canna law blog

Cannabis Branding and Trademarks With and Without Celebrities

Given the onslaught of media pieces lately on celebrity cannabis brands, this would be a good time to enumerate branding issues faced by cannabis business owners, and to discuss how celebrity branding is different. There are three main ways a brand owner can establish trademark rights: By using the mark in connection with their goods or

canna law blog

They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part CXXXI

“Marijuana doesn’t have a high potential for abuse,” says one of the leading doctors on medical cannabis issues, and chief medical correspondent for CNN. Dr. Gupta also states that cannabis have “very legitimate medical applications.” We wrote a couple months ago on how the DEA refused to reschedule marijuana to a lower class, a decision it justified

canna law blog

They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part CXXVIII

Last week we discussed how many, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, use cannabis to aid their creative processes. Here, poet Allen Ginsberg states how marijuana helped him better “apprehend” music. Ginsberg was known for using marijuana, discussing it in his writing, and advocating for its legalization. In his poem “America,” he writes: “I smoke marijuana every chance I get,” and

canna law blog

They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part CXXVI

Ethnobotanist Terence McKenna points to two significant paradoxes inherent in criminalizing cannabis in the United States. First, hemp was legal when the Declaration of Independence was written–to the degree that the document was written on hemp. Yet, due to longstanding stigmatization of marijuana specifically, hemp remains an underutilized resource we could be using for a vast array

canna law blog

They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part CXXII

We do imply that it’s a safe drug — in fact we downright assert it to be such — and that’s because it is. But like pretty much anything, cannabis has its downfalls. For example, a recent study indicates that smoking cannabis may put you at greater risk of gum disease. The real reason Representative Rehm feels

canna law blog

They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part CXXI

Here, Libertarian Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson speaks to one aspect of marijuana legalization on which most of us can probably agree: the importance of personal freedom. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Just last week, we about a similar statement from Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. That two presidential candidates from such significantly different parties have both

canna law blog

They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part CXX

Green Party presidential candidate (and physician) Jill Stein really says it all here–marijuana is not dangerous, and keeping it illegal benefits no one and instead puts many in danger. Keeping marijuana illegal fosters a vast illegal market that can itself be unsafe, and marijuana legalization has already started to put an end to that. In

canna law blog

They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part CXIX

In Marijuana And Racism: Bearing The Blunt Of The Problem, we wrote about how our nation’s drug laws have always been and still are disproportionally applied to African-Americans. In They Said It On Marijuana, Quotable Saturday, Part LXX, we discussed how Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs to divide White and Black America so as to further

canna law blog

Oregon Marijuana: Employee Permits and Employer Liability

In state level marijuana programs, compliance is king. Last week we wrote about the final, permanent rules for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s (OLCC) recreational marijuana program. In that post, we mentioned that all cannabis business employees must hold a marijuana worker permit, not just retail employees. We also mentioned that information about the permit