”

Leahy said he was “encouraged” by the Justice Department’s recent move.

“You can’t begin to prosecute all the laws that are on the books, you don’t have the resources,” he said. “The question is what resources should we use and where… I really don’t think [the Justice Department] should be devoting them to pursuing low-level users of marijuana who are complying with the laws of their states.”

But the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican rejected that thinking, arguing Colorado’s and Washington’s marijuana laws “flatly contradict our federal law.”

“And the response of the Department of Justice isn’t to sue to strike down the laws or to prosecute illegal drug traffickers, but just let these states do it,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said. “Prosecutorial discretion is one thing, but giving the green light to an entire industry predicated on breaking federal law is quite another.”

Grassley raised particular concern over whether Colorado, for example, can be trusted to regulate recreational marijuana use when it is “already struggling” to regulate medical marijuana use.

He noted that over the past several years in Colorado, after marijuana was legalized for medical use, there has been a “sharp increase” in marijuana exposure to young children, seizures of marijuana heading to states outside of Colorado, and fatal car accidents involving drivers who tested positive for marijuana — all areas cited by the Justice Department as among its “priority areas” for enforcement.

Grassley also cited a recent audit by Colorado’s internal watchdog that concluded the state’s system “does not sufficiently oversee physicians who make medical marijuana recommendations.”

Cole said Grassley raised “valid issues” and called the recent audit in Colorado “disappointing.”

He reiterated that the Justice Department reserves the right to bring a lawsuit against Colorado or Washington at a later time, and that it is up to the states to create systems and processes for enforcing the federal government’s “priority areas.” The department will keep tabs on the states under a “trust but verify” approach.

“Our hope is that with this [new guidance] and with the engagement of the states, telling them that they are ‘trust but verify,’ they will have an incentive to actually put in a robust scheme that will in fact address a lot of these issues,” he said.

Currently 21 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana use for medical purposes.

Source: ABCNews.com (U.S. Web)
Author: Mike Levine
Published: September 11, 2013
Copyright: 2013 ABC News Internet Ventures
Website: http://www.abcnews.go.com/

The pros and cons of marijuana will take center stage Tuesday in Washington, D.C., when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a landmark hearing on legalization.

Requested by committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the hearing was triggered by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement last month that federal authorities no longer will interfere as states adopt laws to allow medical marijuana or to legalize the drug entirely.

The hearing is on conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws. In calling for it, Leahy questioned whether, at a time of severe budget cutting, federal prosecutions of marijuana users are the best use of taxpayer dollars.

Dan Riffle, director of federal policies for the nonprofit lobby group Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., said he hopes for a breakthrough in the hearing that would lead to changes in federal banking laws, allowing marijuana sellers to accept credit cards and checks, not just cash.

That would do a lot to legitimize the nation’s marijuana industry, safeguarding transactions from the risk of robberies and smoothing the route away from the black market and Mexico’s drug cartels, Riffle said.

But “the elephant in the room is that we have an administration that’s essentially working around federal law” to allow states to legalize marijuana, he said. “What we should do is just change federal law — just legalize marijuana.”

This fall, Michigan lawmakers could take up bills that would ease laws on marijuana and widen medical users’ access to it.

With public attitudes bending toward legalization in the last three years and reaching a majority in March, those who favor legal weed say they’ve reached a watershed year — one like 1930 might have felt to those who welcomed the nationwide legalization of alcohol in 1933.

“It is historic — you can feel it,” said Matt Abel, a Detroit lawyer who heads Michigan NORML, the state chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Fans of legal marijuana say their cause just hit the tipping point, and point to a series of events that they say prove that legalization is on the cusp of being more than a pipe dream. They include that:

* In March, for the first time, a majority of Americans — 52% — told pollsters they favored legalizing marijuana, according to the Pew Research Center.

* In anticipation of retail pot stores opening this January, recreational users are flocking to Colorado and Washington state.

* Two national opinion leaders signaled changes of heart about cannabis. CNN medical correspondent and Novi native Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in his documentary “Weed” last month, reversed the stance he expressed in his 2009 Time magazine article, “Why I Would Vote No on Pot.” And U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told an audience in Tucson last week, “Maybe we should legalize marijuana. … I respect the will of the people.”

Planning to be in a front-row seat at Tuesday’s hearing is Neill Franklin, who heads LEAP — for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition — a nationwide group of mostly retired police, judges and corrections officers who want to see all street drugs legalized.

“A nationwide policy of prohibition leads to organized crime, underground crime, mass incarceration, very costly law enforcement, and ironically, the drugs become widely available and more dangerous because there are no quality-control standards,” Franklin said last week.

“We saw that with alcohol,” he said.

But not all at the hearing will be in favor of all-out legalization.

Kevin Sabet, a former senior adviser on drug policy to President Barack Obama’s drug czar, is expected to testify that legalization is being rushed into the states without understanding its consequences.

His arguments are laid out in detail in his new book “Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths about Marijuana” (Beaufort Books, New York: $14.95), Sabet said.

“It’s an appeal for a science-based and a health-based marijuana policy, not based on legalization but also not based on incarceration for small amounts” — and instead advocates wider access for marijuana users to state-of-the-art drug treatment programs, said Sabet, the director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida.

Sabet will bring his message to Michigan next month as a presenter at a public conference on youths and the consequences of marijuana. It’s Oct. 10 at the Oakland County Intermediate School District offices.

“Yes, there are medical properties in marijuana,” Sabet said, “but we don’t need to deliver that by smoking a joint or eating a brownie.”

Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Author: Bill Laitner, Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
Published: September 10, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Detroit Free Press
Website: http://www.freep.com/
Contact: [email protected]

The state would license 334 pot stores, including at least 21 in Seattle and 61 in King County, under revised state rules for a recreational marijuana system. Total pot production would be capped at 40 metric tons next year in rules approved Wednesday by the state Liquor Control Board.

The cap is intended to meet anticipated consumer demand that would roughly equal 25 percent of the total state market for legal recreational, medical and illicit-market marijuana.

State officials expect recreational weed to gain market share over time, as they modify the system to better compete on price, quality and convenience with the medical and illicit markets.

The production cap helped determine the number of stores and limits on the amount of pot that growers could produce. Under the revised rules, growing facilities could be up to 30,000 square feet, or almost three-quarters of an acre.

In a stab at keeping the industry from concentrating in the hands of a few big players, the rules say no entity could hold more than three licenses in each of the producer, processor and retail categories.

Alison Holcomb, chief author of the state’s recreational-pot law, praised the revised rules as thoughtful and responsive.

“Other states and nations are already reviewing Washington state’s work for guidance in shaping new, and sound, marijuana policies in their communities,” said Holcomb, who has visited Uruguay to advise officials there on legalization.

But the rules were met by some criticism. They would favor indoor growing, and its large carbon footprint, over more environmentally beneficial sun-grown pot, according to some.

After holding public hearings next month, the board is expected to formally adopt the rules, which could be effective as early as mid-November. Following background checks and other state scrutiny, licenses would be issued, crops grown and stores open by June, if not sooner.

The revised rules come less than a week after the federal Department of Justice indicated it would let Colorado and Washington proceed with tightly regulated legal pot markets, as long as they adhered to certain priorities, such as keeping their weed from leaking into other states, or into the hands of minors.

The draft rules already mirrored the federal government’s priorities and were not changed by last week’s news out of Washington, D.C.

“I think we all breathed a sigh of relief,” said board member Chris Marr about how closely aligned the state rules and federal priorities appear to be.

Retail stores would be allocated by population and accessibility, in a system similar to the one used for defunct state liquor stores. That system sought to have stores within a 15-minute drive for 95 percent of the population.

After feedback from entrepreneurs and consumers, the Liquor Control Board relaxed some draft proposals in hopes of encouraging stores in dense urban neighborhoods such as Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

The voter-approved recreational-pot law restricts locations by requiring a 1,000-foot buffer between marijuana facilities and venues frequented by youth, such as schools and parks.

The board changed the way the 1,000 feet is calculated, opting to use the most common path between a pot facility and a youth venue, rather than a straight-line measurement.

Sharon Foster, the board chair, offered the example of a potential growing facility that was 995 feet from a school, but a person would have to cross a freeway to maintain that distance. “That’s when we looked at common path of travel,” Foster said.

The draft rule was “absurd” because of such examples, said Ryan Espegard, a Seattle attorney whose firm advises pot entrepreneurs and advocated for the common-path measurement.

Under the proposed allocation of stores, the board assigned a certain number to each county.

Some rural counties — Columbia, Ferry, Garfield — each were allotted just one store.

In addition to King County’s 61 stores, Snohomish County was allocated 35 stores, Pierce County 31 stores and Spokane County 18 stores.

Within more populous counties, the state allocated stores to certain cities, and left a number of stores “at-large” meaning they could go where they were welcome within a county.

It did not specify exactly where in counties and cities the stores could set up.

A number of cities, including Kent and University Place, are opposed to legal pot commerce and have created zoning barriers and other impediments.

State officials allocated three stores to Kent, the state’s sixth-largest city, and one to the smaller University Place near Tacoma.

Board officials made it clear that licensees would need approval from the cities they wanted to locate in. And if cities continue their resistance it sets up a potential legal battle between a state-licensed store and reluctant city. “Ultimately, it’s an issue between the applicant and local jurisdiction,” said Alan Rathburn, the board’s licensing director.

Randy Simmons, the state’s marijuana project director, said coming up with the consumption estimate was the toughest task the state has tackled so far.

Simmons called it a “razor’s edge” calculation. If the state underestimated it could encourage consumers to buy from the illicit market; if it overestimated then a surplus of legal pot might leak into other states.

Because the size of farms are capped at 30,000 square feet, some believe the revised rules favor indoor growing, which can produce four crops a year, over outdoor growing, which is limited to two harvests.

“Who wins? The person with the lights on,” said Okanogan County activist Jeremy Moberg, who advocates for sun-grown pot.

A peer-reviewed study in a scientific journal last year reported that producing a kilo of energy-intensive indoor pot leaves a carbon footprint equivalent to driving across the country seven times.

Simmons said the rules give indoor growing an inadvertent edge.

“It wasn’t the intent of the policy,” he said; the intent was to cap the size of growing operations so they weren’t dominated by big businesses.

Simmons said an adjustment in the rules might be necessary to level competition between indoor and sun-grown weed.

“This is just one juncture of many as we move through changes to tweak and improve the system,” said board member Ruthann Kurose of the revised rules.

The Liquor Control Board allocated marijuana retail stores based mostly on population. Here is a partial list of the stores allocated in the Seattle-Tacoma area:

King County 61
Seattle 21
At large 11
Bellevue 4
Kent 3
Federal Way 3
Renton 3
Shoreline 2
Redmond 2
Kirkland 2
Auburn 2
Snohomish County 35
At large 16
Everett 5
Marysville 3
Lynnwood 2
Edmonds 2
Kitsap County 10
At large 7
Bremerton 2
Bainbridge Island 1
Pierce County 31
At large 17
Tacoma 8
Puyallup 2
Lakewood 2

Source: Liquor Control Board

Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Author: Bob Young, Seattle Times Staff Reporter
Published: September 5, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Seattle Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/

A two-year-old Scotch Plains girl and other sick children who qualify for medical marijuana moved closer to getting the treatments they need after the New Jersey Assembly overwhelmingly approved changes in the regulations on Monday.

Vivian Wilson, a toddler who suffers from a severe, rare form of epilepsy, was issued a card to obtain the drug in February, but faced a number of roadblocks, including a ban on edible cannabis.

Inspired by her story, lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill in June to reverse the ban and make other changes but were asked to revisit the issue after Gov. Christie attached recommendations to a veto last month.

A few weeks later, the Senate approved the recommendations, and the Assembly followed suit Monday with a 70-1 vote, with four abstentions.

“We are happy that this is finally being signed into law,” said Vivian’s parents, Brian and Meghan in a statement. “Our next focus will be working with the Mary E. O’Dowd and Department of Health to ensure that this law is properly regulated according to the true intent of the law so that Vivian and all of the other patients in New Jersey can finally start getting the type of medicine they need in the form they need.”

So far, Vivian has been unable to obtain cannabis, partly because of the problems with the law and partly because only one dispensary is open and it cannot meet the demand.

Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Middlesex/Somerset/Union), a prime sponsor of the bill, also issued a statement: “For Vivian and many children like her, marijuana may be the only treatment that can provide life-changing relief. As a state, we should not stand in the way of that,” she said.

The legislators initially passed a bill allowing edible marijuana to be sold to all registered marijuana patients, but Christie recommended this variety be restricted to children.

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), another sponsor, said that he would have preferred elderly patients and others who cannot smoke to also be eligible to take the drug it by tablet or syrup, or another approved form of edibles.

The revised bill now returns to the governor’s desk for his signature.

During a campaign stop at a diner last month, Christie got into a heated exchange with Brian Wilson, who questioned why Christie had not yet signed the bill for two months and who told Christie “please don’t let my daughter die.” The You-Tube video of the conversation went viral.

Christie’s reply was the bill raised “complicated issues.”

“It’s simple for you, it’s not simple for me,” he said. “I’m going to do what’s best for the people of the state, all of the people of the state.”

Christie, a Republican, has said repeatedly that he wants strict regulations to prevent people from getting access to “pot” if they are not sick.

Wilson later blamed politics and said that Christie is concerned about his conservative base as he considers a run in the 2016 presidential primaries.

Another change in the revised bill that passed Monday will allow dispensaries to cultivate more than three strains of marijuana. The Wilsons have said the three-strain limit makes it difficult for dispensaries to provide a cannabis strain tailored to a small percentage of the patients. Children with epilepsy, she said, require a strain that is high in an anti-seizure chemical and that is low in the ingredient that gives the user a “high.”

Christie let that amendment stand but opposed another one that would require children to get only one doctor to approve their use of cannabis. Currently, children must have a psychiatrist and a pediatrician sign off on the drug, and if neither of them are registered, they need to enlist a third doctor.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Author: Jan Hefler, Inquirer Staff Writer
Published: Monday, September 9, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/

A two-year-old Scotch Plains girl and other sick children who qualify for medical marijuana moved closer to getting the treatments they need after the New Jersey Assembly overwhelmingly approved changes in the regulations on Monday.

Vivian Wilson, a toddler who suffers from a severe, rare form of epilepsy, was issued a card to obtain the drug in February, but faced a number of roadblocks, including a ban on edible cannabis.

Inspired by her story, lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill in June to reverse the ban and make other changes but were asked to revisit the issue after Gov. Christie attached recommendations to a veto last month.

A few weeks later, the Senate approved the recommendations, and the Assembly followed suit Monday with a 70-1 vote, with four abstentions.

“We are happy that this is finally being signed into law,” said Vivian’s parents, Brian and Meghan in a statement. “Our next focus will be working with the Mary E. O’Dowd and Department of Health to ensure that this law is properly regulated according to the true intent of the law so that Vivian and all of the other patients in New Jersey can finally start getting the type of medicine they need in the form they need.”

So far, Vivian has been unable to obtain cannabis, partly because of the problems with the law and partly because only one dispensary is open and it cannot meet the demand.

Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Middlesex/Somerset/Union), a prime sponsor of the bill, also issued a statement: “For Vivian and many children like her, marijuana may be the only treatment that can provide life-changing relief. As a state, we should not stand in the way of that,” she said.

The legislators initially passed a bill allowing edible marijuana to be sold to all registered marijuana patients, but Christie recommended this variety be restricted to children.

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), another sponsor, said that he would have preferred elderly patients and others who cannot smoke to also be eligible to take the drug it by tablet or syrup, or another approved form of edibles.

The revised bill now returns to the governor’s desk for his signature.

During a campaign stop at a diner last month, Christie got into a heated exchange with Brian Wilson, who questioned why Christie had not yet signed the bill for two months and who told Christie “please don’t let my daughter die.” The You-Tube video of the conversation went viral.

Christie’s reply was the bill raised “complicated issues.”

“It’s simple for you, it’s not simple for me,” he said. “I’m going to do what’s best for the people of the state, all of the people of the state.”

Christie, a Republican, has said repeatedly that he wants strict regulations to prevent people from getting access to “pot” if they are not sick.

Wilson later blamed politics and said that Christie is concerned about his conservative base as he considers a run in the 2016 presidential primaries.

Another change in the revised bill that passed Monday will allow dispensaries to cultivate more than three strains of marijuana. The Wilsons have said the three-strain limit makes it difficult for dispensaries to provide a cannabis strain tailored to a small percentage of the patients. Children with epilepsy, she said, require a strain that is high in an anti-seizure chemical and that is low in the ingredient that gives the user a “high.”

Christie let that amendment stand but opposed another one that would require children to get only one doctor to approve their use of cannabis. Currently, children must have a psychiatrist and a pediatrician sign off on the drug, and if neither of them are registered, they need to enlist a third doctor.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Author: Jan Hefler, Inquirer Staff Writer
Published: Monday, September 9, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/

In four months, adults in Colorado will be able to walk into a store, plunk down cash and leave with a drug that used to land people in prison. No one, though, is sure what the future holds. Will the new industry damage the state’s reputation, grow the drug culture, spread marijuana into neighboring states, intoxicate young people and spur more crime? Or will it bring an unrecognizable change, produce needed tax revenue, drive a stake in marijuana’s black market and extinguish unnecessary prosecutions?

“It’s like being sucked into a black hole. What is going to be on the other side? No one knows,” said Ry Prichard, part-owner of a hash oil company, TC Labs.

During the first week of January, when the first stores are expected to open in Denver, the world’s media will probably descend on Colorado to document the occasion.

Lines that form in the state for everything from new doughnut shops to ski sales are expected to wrap around businesses as customers queue up for the first buds.

“You are going to have the international media here for New Year’s Eve, and they are not coming for the fireworks,” said Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown. “Then there is going to be a photo that moves across the wire that is going to portray Denver one way or another. That is going to define Denver. It will be an image changer. There is no doubt.”

Rolling Stone magazine recently called Denver “America’s undisputed stoner capital” with two Jerry Garcia-themed bars, the same number of medical marijuana dispensaries as liquor stores and, of course, the Mile High nickname.

A grower told the magazine that the Platte River Valley running through the city has the highest concentration of marijuana on the planet.

“I remember the first day that I walked into a (dispensary), it blew my mind,” said Prichard, who takes professional photographs of marijuana. “Yeah, the shock of being able to see 100 edible products, 60 strains of marijuana, and being able to talk to someone who is knowledgeable about the product. It is going to welcome a lot of new people into the fold to understand how incredible and beautiful this plant is and how it has come so far from 30 years ago.”

Already businesses that cater to marijuana tourism are seeing an increase in interest — especially after last week’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice that the federal government won’t stand in the way of marijuana legalization in Colorado or Washington state.

Matt Brown, who started My 420 Tours in Denver, said he is getting e-mails and calls from around the world from people looking to come to Denver and experience the new industry.

“The demand has been ridiculous,” Brown said. “On our end, we have done zero advertising (and) made no attempt to seek media. But we are having hundreds of people a week hitting the site and people saying, ‘Please offer us some vacation packages.’ “

If everything goes as planned, stores will open during the first days of January — about six months ahead of Washington state, which also legalized adult-use pot last year.

Snipped

Complete Article: http://drugsense.org/url/sgkPnXCS

Source: Denver Post (CO)
Author: Jeremy P. Meyer, The Denver Post
Published: September 1, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The Denver Post
Website: http://www.denverpost.com/
Contact: [email protected]