Multiple times, the trajectory of marijuana legalization has been compared to the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the 1930s. Many policy experts and marijuana industry hopefuls believe marijuana is following the same pattern as alcohol where the states, just as they did with alcohol, start with medical regimes and slowly opt out of federal prohibition altogether,
In the past few weeks we have been working with a number of cannabis clients in similar tough spots. They didn’t want to spend a lot of early money on lawyers, so they negotiated some service contracts on their own. These contracts are generally with “cannabis consultants” to help in the financial space — either
We write frequently about the importance of contracts to the state-legal cannabis industry. (For a crash course, check out Doing Business with Pot Businesses #2: Cannabis Business Contracts; Marijuana Contracts: Get them in Writing; and How to Draft an Effective Marijuana Contract.) We preach about the need to have solid contracts in place before you need them, covering
When it comes to marijuana licenses, some states are completely indifferent to residency, others give a slight competitive advantage to in-state license applicants, while others adopt a bright-line requirement that residents hold a controlling interest in the licensed entity. Are these restrictions on out-of-staters constitutional? State governments can require licensees to be a certain age,
Like many recent court cases involving marijuana, last week’s Oregon Court of Appeals decision got folks talking. Most headlines read something like “Oregon court rules that the odor of marijuana smoke is not legally offensive.” This is accurate but incomplete, and sort of misleading. A complete description of the court’s holding would read something like
Thinking about flying with cannabis on your next vacation? In most cases, you better find an alternative because you may face serious criminal penalties for boarding an airplane with cannabis. However, at a few airports, law enforcement allows passengers to fly with cannabis when certain very limited conditions have been met. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the federal
On July 31, 2015, the New York State Department of Health awarded five licenses for medical marijuana cultivation, processing, and distribution authorized by the state’s Compassionate Care Act that went into effect on July 5, 2014. These five license recipients now have a deadline of January 5, 2016, or eighteen months from the date the law
The best cannabis contracts are those that never need to be enforced. The most important goal in contract negotiation is for the parties to determine their obligations and when those obligations are due to each other. Everything else is secondary. That said, things can and do go wrong in business transactions. Maybe a party tries to
This week we could not resist pulling quotes from two people who we the taxpayers pay to serve us. And serve us they have. The first is from Chuck Rosenberg, the acting head of the DEA. At a news conference, Rosenberg revealed that he didn’t know whether marijuana was as dangerous as heroin because he’s no
So where exactly are people now allowed to smoke marijuana in Oregon? I get this question often from business clients, who understand that smoking marijuana in public is generally verboten. In the business context, the real question is whether the subject business constitutes a “public place” in the eyes of the state. If the answer
