On October 6, 2022, President Joe Biden announced a retroactive pardon for simple possession of marijuana. He also announced that the federal government will review marijuana’s federal scheduling. His announcement suggests that the federal government may reschedule cannabis or even deschedule cannabis. Rescheduling cannabis is a bad idea, as I explain below. If the government
The notion of ornamental trademark use is foreign to many cannabis businesses. This is unfortunate, because it’s an important issue to understand in the cannabis industry, where the only federal trademark protection we can obtain is for ancillary goods and services. (See here for the limitations of federal trademark protection in the cannabis industry.) The issue of
Amazon’s prohibited product algorithm gets drug paraphernalia analysis wrong Amazon’s prohibited product algorithm is creating issues in the ancillary cannabis business space. In doing so it directly contradicts the company’s pro-cannabis public image. On September 26, Seattle Times reporter Lauren Roseblatt wrote an interesting article describing Amazon’s abrupt removal of an herb grinder company’s (“Golden
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
Contract dates are among the most basic, fundamental aspects of any contract– cannabis or otherwise. Nevertheless, parties often mess them up or overlook them in potentially disastrous ways. Today, I want to look at a few key contract date issues and what they mean. Key contract date terms An execution date is the date on which
Government owned cannabis is gaining speed. At least, it is in Canada. This week, I saw a tweet from MJ Biz Daily business journalist, Matt Lamers, that said: The most profitable cannabis businesses in Canada are owned by the government. Provincial monopoly cannabis wholesalers profit/loss (most recent FY): Ontario: $70.2 million; Quebec: $66.5 million; BC:
California’s Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) is the state’s primary cannabis regulatory authority. DCC’s predecessor agencies often gave several days’ advance notice before an inspection. Since its formation, DCC has taken a vastly different – and more aggressive – approach to cannabis inspections. Our California cannabis team is now seeing drop-in, no notice DCC inspections
Published in Law360 on August 30, 2022. © Copyright 2022, Portfolio Media, Inc., publisher of Law360. Reprinted here with permission. A recently filed cannabis case in Oregon, Drops LLC v. La Mota LLC, demonstrates pleading of two forms of the alter ego theory of liability. Most lawyers and business owners know that one of the
Last summer, the Massachusetts based retailer Curaleaf mistakenly mixed-up THC with CBD at a bottling plant in Portland. Approximately 1,500 mislabeled bottles containing what the Oregonian describes as a “jumbo” dose of THC were shipped under the brand name Select and sold as containing only CBD. Although many of the bottles were recalled at the
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress certain enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8), with powers “not delegated to the [federal government] by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people” (Tenth Amendment). While one of the enumerated powers is the regulation of interstate commerce, the
