The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has only the jurisdiction Congress gave it in the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Under this act, the FDA has broad regulatory powers over legal drugs, with more limited powers over food. Under the FDCA, the FDA categorizes a substance as either a food or a drug depending on how
Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), resigned his post last week amid public health and personal travel debacles. Mr. Price’s resignation drew very little coverage from cannabis reporters, however, which was sort of strange because the HHS Secretary wields more influence over cannabis law and policy than any other public official besides Attorney General
Tuesday afternoon, the Washington Post broke an article that acting Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Chuck Rosenberg plans to resign within a week. Rosenberg is an Obama administration holdover going back to 2015, so the news was not totally unexpected. President Trump will be tasked with selecting a successor, which will lead to a confirmation hearing
Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch proves again that seeing value in cannabis regulation is not a partisan issue. As he points out, the federal government’s lack of support for states’ rights and cannabis regulation hangs the states out to dry and leaves cannabis users without proper information on safety, dosing, and quality. Instead, the federal government
Back in 2014, we wrote that bankruptcy is not an option for marijuana businesses. That issue has been litigated here and there since then, but as of today, cannabis businesses are no better off than before. The hard reality is this: all bankruptcy cases are handled in federal courts under rules outlined in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Those courts have held
In cannabis intellectual property (IP) law, as in most areas of cannabis law, separating the flowers from the weeds is difficult. There is a lot of misinformation available on the internet and elsewhere about whether pot is protectable under patent or similar laws, and what patentability means for the industry. This post gives an overview of
Three of our California cannabis lawyers recently did a webinar on the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (“MAUCRSA”) and how it repealed the Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (“MCRSA”) while consolidating some of MCRSA’s provisions with the licensing provisions of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (“AUMA”). If you missed the
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is worried about this country’s “historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.” Because he is so worried, Sessions has spent the past month doing things like: (1) asking his old colleagues for funds to prosecute the War on Drugs, including medical marijuana; (2) writing letters to state
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently ruled on its second tax case regarding IRC §280E. Decisions from the Ninth Circuit are significant as they apply to the cannabis-friendly states of Alaska, California, Nevada, Oregon; and Washington. In Canna Care vs. the Commissioner, the Court of Appeals upheld the United States Tax
In 2015, Washington passed Senate Bill 5052, which allowed medical marijuana patients and their designated providers to grow cannabis plants for personal medical use and band together to form medical marijuana cooperatives. That bill did not provide a legal pathway for cooperatives, medical marijuana patients, or designated providers to acquire plants. It also did not allow
