General

Subscribe to General

Twenty nine states plus the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana and eight of these states plus D.C. have legalized recreational marijuana.  Additional states are considering some form of legalized marijuana use.  This has created a new and growing demand for leasing industrial, agricultural and retail properties for growing, manufacturing and dispensing cannabis.  Given this growing demand for real estate, it is important to reflect on how many boilerplate provisions in commercial leases are not suited to covering a use that continuously puts state law at odds with federal law. Continue Reading Don’t Get Smoked in Your Next Commercial Marijuana Lease

As of January 2017, 29 states have legalized medical marijuana.  However, marijuana remains a Schedule l substance under the Controlled Substances Act.  Substances in Schedule l are determined by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have no medical use, and states that allow the use of marijuana for medical use violate federal law. Continue Reading Food and Drug Administration’s Regulation of Cannabis

Data privacy and the cannabis industry. The growing intersection of the two is yet another sign that cannabis has come a long way from the black market. As more states legalize cannabis for medical and recreational purposes, and the industry faces greater regulation and tracking, data privacy becomes increasingly important in the cannabis world. Continue Reading Data Privacy and Cannabis? You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby…

The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission announced yesterday that it will hire a diversity consultant to examine what steps it could take to improve racial diversity in the state’s medical marijuana industry.  The announcement comes after a losing applicant for a medical marijuana license filed a lawsuit against the Commission alleging that its selection process for coveted marijuana growing licenses ignored a statutory mandate to consider the racial diversity of the applicants. The complaint alleges that the Commission was “derelict in its legislatively mandated duty to ‘actively seek to achieve racial, ethnic, and geographic diversity when licensing medical cannabis growers.’”

Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus has also criticized the lack of racial diversity in the Commission’s licensing process.  Of the 30 business that were cleared for growing and process licenses in 2016, minorities held leadership positions in only two. Continue Reading Racial Diversity in the Spotlight for Cannabis Industry

Welcome back to The Week in Weed, your Friday look at what’s happening in the world of legalized marijuana.

But the margins — in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada — are so small that the races are still up for grabs.

A petition that would legalize medical marijuana in Oklahoma will go before voters in a future election after a 10-day period that allowed for challenges over the validity of the signatures expired this week.

On September 21, Governor Snyder signed a package of bills (2016 PA 281-283) that significantly expands the types of medical marijuana facilities permitted under state law.

Something we missed that everyone needs to know?  Give us a shout in the comments.

As state laws regarding medical and recreational marijuana evolve, lawyers face a variety of ethical issues relating both to counseling clients in marijuana related businesses (MRBs)and to financing or participating in MRBs.

The ethical dilemma stems from the fact that while state laws continue to expand the legality of marijuana, its use and possession in any form is still against federal law.  Most state ethical rules contain a rule similar to Rule 1.2(d) of the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct (Model Rules) which states:

A lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client in, conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent, but a lawyer may discuss the legal consequences of a proposed course of conduct with a client and may counsel or assist a client to make a good faith effort to determine the validity, meaning, or application of the law.

The dilemma created by Rule 1.2(d) is that it does not make a distinction between state and federal law. Continue Reading Lawyers Beware: Navigating the Legal Ethics of Counseling or Participating in the Marijuana Industry

Welcome back to The Week in Weed, your Friday look at what’s happening in the world of legalized marijuana.

 

Some more good news for cannabis entrepreneurs in Maine and Nevada: The latest polls in both states show a majority of voters support adult-use legalization ballot initiatives.

 

When searching for America’s fastest-growing industries, chances are you’ll find marijuana near, or at, the top.

 

The statistics associated with Alzheimer’s disease are downright depressing.

The disease, which typically affects the elderly and is characterized by a progressive decline in cognitive function, currently afflicts 5.4 million Americans, and the Alzheimer’s Association expects the direct and indirect costs of treatment to reach $236 billion in 2016.

 

Anything we missed that everyone needs to know?  Give us a shout in the comments.

Welcome back to The Week in Weed, your Friday look at what’s happening in the world of legalized marijuana.

 

Ohio’s Supreme Court affirmed that lawyers in the state will be allowed to serve medical cannabis business clients, much to the relief of hopeful cannabis entrepreneurs.

 

Until he was released from the Baltimore Ravens this year, Eugene Monroe was the NFL’s foremost advocate for allowing players to use medical marijuana. Now he’s a partner in a company suing Maryland regulators for rejecting its application to grow the drug.

 

Gov. Rick Snyder has signed into law new marijuana regulations that he says clarify Michigan’s 8-year-old voter-approved initiative that legalized the drug for medical use.

 

A proposal to allow medical marijuana in Missouri won’t go to voters this year because of an insufficient number of valid signatures, a judge has ruled.

 

Anything we missed that everyone needs to know?  Give us a shout in the comments.

Earlier this month a major US bank told the Alaska Alcohol & Marijuana Control Office that it can no longer accept credit card payments for licensing fees.  This followed on the heels of the closing of several business accounts of marijuana related businesses (MRBs) by Alaska banks and the closing of personal accounts maintained by people with ties to marijuana start up businesses.  No explanations for the closures were given either to the State of Alaska or to the account holders.  According to Marijuana Business Daily, the bank noted that “marijuana remains illegal under federal law.”  True, although marijuana was also illegal under federal law when the bank first allowed the Alaska Alcohol & Marijuana Control Office to accept credit card payments.

According to the Alaska Journal of Commerce, over 300 banks in the US now accept money from MRBs.  As we reported earlier, most banks act only as vaults for MRBs and provide depository services but no other traditional banking services such as lending, credit cards and wiring.  Part of the problem stems from the credit card companies strict ban on marijuana purchases and the Fed’s unwillingness to provide certain banks with master accounts.

Banking MRBs in the State of Washington may be an exception.  Rick Riccobono, Washington’s Director of Banks, was quoted in the Alaska Journal of Commerce as stating that “roughly 90% of all marijuana related taxes and fees pour into the state treasury electronically, not with cash.”   According to the Alaska Journal of Commerce, Washington uses two workarounds involving credit cards.  One workaround is through a company called PayQwik which is a system similar to PayPal.  A prepaid PayQwik account is linked to a credit card card or bank account and can be used to purchase marijuana and marijuana related products.  The credit card code for loading a prepaid card is one that the credit card companies will accept and is not a code related to marijuana purchases.  The second workaround involves customers using credit cards to purchase Bitcoin, the digital currency, and then using Bitcoin to purchase cannabis.  Interesting solution, but given how little most people know about Bitcoin, probably not good for the long term.

In the week that banks in Alaska were busy eliminating MRBs from their portfolio of customers, San Francisco Fed President John Williams gave a speech in Las Vegas in which he told his audience that as more states legalize marijuana, banks are facing “unsustainable tension” that needs to be resolved by Congress.  Good luck with that Mr. Williams.