Author: Ben Adlin

[ad_1] Illinois marijuana retailers set new monthly sales records to close out 2023, selling $181.8 million worth of cannabis products during December, including a record $153.9 million in adult-use purchases. Sales of medical marijuana in December were at their highest since April, at $27.9 million. All told, legal cannabis sales for 2023 set a new annual record, reaching just under $2 billion, including more than $1.6 billion from the state’s adult-use market, which launched four years ago. Recreational marijuana sales generated $417.6 million in tax revenue for the state in 2023, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue. “From day…

[ad_1] A month after Virginia Sen. Adam Ebbin (D) declared he was confident a marijuana sales bill could pass the legislature and reach the governor’s desk this year, lawmakers have officially filed legislation to make it happen. Del. Paul Krizek (D) introduced the sales legalization bill, HB 698, in the House of Delegates on Wednesday, with an identical bill from Ebbin expected to be filed in the Senate shortly. The legislation follows a proposal Ebbin put forward last session that passed the Democratic-controlled Senate but died in committee in the GOP majority House of Delegates. Use, possession and limited personal…

[ad_1] On the one-year anniversary of the opening of the adult-use marijuana market in Connecticut, state officials announced Wednesday that 2023 saw more than a quarter-million dollars ($274 million) in total sales between the recreational and medical cannabis markets combined. In December, the most recent month for which sales data is available, adult-use retailers sold just over $17.1 million in cannabis products, while medical marijuana sales exceeded $10.3 million. Together, the markets’ roughly $27.5 million in sales marked the highest single-month sales total so far recorded, according to the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection (DCP). Last month’s record broke the…

[ad_1] Washington State lawmakers are again trying to allow adults in the state to grow their own marijuana, having introduced a new bill that would allow the cultivation of up to six plants at home. Washington voters legalized marijuana through a ballot measure in 2012, but the law still makes it a felony for anyone but medical patients to grow the plant. And though several bills have been introduced to allow home cultivation over the years—stretching back to 2015—so far each has failed to find traction. The latest bill, HB 2194, is an update to a homegrow proposal introduced last…

[ad_1] A newly introduced bill in Rhode Island would effectively legalize psilocybin mushrooms in the state, removing penalties around possession, home cultivation and sharing of psilocybin until mid-2026. The proposal, from Rep. Brandon Potter (D), would not establish a commercial retail system around psilocybin—at least until after federal reform is enacted. Until then, it would exempt up to an ounce of psilocybin from the state’s law against controlled substances provided that it “has been securely cultivated within a person’s residence for personal use” or is possessed by “one person or shared by one person to another.” In an interview with…

[ad_1] Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) has opened a fourth survey seeking public input on how the state’s forthcoming commercial marijuana market should function, asking for opinions around packaging and labeling as well as the state’s system for cannabis tracking, inventory and verification. Already the agency has solicited input on issues such as cultivation, processing and manufacturing; pesticides, fertilizers and environmental controls; and retail cannabis operations and sanitary standards. OCM was initially planning to circulate a total of five surveys on marijuana consumer and industry topics, with the aim of informing rulemaking under the state’s legalization law enacted last…

[ad_1] West Virginia’s Republican Senate president says that legalizing marijuana could help ease the state’s crush of fatal fentanyl overdoses, predicting that the policy change will come “sooner than later” but probably not in the new legislative session. “My gut tells me it might not happen this year,” Senate President Craig Blair (R) said at a media event last week, according to West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “But you’re going to see it sooner than later, because that is a way to combat the issue.” Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that West Virginia had more…

[ad_1] A new study aimed at comparing medical marijuana and opioids for chronic non-cancer pain found that cannabis “may be similarly effective and result in fewer discontinuations than opioids,” potentially offering comparable relief with a lower likelihood of adverse effects. The findings, published in the journal BMJ Open, come from a review of 90 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing opioids, medical marijuana and placebos, which together involved 22,028 participants. Eighty-four of the trials were included in the report’s qualitative analysis. “Our findings suggest that both opioids and cannabis for medical use may provide benefits for a minority of chronic pain…

[ad_1] Bipartisan Washington State lawmakers prefiled a Senate bill last week that would allow nonprofits to provide psilocybin services to clients 21 and older so long as the organizations “have an explicit goal of promoting wellness for and assisting military veterans or first responders.” Sponsored by Sens. Jesse Salomon (D) and Ann Rivers (R), SB 5977 appears to build on the state’s limited psychedelics pilot program signed into law last year, which is also aimed at serving veterans and first responders, including law enforcement, firefighters, coroners, medical examiners and emergency medical personnel. The new limited measure would require nonprofits to…

[ad_1] Hawaii’s attorney general is clarifying that despite unveiling a draft marijuana legalization bill in November and subsequently defending the proposal against criticism from law enforcement, her office does not, in fact, support legalizing cannabis for adult use. But the office also won’t actively work to oppose it the reform—as long as any legislation that is advancing contains several “key elements.” On Friday, Attorney General Anne Lopez’s (D) office sent lawmakers a revised 315-page draft bill to legalize cannabis as well as 38-page report outlining related issues. “The draft bill is not ‘the Department of the Attorney General’s cannabis bill,’”…

[ad_1] In a major milestone on the path to expanding access to psychedelic-assisted therapy among the nation’s military veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has issued a request for applications to conduct in-depth research on the use of psychedelics to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. The department, which said it’s the first time since the 1960s that it will fund psychedelics research, “intends to gather definitive scientific evidence on the potential efficacy and safety of psychedelic compounds such as Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and psilocybin when used in conjunction with psychotherapy to treat Veterans with PTSD and depression,” it…

[ad_1] Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety posted an update on the state’s mandated expungement of thousands of marijuana-related criminal records on Thursday, saying employees are “hard at work” to implement the automatic expungement process that was mandated under the legalization law signed by the governor last May. In the interim, the state has added a new notice to all criminal history records, essentially letting reviewers know that certain marijuana records that appear on records checks may be pending expungement. An initial analysis showed that more than 66,000 criminal records are eligible for automatic expungement under the Adult-Use Cannabis Act, the…