The year 2022 was a busy one for the California cannabis industry, with everything from tax reform to the beginning of enforcement. In this post, I'll go back through some of the highlight's for California's cannabis industry last year. California hints at enforcement? Anyone who knows anything about California cannabis knows that the regulators simply
There has been so much talk from the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") around cannabidiol ("CBD") regulations that it makes one's head spin. For years everyone has wondered when, or even if, the FDA would propose and adopt CBD regulations. To date, while taking input from the public on the topic, the FDA mostly has
Lawful use in commerce is a requirement for a trademark to be registered in the United States. For cannabis brands, this means that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will not register trademarks used in connection with products that are illegal under federal law, most notably marijuana. However, USPTO's problematic approach to lawful
We recently got to ask Kai-Friedrich Niermann of KFN+ Law Office some questions about EU Novel Food authorizations. His answers are a must-read for cannabis food businesses interested in the EU market. 1. What is an EU Novel Food authorization? Novel foods are regulated in the European Union by the so-called Novel Food Regulation (Regulation
I'm guilty of dunking on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the past for not doing more to protect cannabis consumers, despite the current federal illegality of cannabis. That may be changing, at least with respect to CBD consumers. Before diving into this latest development, I should mention that historically, cannabis is treated differently from
Last year, California passed into law AB-45, which paved the way for a regulated CBD market in the state. However, California flip-flopped on inhalable CBD products. Earlier CBD legislation would have allowed them, but then drafts of AB-45 prohibited them. Finally, we landed on an interesting compromise that made basically everyone unhappy. Today I'll unpack
International hemp is big business. There are all kinds opportunities around import, export, production, processing, and sale of international hemp and hemp products. We handle these inquiries on a weekly basis, and have since 2018 when the federal government legalized the cultivation of hemp with the passage of the 2018 Agricultural Improvement Act ("2018 Farm Bill").
For years, California has been a very bad state for the hemp industry. That started to change last year with the passage of AB-45, a bill intended to regulate CBD manufacturing and sales. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued proposed AB-45 regulations just a few months ago. And now it looks like California
The Texas Supreme Court recently upheld the state's smokable hemp ban. This is bad news for the smokable hemp industry inside and outside of Texas. Today, we'll look at what happened. As our readers know, the federal 2018 Farm Bill classified “hemp” as an agricultural product and removed hemp from schedule I of the federal
Earlier this month, we discussed the approval of a new regulatory framework for hemp and medical cannabis by Argentina's legislature. At the time, we focused our attention on those who, reflecting antiquated thinking on cannabis, voted against the bill. Today we finally turn to the substance of what is officially known as the Regulatory Framework
