TG Branfalt

The NFL and NFLPA are creating a joint committee to investigate pain treatment and the use of cannabis and cannabinoids in pain management.

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has announced the creation of cannabis pre-roll brand Mind Your Head, the rock legend’s new collaboration with Left Coast Ventures in California.

Cannabis industry investment firm Northern Swan Holdings has announced that former federal lawmakers Rep. Joseph Crowley and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have been added to the company’s advisory board.

Lawmakers in California have rejected legislation to reduce the state’s cannabis tax but also advanced a bill that would require municipalities to allow industry operations.

The Archdiocese of Chicago — one of Illinois’ most powerful organizations — has come out against legal cannabis in the state; meanwhile, one of the group’s top officials serves on the board of Insys Therapeutics, a notoriously anti-legalization pharmaceutical group.

A recent study into the historical origins of cannabis has traced the plant back just over 28 million years ago to the Tibetan Plateau, 10,500 feet above sea level.

New York lawmakers are crafting new legislation aimed at major cannabis policy reforms now that the governor’s plan to legalize via the state budget has been rejected.

In a 3-2 vote, Massachusetts regulators narrowly approved the creation of regulations for a pilot social-use cannabis program. Currently, Alaska is the only other state with a social-use program.

Recently introduced legislation to legalize adult-use cannabis in Delaware contains much of the same language as the state’s failed attempt from last year — this time, however, the proposal lacks home-grow provisions, which may make it easier to accept for certain lawmakers.

With lawmakers having failed to establish adult-use cannabis legislation this session, Senate President Steve Sweeney says he’s planning to put the question to voters via a ballot initiative in the 2020 general election.

The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously, now returns to the House for reconciliation by lawmakers there; senators added language implementing random CBD product testing and heavy fines against people whose hemp crops exceed 0.3 percent THC.

Nebraska state senators have tabled medical cannabis legislation, effectively killing it, after hours of debate on the Senate floor and even after the bill’s sponsor agreed to suggested amendments limiting the program’s available products and delivery methods.

Michigan companies in Detroit and Portage have received the state’s first cannabis delivery licenses. Delivery services, however, will only be available to patients who live in municipalities where cannabis sales are generally outlawed.

Lawmakers in Quebec may backpedal on some of their proposed cannabis use restrictions, specifically language that prohibits the public use of cannabis. Officials have determined the rules would be unenforceable.

The Vermont bill to create a taxed and regulated system for adult-use cannabis sales is likely dead until lawmakers — some saying they don’t want to rush the policy-making process — bring it up again next year.

Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries announced they will reintroduce the Marijuana Freedom and Opportunity Act, which would legalize cannabis nationwide and authorize spending for cannabis crime expungement.

In lieu of the adult-use cannabis reforms he hoped to establish this year, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has signed an executive order expanding the state’s medical cannabis program.

Iowa is the latest state to adopt hemp legalization language now that the crop has been federally legalized. Gov. Kim Reynolds warned, however, that the measure “does not legalize” the manufacturing or sales of CBD products.

With more than 30,000 patients registered to the program, Ohio’s medical cannabis market has now surpassed $5.8 million in sales since dispensaries opened on January 1.

A measure to establish an industrial hemp pilot program in Connecticut has been signed into law; the bill passed both chambers of the state’s General Assembly with unanimous support.

The hemp and medical cannabis markets in Asia — if fully legalized — would be poised to grow more rapidly than anywhere else in the world, new data indicates.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture — which is the only agency in the country capable of certifying agricultural products as “organic” — has issued its first-ever organic certification for a hemp flower product.

California’s high cannabis tax rates — which in some communities can reach as high as 50 percent — appear to have drastically stunted the marketplace’s growth, so much so that state officials have scaled back their estimated cannabis tax revenues through June 2020 by $223 million.