#NORML #News @WeedConnection

Poll: Super-Majority of Voters Favor Federal Repeal of Marijuana Prohibition

Washington, DC: Majorities of Democrat, Republican, and Independent voters support repealing the federal criminalization of marijuana, according to national polling provided by the group, Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education and Regulation (CPEAR).

Seventy percent of registered voters support the repeal of federal prohibition, the survey found. Support was strongest (83 percent) among Democrats and those between the ages of 30 to 44. Seventy percent of Independents and 58 percent of Republicans endorsed federal reform.

Multiple pieces of legislation pending before Congress, including the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (MORE) Act, remove cannabis from the US Controlled Substances Act - thereby repealing federal prohibition and providing states with the authority to regulate marijuana absent federal interference.

The survey data is consistent with dozens of other recent national polls showing that over 60 percent of Americans believe that the adult use of cannabis ought to be legal.

Senate Unanimously Approves Legislation Providing Attorney General with Greater Say in Cannabis Research Decisions

Washington, DC: Legislation unanimously passed last week by members of the US Senate empowers the US Attorney General to facilitate clinical research trials involving cannabis. The action represents one of the very few occasions that members of the Senate have ever advanced a marijuana-related reform bill.

Senate Bill 253: The Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion Act provides the office of the US Attorney General, rather than the Drug Enforcement Administration, the discretion to license scientists to engage in clinical trials involving the use of cannabis by human subjects. Under this proposal, the AG is also provided with the ability to authorize increases in the total number of federally approved marijuana cultivators. The Attorney General is provided with a 60-day timeline to either affirm or reject applicants for licensure.

Under current regulations, the US Drug Enforcement Administration is primarily tasked with reviewing and licensing marijuana cultivators, as well as granting Schedule I licenses to scientists wishing to study cannabis in clinical settings. In 2016, the agency announced that it would expand the pool of federally licensed growers beyond just the University of Mississippi (which was initially granted a federal cannabis cultivation license in 1968). In May, the agency for the first time ever announced that it had reached agreements with a handful of third-party applicants to allow them to grow cannabis for use in federally approved clinical trials.

For decades, scientists wishing to work with marijuana have complained that it often takes years before their research protocols are approved by the DEA, and that the quality of cannabis provided by the University of Mississippi's cultivation program is of inferior quality and that it is not representative of the products available in state-legal markets.

Senate members in 2020 passed a similar version of S. 253 in the final weeks of the legislative session. Their action came days after House members passed more expansive legislation, The Medical Marijuana Research Act, which sought to facilitate clinical cannabis research by permitting authorized scientists to access flowers and other products manufactured in accordance with state-approved marijuana programs - thereby bypassing the need for researchers to access marijuana grown by DEA license-holders. A new version of this Act, House Bill 5657, is pending in the US House of Representatives, but it has not yet been advanced out of committee.

NORML has long advocated for amending federal regulations so that federally-licensed scientists can directly access and assess the wide variety of cannabis products readily available in medical-use and adult-use state markets.

"Rather than compelling scientists to access marijuana products of questionable quality that are manufactured by a limited number of federally licensed producers, NORML believes that federal regulators should allow investigators to access the cannabis that is currently being produced by the multitude of state-sanctioned producers and retailers throughout the country," NORML's Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. "Doing so will not only facilitate and expedite clinical cannabis research in the United States, but it will also bring about a long overdue end to decades of DEA stonewalling and interference with respect to the advancement of our scientific understanding of the cannabis plant."

The full text of S. 253 is online.

Analysis: Legal Cannabis Sales Projected to Top $72 Billion by 2030

Washington, DC: Retail sales of cannabis in states where it is legal for either medical or adult use are estimated to top $72 billion annually by 2030, according to projections provided by the analytics firm New Frontier Data.

Their analysis predicts that several additional states - including Florida, Missouri, and Ohio - will regulate adult use markets in the coming years, while as many as nine other states will legalize medical use. Missouri and Ohio are among a number of states where voters are anticipated to decide on the issue of legalizing marijuana this election.

In 2021, analysts estimated that state-licensed retailers sold nearly $27 billion in cannabis products and that 428,000 workers were employed full-time in the marijuana industry.

Full text of the New Frontier Data's economic analysis is online.

US Senate Excludes SAFE Banking Language from America COMPETES Act

Washington, DC: Members of the US Senate have advanced an amended version of HR 4521: the American COMPETES Act. The Senate version of the bill, unlike the House version, does not include provisions of the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act.

Members of the House voted in February to include SAFE Banking provisions in HR 4521. That marked the sixth time that House members had advanced SAFE Banking to the Senate as either an amendment or as a stand-alone piece of legislation. In December, Senate lawmakers similarly removed the language from a House-backed version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The Senate's decision to strike the language from HR 4521 means that the fate of SAFE Banking will be decided in Conference Committee - when leaders from both chambers and from both parties negotiate on finalizing the bill's language. Some powerful Republican Senators, like Minority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly criticized the inclusion of the banking language as a "poison pill."

NORML's Political Director Morgan Fox urged members of the conference committee to prioritize the inclusion of SAFE Banking provisions in the bill. "It is imperative for the interests of public safety, transparency, and the economic viability of small cannabis businesses that this legislation is approved as soon as possible," he said. "Continued inaction by the Senate on this popular bipartisan reform puts workers and customers at risk of violence, makes it harder for regulators to accurately track cannabis revenue, and perpetuates the high costs and lack of access to capital that are increasingly widening the gap between large and small businesses in the cannabis space when it comes to their chances to succeed."

Morgan reminded lawmakers that a growing number of cannabis retailers have been recent victims of armed robberies because it is well known that these establishments are required to maintain large quantities of cash on hand.

According to the most recent financial information provided by the US Treasury Department, only about ten percent of all banks and only about four percent of all credit unions provide services to licensed cannabis-related businesses.

Utah: Governor Signs Bills Expanding Access, Legal Protections for Medical Cannabis Patients

Salt Lake City, UT: Republican Gov. Spencer Cox has signed a pair of bills into law expanding legal protections for registered medical cannabis patients.

Senate Bill 46 limits state employers from taking punitive actions against employees who consume cannabis products at home in compliance with the state's medical marijuana access law. The legislation does not extend these protections to those who work for private employers, nor does it allow for employees to arrive to work under the influence of marijuana.

The measure also forbids judges and juries from discriminating against medical cannabis patients in the course of a judicial proceeding.

The bill's chief sponsor said that the bill's enactment further clarifies lawmakers' intent to treat the medicinal use of cannabis in a manner that is similar to the use of other physician-authorized medicines.

Governor Cox also signed SB 195, which expands the ability of doctors to recommend medical cannabis products to patients suffering from chronic pain, particularly for those for whom they would otherwise prescribe opioids.

Those who consume cannabis medicinally are most likely to report doing so to address chronic pain conditions. Dozens of studies further report that pain patients typically reduce or eliminate their use of opioids following their initiation of cannabis therapy.

Other provisions in SB 195 place limitations on the way retailers can market or advertise medical cannabis products.