Author: Ben Adlin

[ad_1] Sales of legal marijuana in Michigan contributed $266.2 million in tax revenue to the government during the most recent fiscal year, according to a new report from the legislature’s nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency. That’s more than the state made from the sale of beer, wine and liquor combined. Tax from sales of adult-use cannabis were up 49.1 percent in fiscal year 2022–23, which ended in October, compared to $178.6 million collected the year before. That amounted to an additional $87.6 million in state revenue from cannabis sales compared to the prior 12 months. Of all the major tax revenues…

[ad_1] With Lubbock city leaders set to consider a citizen-initiated proposed ordinance to decriminalize cannabis on Tuesday, a Texas advocacy group has released a report looking at the impacts of similar marijuana reform efforts passed by voters in five different jurisdictions during the 2022 election. It found that the measures will keep hundreds of people out of jail, even as they have led to blowback from law enforcement in some cities. The report, from Ground Game Texas, looks at local decriminalization reforms adopted in Killeen, San Marcos, Denton, Harker Heights and Elgin. Julie Oliver, executive director for the group, said…

[ad_1] With less than a month left before a New Hampshire commission is due to put forward a plan for how to legalize adult-use marijuana sales through a system of state-controlled stores, members were visibly frustrated at a Thursday meeting with the group’s slow, meandering progress through a draft bill circulated last month by the group’s chair, Sen. Daryl Abbas (R). Lawmakers on the panel grew combative with one another over issues such as penalties for public consumption of cannabis, dual licenses for existing medical marijuana businesses and the very handling of the commission meetings themselves. After more than two…

[ad_1] House lawmakers are set to meet next week for what’s believed to be the first-ever congressional hearing focused on psychedelic-assisted therapy for veterans’ mental health. The House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health was originally scheduled to meet October 19 to discuss the matter, but that hearing was postponed as Republicans scrambled to elect a House speaker. Now the panel is set to convene Tuesday afternoon at 2 p.m. for the event, titled “Emerging Therapies: Breakthroughs in the Battle Against Suicide?” Since the meeting’s postponement last month, two new witnesses have been added to the calendar. One is Brett Waters,…

[ad_1] German lawmakers have postponed a final vote on legislation to legalize marijuana that was scheduled for next week, a move expected to delay the proposed nationwide reform from taking effect into at least early next year. The bill, which was set for a final reading next Thursday in the Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament, now “will be decided in December,” member Carmen Wegge said in a social media post on Friday. “I know this is a huge disappointment for many,” said Wegge, of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). “That’s why this decision wasn’t easy for anyone. However, well-designed improvements are…

[ad_1] Speaking at a cannabis industry event on Thursday, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official said he’d be “shocked” if the Drug Enforcement Administration doesn’t reschedule marijuana by next year’s presidential election. “I would be really shocked if it took the DEA longer than the second quarter of next year to come up with its final rule,” said Howard Sklamberg, former FDA deputy commissioner for global regulatory operations and compliance. “Even when I was at FDA, we knew that important regulations that you wanted to get done in an election year, you want to get done by the…

[ad_1] The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is soliciting proposals to develop psychedelics into treatments for substance use disorder (SUD), with plans to issue $2 million in grant money toward the research projects during fiscal year 2025. The funding opportunity will support research into a range of substances that might be used treat addiction, including “classic psychedelics” such as psilocybin and LSD, empathogens such as MDMA, dissociatives such as ketamine and other hallucinogens, including ibogaine and its analogues. The NIH listing refers to all the substances broadly as “psychedelics.” “There is an urgent need to develop novel treatments for SUD…

[ad_1] As the dust settles from Tuesday’s elections, Democrats in Virginia emerged with control of both chambers of the state legislature, an outcome that many see as crucial to further marijuana reform, including legalizing and regulating sales. For advocates, the question now becomes what cannabis legislation Democrats will rally around and ultimately send to the desk of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin—as well as whether Youngkin try to amend or block those changes. Led by Democrats, Virginia lawmakers in 2021 legalized the use, possession and limited personal cultivation of marijuana by adults. But Republicans later blocked the required reenactment of a…

[ad_1] A delegation of more than two dozen Oregon officials and advocates returned this past weekend from a trip to Portugal, where they studied the country’s health-focused response to substance abuse disorders. The visit comes on the third anniversary of Oregon voters’ passage of Measure 110, which decriminalized all drugs in the state and funneled millions of dollars in marijuana tax revenue toward expanding addiction recovery services. “My main takeaway from this trip is that seeing is believing,” state Rep. Rob Nosse (D), a member of the delegation, said in a statement about the visit. “There’s no real disagreement between…

[ad_1] Ohio voters on Tuesday passed a ballot initiative to legalize adult-use marijuana, but one resident who voted against the change was GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Although the 38-year-old pharmaceutical company founder has said he supports legal access to marijuana and psychedelics, he opposed legalization in his home state. “I voted no on that one,” Ramaswamy said on CNN Tuesday night, as the network projected that voters had passed the legalization measure, Issue 2. “I think it’s an abandonment of the rule of law when you have one set of rules at the federal level but state laws that…

[ad_1] Overall sales of legal marijuana fell slightly in Maryland in October compared to the prior month, but sales of adult-use products—which kicked off in July—were stronger than ever. All told, licensed retailers in the state sold nearly $90 million in combined medical and retail cannabis products during October. A little more than a third of that ($35 million, or 39 percent) came from medical marijuana sales, while sales of recreational products totaled $55 million. Sales of adult-use products have set records in every single month since the recreational marijuana market opened in July. Meanwhile October’s monthly medical cannabis sales…

[ad_1] A month into the war between Israel and Hamas, data from Israel’s Ministry of Health shows a sharp expansion in the reach of the medical marijuana program in that country. Patient enrollments have spiked, especially those tied to PTSD and pain, and doctors have prescribed more cannabis by weight than ever before. Patient enrollment in Israel’s medical cannabis registry rose by 2,202 people in October, according to the newly released government numbers. That’s roughly twice the recent monthly average, though it’s not quite the rapid growth seen in early 2021, when nearly 3,000 patients were registering each month. Medical…