On November 18, 2021, the Greater Phoenix Urban League and Acre 41 Enterprises, LLC (the “Plaintiffs”), sued the State of Arizona, the Arizona Department of Health Services (the “Department”), Governor Ducey, and the Director of the Department for their purported failure to implement the social equity provisions of Proposition 207 by issuing final regulations that
Last Friday, I spoke on a panel for the American Bar Association (ABA) in Denver. It was the first conference for the ABA’s new Global Cannabis section and the first live event I’ve done since COVID started. The panel discussed "Legal Ethics in International Cannabis." My colleague Adams Lee participated too, but on another panel
On the 25th anniversary of Prop. 215, I was recently interviewed on KCRW to give my take on how California (and specifically the City of Los Angeles) has done when it comes to legalizing and licensing cannabis businesses. I'm a pretty tough critic of California in general if you read any of my writings on
Since California passed the Compassionate Use Act in 1996, there have always been folks who insist that federal legalization is right around that corner. As more and more states decriminalized and then regulated cannabis, the ranks of people who believe federal legalization is imminent has grown exponentially. Recently, when Joe Biden won the presidency, it
I often write about various discrete aspects of cannabis M&A transactions. A full list of my posts, along with other Canna Law Blog contributors’ posts, is linked at the bottom of this post. Today, rather than looking at individual elements of a cannabis M&A transaction, I want to walk through what a transaction looks like
Some readers may be surprised to realize that a lot of cannabis stakeholders actually don't want broadsweeping federal legalization. Why? Because they know it means that they'll instantly be competing with well-established companies that are already masters of economies of scale, branding, marketing, and consumer sales, and their market share will shrink or be eliminated
Back in 2015, we wrote about the U.S. Postal Service ("USPS") taking issue with companies placing cannabis ads in the mail. In a written notice dated November 27, 2015, issued by the Portland, Oregon, District Mailing Requirements Office, the USPS explained: [i]f a mailpiece contains an advertisement for marijuana, that mailpiece is nonmailable" where the
If you’re still at the point where you are playing lawyer sometimes or all of the time with your cannabis business contracts, then this post is for you. I grew up in rural Wisconsin with two parents who were raised in the wake of the Great Depression. My parents had a bunch of kids, and
Cannabis licensing has a pretty standard trajectory by this point in time. States tend to start out with medical programs and later adopt recreational programs. What usually happens is that the recreational cannabis market swallows up the medical market. The majority of medical operators will seek out and get authorization to sell recreational cannabis, and
Seen as a protectionist, cottage measure to some stakeholders, residency requirements for cannabis licensure have been a staple in the industry since Washington and Colorado legalized cannabis statewide back in 2012. When I lived in Seattle, the local industry was mostly stoked then that "big money" and out-of-state interests couldn't easily crash the party that
