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Marijuana

Canada Legalises Recreational Marijuana Nationwide

Canada has legalised the use of recreational marijuana nationwide, making it the first G7 country to do so. The Senate voted 52-29 on Tuesday to pass the Cannabis Act, which allows people over the age of 18 to grow, buy, and use the drug for recreational purposes. It also regulates the growth and sale of marijuana, putting strict limits on packaging and limiting home growth to four plants at a time. The bill passed the House of Commons earlier on Tuesday, and now goes to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – an outspoken supporter of the legalisation effort – to decide when it will take effect. Isn’t it about time we legalised marijuana? The vote makes Canada the second country to legalise recreational marijuana nationwide, after Uruguay. It is the first of the world's seven most advanced economies – also known as the G7 – to do so.

Worker Rights For Cannabis Trimmers

Matilda reclines on a Northeast Los Angeles couch she’s paid $25 to sleep on for one night. The young woman, who earlier in the day had returned to the U.S. from Mexico, talks about her job as a cannabis trimmer. Matilda—not her real name—gives a heads-up on her epilepsy, and through the night she’ll make a number of unusual, loud sounds in her sleep. Matilda has worked most in Mendocino on trimming jobs good and bad. At most black-market marijuana grow operations, she’s found there are guns. She grew used to the constant, noisy whirr of the high-powered generator that powered the lights growing the plants. The bad gigs are the grows where weapons are numerous and the bosses are stressed out and high. She left one trimming gig where the volume of open gunplay made her uncomfortable, and moved to another one in the Emerald Triangle–– Northern California‘s Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties –– that featured consistent pay.

Jeff Sessions Marijuana Rolling Papers Are A Thing

A group supporting the legalization of marijuana has come up with a nifty fundraising scheme: Rolling papers with the attorney general's image on the packaging. Who better to poke fun at than the cluelessly anti-marijuana Sessions—the man who claims "good people" don't smoke pot, that marijuana is a gateway drug, and who once said he liked the local Ku Klux Klan boys until he found out they smoked weed? The folks at #JeffSesh apparently agreed, selecting the attorney general's visage to grace the packages of "General Jeff's Old Rebel Session Papers," replete with the warning to "Don't Beauregard That Joint My Friend."

States Mull “Sanctuary” Status For Marijuana Businesses

JUNEAU, Alaska — Taking a cue from the fight over immigration, some states that have legalized marijuana are considering providing so-called sanctuary status for licensed pot businesses, hoping to protect the fledgling industry from a shift in federal enforcement policy. Just hours after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Jan. 4 that federal prosecutors would be free to crack down on marijuana operations as they see fit, Jesse Arreguin, the mayor in Berkeley, California, summoned city councilman Ben Bartlett to his office with a novel idea. Berkeley was already the first city in the nation to formally declare itself a sanctuary city on immigration, barring city officials from cooperating with federal authorities. Why not do the same thing with marijuana? Last month, it did. “We knew we had to do something,” Bartlett said. “This is a new engine of a healthy economy.”

Big Pharma Corp Trying To Keep Pot Illegal Approved To Manufacture Synthetic Marijuana

“It appears they are trying to kill a non-pharmaceutical market for marijuana in order to line their own pockets.” Insys Therapeutics, a major pharmaceutical company, has spent over $500,000 fueling the opposition to marijuana legalization in the United States. Now we know why. The Big Pharma company is a major manufacturer of deadly painkillers and is one of the chief backers of the anti-legalization movement. They have been in legal trouble in the last several years for “alleged improper marketing of a highly addictive prescription painkiller.” They are currently the subject of several state and federal criminal investigations, and a shareholder lawsuit, over their marketing of a product that contains the deadly opioid painkiller fentanyl. The company is curiously developing a drug to treat opioid overdose as well as fueling the addiction.

Top Cannabis Regulator: Massachusetts Should Create State Public Bank

Recreational pot sales are scheduled to begin in July in Massachusetts, and as yet, there are no banking services for the industry predicted to have $1 billion in sales by 2020. Cannabis Control Commission chairman Steve Hoffman said in the Boston Globe, “There’s a high degree of urgency, so it’s something we need to start talking about.” Hoffman suggests the state should consider creating a state-run bank. That adds Massachusetts to the list of states — including California and Ohio — considering Public Banking due to the urgent needs of the legalized marijuana industry. Hoffman continued: “Unfortunately, it’s a real possibility that the recreational industry won’t have access to any banking services. We’re working as hard as we can to preempt that, but we can’t force any bank or credit union to service this industry.”

Legal Marijuana Propelling Public Banking

Things are moving fast in California. A Los Angeles City Council committee approved a resolution February 16 to support the recently introduced state bill that would create a Public Bank that could take deposits from legal marijuana businesses. California Senate Bill 930, introduced at the end of January, would establish a state-chartered bank that would “allow a person licensed to engage in commercial cannabis activity to engage in banking activities in California”. The LA resolution to support SB 930 was proposed by Council President Herb Wesson and approved by the council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee. Wesson proposed creating a Public Bank for the City of Los Angeles in July 2017.

Mixed Reactions In Legal Marijuana States By US Attorneys To New DOJ Policy

It’s been a month since U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo, Obama-era Department of Justice guidance on enforcement of federal law in states that legalized marijuana in some form. Sessions’ marijuana policy shift didn’t just inject uncertainty into the legal cannabis industry — it empowered the Justice Department’s U.S. attorneys to enforce — or ignore — federal marijuana laws. U.S. attorneys are the chief federal law enforcement officers within 93 districts throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. They’re nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. U.S. attorneys have three primary duties, according to the Justice Department’s website.

8 Things That Happen When We Legalize Marijuana

The great social experiment that is marijuana legalization is now five years old, with six states already allowing legal marijuana sales, two more where legal sales will begin within months, and yet another that, along with the District of Columbia, has legalized personal possession and cultivation of the herb. As a number of state legislatures—including Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York—seriously contemplate joining the parade this year, it's more important than ever to be able to assess just what impact marijuana legalization has had on those states that have led the way. The prophets of doom warned of all manner of social ills that would arise if marijuana were legalized. From hordes of dope-addled youths aimlessly wandering the streets to red-eyed carnage on the highway, the divinations were dire.

Policy Road Map To Reparations For ‘War On Weed’

Over the past 50 years, the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland’s active investments in policing the War on Drugs have created conditions of concentrated poverty in Baltimore City. While not limited to marijuana, cannabis prohibition has been, and continues to be, the vanguard of the War on Drugs in terms of social impact. Even today, despite the perception of increased tolerance of marijuana and many states’ pursuit of legalization, marijuana possession is the number of cause of arrest in the United States. In fact, in recent years marijuana arrests have continued to increase. Currently, over 100,000 Americans are incarcerated for marijuana possession, racking up a total cost of over three billion dollars. From 1990 to 2000, 75% of the increase in arrests for drug charges nationwide came from marijuana related offenses.

Jeff Session’s Assault On Mariujuana Legalization

Jeff Sessions, head of the Department of Justice, reversed the "Cole Memo" that allowed states to pursue marijuana legalization without fear of the federal government stepping in and prosecuting the marijuana industry. Sessions is leaving it up to each state's federal prosecutor to decide on how to proceed. This happened just as California moved to implement legal marijuana and Vermont voted to legalize marijuana. We speak with Justin Strekal, policy director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and Doug McVay, a long time advocate for drug law reform at the state and national level and editor of Drug War Facts, about what lies ahead for the movement to end marijuana prohibition.

How Uncle Sam Launders Marijuana Money

Thirty states and the District of Columbia currently have laws broadly legalizing marijuana in some form. The herb has been shown to have significant therapeutic value for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, lung disease, anxiety, muscle spasms, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis pain. The community of Americans who rely on legal medical marijuana was estimated to be 2.6 million people in 2016 and includes a variety of mainstream constituency groups like veterans, senior citizens, cancer survivors, and parents of epileptic children.

Recriminalizing Cannabis Is Worse Than 1930s “Reefer Madness”

In the 1930s, parents across the US were panicked. A new documentary, "Reefer Madness," suggested that evil marijuana dealers lurked in public schools, waiting to entice their children into a life of crime and degeneracy.  The documentary captured the essence of the anti-marijuana campaign started by Harry Anslinger, a government employee eager to make a name for himself after Prohibition ended. Ansligner's campaign demonized marijuana as a dangerous drug, playing on the racist attitudes of white Americans in the early 20th century and stoking fears of marijuana as an "assassin of youth."  Over the decades, there's been a general trend toward greater social acceptance of marijuana by a more educated society, seeing the harm caused by the prohibition of marijuana. But then, on Jan. 4...

Movement Against Sessions On Marijuana Growing

There is still no one in Congress who has come out in support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions backward steps on marijuana in either chamber of Congress. He stands alone. In addition, support for positive congressional action is growing but it remains to be seen what US Attorneys will do in states that have legal adult use of marijuana, see the link below to Massachusetts where the federal prosecutor is making no promises that would allow legal adult use. Below is the daily newsletter of the Cannabist from January 9. We will not be publishing these regularly but at this critical moment it is a good snapshot of the immediate trends on marijuana policy after Sessions actions. 

More Seeds For Transformation Planted This Week

The Trump Administration continues to plant more seeds for the coming era of transformation that we have written about in recent newsletters, Preparing for the Coming Age of Transformation and Ensuring Justice in the Coming Age of Transformation. It continues to put policies in place that go against national consensus on critical issues and is conducting a foreign policy that isolates the United States from the rest of the world. With each of these actions, the spring that will create the boomerang of transformation gets pushed down further. This week, we focus on three areas: allowing federal prosecution of marijuana offenses where states have made marijuana legal, allowing off shore oil exploration throughout US coastal areas, and escalating regime change efforts in Iran. Each of these actions creates the potential for a larger boomerang in favor economic, racial and environmental justice and peace.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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