I have a bunch of thoughts actually, none of them so flattering. I’m going to break them down by category. The pardons themselves don’t do much President Biden pardoned 6,500 people previously convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law. The pardons don’t release anyone from prison, as no one was in federal prison
Mike Tyson wants to market cannabis edibles shaped like ears with bite marks in them. Love him or hate him, you have to admit it’s clever. He’s apparently having a hard time getting his “Mike Bites” to market, due to regulators who apparently can’t take a joke or regulations that don’t seem to make any
On August 4, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden published a formal statement concerning the sentencing of U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner. Griner was just sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony and fined one million rubles. We’ve written about Griner’s case before (here and here), but to summarize, she could be spending the
In May 2021, we wrote about the injustice of the Mississippi Court of Appeals affirming a life sentence without eligibility for probation or parole in the case of Allen Russell. Mr. Russell was found in possession of 43 grams (1.5 ounces) of marijuana. A legal basis for Mr. Russell’s brutal sentence was the fact that
High profile lawsuits to end cannabis prohibition are nothing new. We’ve covered efforts going back several years, though none of these has succeeded. A recently announced attempt, though, may be the best chance yet– especially given the changing environment with cannabis legalization in so many states; and especially given Constitutional jurisprudence relevant to those changes.
When it comes to canna law on the internet, half-truths might be a bigger problem than outright lies or mistakes. Recently, our sister China Law Blog declared that China Law on the Internet Is All Wrong. As a lawyer who spends a lot of time working on China-related matters, I can confirm that there is
These days, everyone is throwing a hat into the ring of cannabis reform. Many ideas are floating around; some of them are not so hot. Last week’s federal legislative activity is a good example of this. Two things happened on the same day: the Senate unanimously passed the CMRE Act (Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion
Who is a “qualified applicant” under Oregon’s new marijuana license reassignment program? First, some context. House Bill 4016, which introduced the reassignment concept, represents a sea change for Oregon’s licensed marijuana industry. The bill presently awaits signature by the Governor, and no one is betting it won’t become law. Our take on all of Oregon’s
Happy MLK Day! If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would almost certainly advocate to end the War on Drugs. Dr. King never spoke publicly about drugs or cannabis in particular: he was assassinated in 1968, two years before President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). But it is well established that
I recently received a random marketing email in which I was greeted with the word “high” in place of the word “hi”. My first reaction was a long, visceral cringe. My second was the thought, “hey, if I – just a lowly cannabis industry lawyer and not an actual cannabis industry stakeholder – am so
