Lawsuits Send ‘The Blacklist’ Into Turmoil Amid Divorce & Ownership Disputes

9/21/2022

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The owner of The Blacklist is suing her former partner and soon-to-be ex-husband, as well as a former brand representative and the person who first publicly attached their name to the notoriously anonymous publication, The Daily Beast reports.

Powered primarily by anonymous insider leaks, The Blacklist and its widely followed Instagram page have in recent years presented some of the juiciest cannabis industry rumors, gossip, and consumer product reviews. But while popular, The Blacklist has also faced significant criticism including by Bay Area rapper and Cookies CEO Berner, who called the publication a “well-known extortionist” in an interview last year with SF Weekly. The Blacklist disputed his claims.

According to the lawsuit outlined in the report, the company’s registered Los Angeles-based founder and owner Shalon Doney is suing Adam Campbell, her husband (the couple filed for divorce in 2021 but those proceedings are ongoing), and Matthew Wagner, a man who worked alongside the married couple to help monetize the publication, for “unlawfully misappropriating [Doney’s] federal intellectual property rights.” Doney said she learned of the infringement after somebody she did not recognize DM’d The Blacklist in reference to a conversation she did not have, with a message along the lines of “nice meeting you,” according to the report.

Wagner is a former adult nightclub owner, consultant, promoter, and performer. Campbell is a cannabis cultivator originally from Montana who said that, due to having a federal cannabis-related charge on his record, he decided against formally involving himself in the company’s founding. And indeed, none of the parties dispute the fact that on paper, Doney is and has always been the sole owner of The Blacklist. But while Doney is the legal owner of the publication, because she and Campbell are still married and the company is considered a community asset of their marriage, Campbell will be entitled to one-half ownership when the couple’s divorce is finalized.

But Wagner has alleged in his response to the suit that, “At the time Wagner was hired (and continuously thereafter), Doney promised that if Wagner could figure out how to monetize TBO [The Blacklist Online], he would be given a 1/3 ownership interest in TBO. This promise was confirmed repeatedly by both Doney and her husband Defendant Adam Campbell.” Wagner’s filing also suggests he started to land five-figure sponsorship deals for the publication in 2019, eventually even renting part of the couple’s home where he “literally and figuratively worked day and night, side by side, with Doney and her husband.”

Wagner and Campbell say the team experienced their falling out following Doney and Campbell’s separation. Doney claimed that she let Wagner go from the project after she allegedly discovered he had been linked to an underage sex trafficking incident in Thailand — but Wagner had already returned to the U.S. months before the incident took place, “It’s just not true, and that’s why I’m not afraid to face it,” he told The Daily Beast.

In his own suit, Wagner said that Doney had grown “physically and verbally abusive” towards him by the end of things in November 2021.

Editor’s note: This article was updated for clarity on 9/21/22.

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Report: Handheld Vaporizer Market to Reach $15.9 Billion by 2031

9/21/2022

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The handheld vaporizer market is expected to reach $15.9 billion by 2031, Transparency Market Research (TMR) suggests in a new report. The shift would represent a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.4%.

The report credits the expected growth to the growing popularity of dry and conductive vaporizers as well as the introduction of new innovations involving wax and oil vape pens. Additionally, the market is expected to see significant funding for improving the vaporizers’ design and function, and these innovations will further help grow the devices’ popularity and use among consumers.

The researchers said in a press release that other factors contributing to the market’s expansion include the easy cleaning of handheld vaporizers, the ease with which one can use and carry the devices, and the fact that vaporizing is a more discreet option than the traditional methods of smoking cannabis, like a pipe or joint. The report also says the increased acceptance of medical cannabis by consumers and their governments around the world would be a driving force for growing the handheld vaporizer market.

Lastly, researchers suggested that while the North American vaporizer market is expected to uphold its position as the current global leader in terms of market size, the market is “expected to gain sizable avenues for growth in Europe during the forecast period [of 2022-2031] as marijuana is technically legal in several regional nations such as Italy.”

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Cannabis Community College Launches Revamped Education Platform

9/21/2022

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The Cannabis Community College (CCC) has launched its new online education platform, which it describes as “one-of-a-kind, teaching every legal state’s educational requirement to work in a licensed marijuana establishment.” 

The CCC is launching its updated platform with the Cannabis Essentials 5 Course Bundle which includes compliance essentials, cultivation essentials, dispensary essentials, production essentials, and cultivating a cannabis career.

In a statement, Christi McAdams, CCC Chairman, said the courses were “developed by some of the top names from several of the largest public and privately held, vertically integrated, multistate operators in the country.” 

“We did this specifically for two reasons: first, to provide leverage to job seekers applying in a highly competitive market where a single job post easily produces hundreds of applicants, and second, to offer employers a simple and streamlined way to train newly hired staff.” — McAdams, in a press release 

The five-course bundle runs $270 and students and course graduates also have access to their online community, various clubs such as the Global Cannabis Industry Networking Group, and live educational webinars. They can also participate in the Cannabis Intern Project, which helps place students at licensed facilities across the U.S.

According to the CCC website, the courses cover compliance certifications in all 40 states that have legalized cannabis for either adult or medical use. 

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Cannabis Companies Led By Women Have Harder Time Finding Business Financing

9/20/2022

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Female-led cannabis companies have a harder time raising capital compared to their male counterparts, Yahoo Finance reports.

“What has ended up happening is that as states have adopted more limited license models, it’s become much more expensive to get in the game,” Nancy Whiteman, CEO of Wana Brands, recently told Yahoo Finance. “And so, it favors the people who’ve traditionally had access to capital, which are men — white men.”

According to a 2021 MJBizDaily report titled Current State of Diversity in the Cannabis Industry, only 19.9% of cannabis businesses are owned by women, only 8% of cannabis CEOs are women, and only 5% of executives at cannabis-focused investment firms are women. Additionally, female cannabis business executive representation in the industry dropped from 36.8% in 2019 to 21.1% in 2021, which is below the 29.8% women executive count found in 2020 across all other industries, Yahoo Finance notes.

“It’s a little disheartening. You have this brand new industry. You’d think that it really has the opportunity to set a new path but unfortunately at this point, it looks very much like a traditional industry.” — Whiteman, via Yahoo Finance

The diversity report said that starting a plant-touching cannabis business can run into the six figures and “the networks of investors that can provide that amount of money — such as high-net-worth individuals and venture capital firms — can be hard for women to tap into.” The report found even if women do secure major funding, “women-owned businesses often receive less funding and fewer resources — such as mentorship and strategic guidance — than their male counterparts.”

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CannaCon Brings Virginia’s First Major Cannabis Expo to Richmond Oct. 14-15

9/20/2022

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On October 14th-15th, the industry-leading cannabis business exposition, CannaCon, is heading to the Greater Richmond Convention Center. Over the years, CannaCon has established itself as the premier destination for cannabis industry professionals, with unbridled opportunities for business-to-business networking on its exposition floor.

As the first major cannabis exposition to come to Virginia since legalization, CannaCon will once again provide a place for the community to shop, learn, and network. The event will feature exhibitors from across the US selling everything you need to grow in the cannabis space from the latest in soil, nutrients, and lighting, to packaging, processing, and more.

Each CannaCon expo is uniquely catered to the needs of the local industry — the upcoming event will feature seminars including Legalization to Licensing: Opening Virginia’s Adult-use Retail Market by JM Pedini Executive Director of Virginia NORML, Managing Your Plants’ Nutrition by Joel Perkins of Key Grow Solutions, How to Permanently Reduce Your Cost Per Pound with Jim Walker of CanGrow Solutions, and so much more.

About CannaCon
CannaCon is dedicated to creating and strengthening lifelong partnerships within the emerging cannabis industry. It is our mission to provide a global B2B venue for cannabis businesses, marijuana entrepreneurs, investors and community partners to showcase industry products, people, innovations and technology. We are committed to cultivating business values within the cannabis industry through education and responsible community involvement.

 

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West Virginia Cannabis Advisory Board Rejects THC Caps for Medical Cannabis

9/20/2022

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The West Virginia Medical Cannabis Advisory Board declined to enact a proposed cap on THC on medical cannabis products, saying they need more information before making a decision, WV Public Broadcasting (WVPB) reports. The rule was proposed by the board’s Health and Medical Workgroup and would have capped THC in medical cannabis products in the state at 10%. 

Dr. James Berry, a psychiatrist and the leader of the workgroup, claimed that medical evidence supports the cap, saying the evidence supports “the possibility of using THC potencies of 10 percent or less to help with any medical condition.”  

“And at the same time, there has been a preponderance of evidence associating higher THC content with a number of public health concerns, such as suicide, psychosis, in addition, depression, anxiety, these sorts of things.” — Berry, via WVPB 

Dr. Cody Peterson, a pediatric pharmacist who practices in California, didn’t appear to support the cap, although he said he does “see problems with cannabis” in his role as a medical practitioner. 

“The most problematic products I see are from the black market and setting THC limits, especially those THC limits well below the products that are currently available on the market and people are accustomed to will create more demand, more incentive, and more profitability in the illicit market,” he said, “and you create more issues than you’re intending to correct.” 

The West Virginia Medical Cannabis Advisory Board will meet again on January 5 and could reconsider the cap at that meeting.  

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Cannabis Arrests Plummet In New Jersey Post-Legalization

9/20/2022

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The number of people arrested for low-level cannabis dealing in New Jersey has plummeted post-legalization from in the thousands to fewer than three dozen, Politico reports. According to state Judiciary figures, from March 1, 2021, through August 15, 2022, just 34 people were arrested statewide for manufacturing, distributing, or dispensing less than an ounce of cannabis. In the two years prior to legalization, New Jersey police arrested 2,117 people for the same offense.  

Post-legalization, there have been 556 arrests in the state for the same offenses of between one ounce and five pounds, compared to 1,492 in the two years prior to legalization, according to the Judiciary data outlined by Politico.  

Under the state adult-use law, people caught selling less than an ounce of cannabis issued a written warning for the first offense; second offenses can lead to a fourth-degree crime charge. 

Prior to legalization, possession of less than 50 grams of cannabis was a disorderly person offense, a misdemeanor, and New Jersey police arrested 37,000 individuals (about twice the seating capacity of Madison Square Garden) for that offense in the two years before legalization, according to the Judiciary data. During that time, there were 2,837 arrests for possession of more than 50 grams, a fourth-degree crime. Under the new law, it’s a fourth-degree crime to possess more than six ounces of cannabis, and police are not allowed to conduct searches based solely on the odor of cannabis. Since March 1, 2021, there have been 317 arrests for that offense, according to the data. 

In the two years leading up to adult-use legalization, there were 100 arrests for manufacture or possession with intent to distribute more than 25 pounds of cannabis and 172 arrests for between five pounds and 25 pounds. From March 1, 2021, and Aug. 15, 2022, there have been 79 arrests for more than 25 pounds and 102 arrests for between five pounds and 25 pounds, the data shows. In the two years prior to legalization, there were 429 arrests for operating a drug production facility; Since legalization, there have been 298 arrests, according to the Judiciary. 

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Poll: Most Maryland Voters Support Cannabis Legalization

9/19/2022

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A recent Goucher College Poll found that most Marylanders are planning to vote yes on an upcoming adult-use cannabis legalization question on this year’s ballot, CBS News reports.

In the poll of 1,008 Maryland residents, 59% of Marylanders said they would vote yes on the ballot question while 34% said they would vote no and 7% were still undecided.

The legalization question is bound for November ballots after state lawmakers passed House Bill 1 in April, which created the Constitutional Amendment that voters are set to consider. If approved, the amendment would legalize adult-use cannabis starting July 1, 2023, with a transitional period from January 1 to July 1 where possession of up to 1.5 ounces of cannabis would be considered a fineable offense.

Lawmakers also approved companion legislation in HB 837, which would begin implementing the program following the ballot measure’s passage. That bill also includes automatic expungement of any previous simple cannabis possession charges, resentencing for anyone currently held in a jail or state prison on a cannabis-related conviction, and would establish a study to investigate potential public health concerns including patterns of use and impaired driving statistics. The bill also contains a foundation for social equity opportunities in Maryland’s cannabis industry, according to the report.

Medical cannabis is legal in Maryland although legislative efforts to legalize the plant for adults have repeatedly stalled in recent years, which led lawmakers to put the issue to voters. Maryland shares its border with two jurisdictions with legal cannabis, Washington D.C. and Virginia.

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NECANN’s New Consumption-Friendly High Life Style Show Coming Oct 7-9

9/19/2022

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NECANN’s High Lifestyle Show will be a first-of-its kind in Massachusetts. The three-day event will be a 30,000 sq ft indoor and outdoor gathering of cannabis brands, retailers, distributors, growers, artists, performers, and consumers converging at a private resort hotel. The event will feature both a conference and festival setting with exhibitors, vendors, concerts, comedy, education, celebrities, socializing and networking.

As a business event, one of our goals is to have businesses, entrepreneurs and brands to be able to meet the distributors, retailers and consumers in an entertaining, safe environment. Retail distributors can promote their products and retail locations in order to compete to attract new customers. Artists can find new fans. Craft growers and brands can showcase their products (in legally acceptable quantities) to curators, dispensaries, and delivery licensees. Making the connection and showing products, knowledge, and skills will allow next-generation and legacy growers to find new paths to success.

As a LifeStyle event, we will be showcasing all aspects of the canna-inspired culture including health, wellness, music, art, clothing, literature, food, cultivation, supplies, medical, educational and ancillary aspects including cannabis weddings and travel.

There will be multiple forms of entertainment all weekend, with live music headlined by: The Wailers, Jon Butcher Axis, Roots of Creation, Brett Wilson, Mikaela Davis, Barrence Whitfield, Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys, Tsunami of Sound, Justine’s Black Threads and more.

Comedy highlights include Dan Hall & The Weed Game Show, plus LIVE Stand-up starring Matt Barry, Mona Forgione, Ian Stuart, Josh Day, all weekend long.

There will also be celebrity signings, artists, and educational seminars on various aspects of the cannabis industry.

Access to the property Oct. 7-9 will be limited to 21+ aged ticket holders, and cannabis activities allowed will be anything legal by Massachusetts laws including outdoor consumption (the event is 21+). Attendees will be allowed to carry a quantity that is legally allowed in Mass, and consume combustible cannabis on property outdoors. No THC products will be sold on premises, although CBD and non-infused products will be.

“The concept for this event has been years in the making, following the craft wine and craft beer movements, both regulated in a similar manner as cannabis,” said event promoter Gary Sohmers. “That model where brands are allowed (by law) to allow people to “taste” their products to build brand loyalty and let people try something prior to buying it, allowed smaller businesses to succeed in stores, bars, and restaurants because of consumer demand. We hope that this consumption-friendly event will be a step in the direction of safe and legal tasting events in Massachusetts”.

For more information email: marc@necann.com or GarySohmers@gmail.com

 

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Michigan Fines Cannabis Firms $116K for Late Financial Reports

9/19/2022

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Michigan regulators last month began publishing monthly disciplinary action reports they issued to cannabis businesses, MLive.com reports. The first report includes eight fines totaling $116,000 for failure to submit proper financial reports by the deadline but no other violations were reported. 

Simon M. Gumma, a certified public accountant and president of Gumma Acho, told MLive that the Cannabis Regulatory Agency (CRA) “is filing complaints and assessing fines.” 

“I think they can even suspend or revoke a license for not being compliant. I don’t know that it’s gotten to that point.”— Gumma to MLive 

The CRA fined businesses between $8,000 and $10,000 for each overdue statement, which were each usually more than a month late, according to formal complaints reviewed by MLive. Some had overdue statements for multiple licenses and others were fined for violations related to 2020 statements, the report says. 

Infinite Chemical Analysis Lab Director David Egerton, whose company was fined $20,000 for two late statements, told MLive that the CRA made the requirement in 2021 but amended them in 2022 which “caught many facilities off guard” and led to Infinites’ late filing.  

The other firms fined by the CRA include:  

  • Bella Sol Wellness, Muskegon, fined $10,000, for failure to file annual financial statements for fiscal year 2021 related to its medical cannabis retail center license. 
  • The ReLeaf Center of Lapeer, fined $10,000, for failure to file annual financial statements for fiscal year 2021 related to its medical cannabis retail license. 
  • The ReLeaf Center of Niles, fined $20,000, for failure to file annual financial statements for fiscal year 2021 related to its medical cannabis retail licenses in Niles and Chesaning. 
  • Essence Provisioning, Pinconning, fined $28,500, for failure to file annual financial statements for fiscal year 2020 related to its medical cannabis retail license, and annual financial statements for fiscal year 2021 related to its medical and adult-use retail licenses. 
  • Green Koi, Douglas, fined $9,500, for failure to file annual financial statements for fiscal year 2021 related to its adult-use retail license. 
  • The Sweet Leaf, Flint, fined $8,000, for failure to file annual financial statements for fiscal year 2020 related to its medical cannabis retail license. 
  • Cannamazoo, Kalamazoo, fined $10,000, for failure to file annual financial statements for fiscal year 2020 related to its medical cannabis retail license. 

In July, the Michigan CRA issued 70 formal complaints against adult-use companies, and three against medical licensees, according to the monthly statistical report. 

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MJBizCon Brings $33B Cannabis Industry Together

9/19/2022

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35,000 Industry Professionals to Gather to Build Business Momentum

Denver CO, September 8, 2022 — MJBizCon, owned by Emerald Holding, Inc. (NYSE; EEX), the largest, most established cannabis business conference in the world is taking place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, November 16-18, 2022. Along with MJBizCon, the reMind Psychedelics, Business Forum, also owned by Emerald’s Xcelerator Division, CannaVest Institutional Investment Conference, and the Hall of Flowers Experience events will comprise MJBizCon Week, beginning Tuesday, November 15.

Now in its 11th year, MJBizCon is where more than 35,000 cannabis industry professionals convene for unparalleled networking, start-up funding, alliance creation, and fact-based insights on growth projections, regulatory reform, politics, and business management. In short, MJBizCon is where vendors, executives, and entrepreneurs gain a competitive advantage in an industry expected to generate $52.6 billion in retail sales by 2026.

Chris Walsh, CEO of MJBiz will deliver his always popular ‘State of the Industry and Predictions for 2023’ on Wednesday, November 16. He will address the current cannabis climate and opportunities for future growth. Topics include: the mid-term election and how it will it impact the
industry, mature and emerging market woes and opportunities, the strategies companies should be employing now to overcome industry growing pains, and whether federal reform is gaining momentum.

The 2022 event will showcase over 1,400 exhibitors and more than 70 hours of educational content from 170 speakers.

MJBizCon’s agenda is carefully curated to deliver value for businesses and enterprises at all stages: from education to development to launch and growth and expansion. The Main Stage will feature a diverse lineup of both cannabis industry leaders and successful mainstream executives providing exclusive insights:

  • A one-on-one on-stage interview with Cookies Co-founder and CEO Berner. Berner has mastered branding and global expansion in the cannabis industry. He’ll shed light on how he has carved a sizable presence in the market and jumped many hurdles in both life and business.
  • Rhonda Kallman is a trailblazer in the alcoholic beverage industry. Kallman founded the Boston Beer Company (producers of Sam Adams) and now runs Boston Harbor Distillery. She will provide insight from decades of business, branding and marketing expertise from an industry with many parallels to cannabis.
  • A ‘Power Panel’ featuring cannabis business leaders Nancy Whiteman (Co-founder and CEO, Wana Brands), Ruben Lindo (Founder, Blak Mar Farms, LLC), Troy Datcher (CEO, The Parent Company), Toi Hutchison (President and CEO, Marijuana Policy Project) and Peter Caldini (CEO, Acreage Holdings) will address current cannabis challenges, trends, and opportunities.
  • SIX pre-show forums start on Tuesday, November 15 at the Westgate Las Vegas Hotel (next to the Convention Center): MJBizFinance Forum, MJBiz Hemp + CBD Forum, MJBiz Marketing Forum, MJBiz Science Symposium, reMind Psychedelics Business Forum, and Associations Day. (Ticketing for these sessions are each sold separately.)

The new expo-floor spans two floors of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall. Divided into industry sectors including: cultivation, processing, packaging & lab services, business services and retail/dispensary, exhibitors showcase new tech solutions, supplier offerings, and processing equipment.

Additional experiential exhibits include: the return of Hall of Flowers, First-Timers Open House, Innovations Product Showcase, and the Exhibitor Spotlight theater. Recharge at ‘The Joint’ (first floor) or ‘Elevation Lounge’ (second floor) to hydrate, plug in, or meet-up. Come outside to ‘The Patio’ a newly added outdoor gathering space for fresh air, games, DJs, drinks and more. Participate in audience meet-ups taking place for cultivator, manufacturer, retailer and global audiences.

With a new scholarship program, pop-ups from Women Grow and Black Cannabis Magazine,
ongoing efforts for speaker diversity and networking functions focused on women and the
BIPOC communities will make MJBizCon 2022 more inclusive than ever.

“MJBizCon is a great place to collectively support each other and the industry as we look to brighter days ahead. We will capitalize on emerging opportunities, learn from new power house states like New York and New Jersey, and build on momentum coming out of federal changes to come,” said Chris Walsh, CEO MJBiz.

ABOUT MJBiz
MJBiz is the leading B2B resource for the cannabis industry. Founded in 2011, it is the most trusted publisher and event producer serving cannabis industry entrepreneurs and investors from around the globe. MJBiz produces MJBizCon, the longest-running and largest cannabis trade show in the world. The 2015-2019 events were each named to Trade Show Executive’s Fastest 50 list and ranks on the Gold 100 list of largest tradeshows in the U.S. The 2022 event will return to Las Vegas November 15-18, 2022. The MJBiz team also produces news and analysis of the marijuana and hemp industries via MJBizDaily, Hemp Industry Daily, MJBiz Magazine, MJBiz Factbook, and MJBizScience’s Emerald Conference. For more information about MJBizCon or MJBiz, please visit www.MJBizCon.com and www.MJBizDaily.com.

ABOUT EMERALD
Emerald’s talented and experienced team grows our customers’ businesses 365 days a year through connections, content, and commerce. We expand connections that drive new business opportunities, product discovery, and relationships with over 140 annual events, matchmaking, and lead-gen services. We create content to ensure that our customers are on the cutting edge of their industries and are continually developing their skills. And we power commerce through efficient year-round buying and selling. We do all this by seamlessly integrating in-person and digital platforms and channels. Emerald is immersed in the industries we serve and committed to supporting the communities in which we operate. As true partners, we create experiences that inspire, amaze, and deliver breakthrough results. Emerald acquired MJBiz in January 2022. For more information, please visit http//www.emeraldx.com/.

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Missouri Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Seeking to Block Cannabis Legalization Question from Ballots

9/19/2022

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A Cole County, Missouri Circuit Court Judge last week dismissed a lawsuit that sought to prevent the adult-use legalization question from appearing on November ballots, the Missouri Independent reports. In the ruling, Judge Cotton Walker determined that Joy Sweeney, an anti-drug legalization activist who filed the lawsuit, lacked standing to sue because she hadn’t proven she was a Missouri citizen. 

Walker also said that were he to rule on the merits of the case, he would have ruled against Sweeney and sided with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Legal Missouri, the campaign backing the initiative petition. In the ruling, Walker said the petition was lawful in that it contained only a single subject, had enough valid signatures, and was “legally authorized” by Ashcroft’s office. 

“Foremost, we did the right thing in certifying this measure to the ballot within the bounds of the constitution and the laws passed by the general assembly. We followed the law – we did everything right.” — Ashcroft, in a statement, via the Independent 

In a statement, John Payne, Legal Missouri’s campaign manager, called the ruling “another step towards the historic passage of this citizen-led initiative to regulate, tax and legalize marijuana in Missouri.” 

“We are thrilled that Missourians will have the opportunity to pass Amendment 3 in November,” Payne said, “which will allow law enforcement to better focus on violent crime, while bringing millions in new revenue to Missouri.” 

Following the ruling, Luke Niforatos, the CEO of Protect Our Kids PAC, a Colorado-based super PAC launched earlier this year that opposes cannabis legalization and is supporting Sweeney’s lawsuit, said the group was “extremely disappointed that they dismissed this based on a technicality that was not true.” 

Sweeney attended the hearing, virtually, from Virginia. 

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First Retail Cannabis Licenses Awarded In Vermont

9/16/2022

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Vermont regulators issued the state’s first adult-use cannabis retail licenses this week ahead of an October 1 deadline for the market’s launch. The newly licensed businesses include FLŌRA Cannabis in Middlebury and Mountain Girl Cannabis in Rutland; additionally, the board has also permitted CeresMED in Burlington to transition from medical to recreational sales.

The new licensees can begin adult-use sales as soon as they have paid the license fees and conducted appropriate employee training, including recognizing the symptoms of over-consumption and substance use disorder. The companies may also need to acquire additional local licenses if so required by their municipality.

“Today’s license approvals mark a historic moment for Vermont that is decades in the making. We would not be here without the tireless dedication of cannabis advocates, the legislature, our agency partners, and most importantly the CCB staff.” — James Pepper, Chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board, in a press release

FLORA Cannabis co-owner Dave Silberman said in a VT Digger report that his store is aiming for a grand opening on October 1 but ultimately, the state’s retail launch will be likely muted given a series of licensing delays. Silberman predicted “a trickle” of store openings, at least in the beginning.

“There’s not going to be a lot of retailers ready,” he told VT Digger. “There’s not a ton of ready inventory right away and so it’s going to be rocky at the start.”

As of local elections held in March, nearly 50 Vermont towns — more than half the municipalities in the New England state — had opted into allowing adult-use cannabis sales. Businesses can only apply for a license once their local municipality has opted into the program.

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Florida Judge Criticizes Failure to License More Cannabis Businesses as Required Under 2017 Law

9/16/2022

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A Florida appeals court judge last week criticized state officials over their failure to issue new medical cannabis licenses as required under a 2017 law, News Service of Florida reports. First District Court of Appeals Judge Ross Bilbrey said that applicants are “understandably frustrated with the ongoing failure of the Department of Health to open the application window and issue Medical Marijuana Treatment Center (MMTC) licenses as required by the Florida Constitution.” 

Under the 2017 law, new licenses are supposed to be awarded as the number of medical cannabis patients increases. The state now has more than 700,000 registered patients and should have issued 22 more licenses, which would double the number of medical cannabis operators in the state. However, since taking office in 2019, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has not moved forward with issuing new licenses.     

“Almost five years after the emergency rule was issued, the MMTC license application window remains closed.” — Bilbrey, during the hearing, via News Service of Florida  

Louise St. Laurent, the Department of Health’s general counsel, said the agency wants “to open that window” and “have wanted to for three years” but have been forced to wait until the outcome of a separate lawsuit filed by Florigrown challenging the 2017 law.  

Bilbrey noted that the Florida Supreme Court ruled against Florigrown and upheld the 2017 law more than a year ago “and the MMTC license application window remains closed.”   

“I respectfully suggest that the department comply with its representations at the MedPure oral argument – either open the application window referenced in the emergency rule or promulgate a superseding rule allowing for MMTC license applications,” Bilbrey wrote. “Otherwise, it may be necessary for a potential licensee to ‘seek judicial relief to compel compliance with the department’s constitutional duties.’”  

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National Hemp Growers Cooperative Partners with Troy University on Hemp Plastic Project

9/16/2022

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The National Hemp Growers Cooperative (NHGC) earlier this month entered into an agreement with Alabama’s Troy University on a project aimed at using hemp fiber to create biodegradable plastics. The partnership will see the co-op work with the college’s Center for Materials and Manufacturing Sciences.  

During the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on September 8, Dr. Jack Hawkins, Jr. described hemp plastics innovation as, “Not only is it good for the economy, but … also good for our world.”

“When you think about the advantage of hemp-based bioplastic, it makes for a better environment. It’s biodegradable, it’s a renewable resource and it’s tough. … This is a step in a major initiative that will grow this University in an exciting new way. We look forward to what the National Hemp Growers Cooperative can mean to this partnership.” — Hawkins, Jr. in a statement 

The NHGC is a management company headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi that connects growers from across the United States. Nick Walters, managing partner of the NHGC, called the partnership “the beginning of hopefully a long-lasting relationship.”  

“The use of bio-based plastics is full of potential, in particular for the U.S. automotive industry,” he said in a statement. “Industrial hemp is already proven to be an excellent source for bio-based plastics, but we need to create even more uses by blending with recyclable plastics. We can think of no better partner than Troy University.” 

Dr. Steven Taylor, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the partnership encompasses the goal of the Center: to offer solutions to real-world problems. 

“It’s not so much about what the NHGC leadership needs, it’s what their members might need. Their goal is to try to help the farmers grow the product and have a market for the product, therefore they need products to make,” he said in a statement. “This also gives us the possibility of multiple partners, a place to start and branch out from. It’s the first step toward the Center having real connectivity outside of the University and may give us synergy beyond what projects we alone can generate.” 

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Arkansas Secretary of State Rules Adult Use Measure Insufficient

9/16/2022

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Arkansas’ Secretary of State John Thurston has declared the state’s proposed ballot measure to legalize adult-use cannabis is “insufficient” to appear before voters this November, KPVI reports. Thurston’s declaration argues the proposed Constitutional amendment is not valid because the State Board of Election Commissioners (SBEC) failed to certify the popular name and ballot title for the measure and, per Arkansas Code Annotated 7-9-111, if SBEC does not certify the measure’s title, he must rule it insufficient, the report says.

The SBEC rejected the initiative’s title and popular name in early August but activists pushed back, filing an appeal with the state Supreme Court. Attorney Steve Lancaster — who represents the group behind the measure, Responsible Growth Arkansas — said the board’s request would make the title too long.

“The type of detail that the board expected, or demanded in this case, would make our ballot title thousands and thousands of words long. That just simply is not workable for a ballot.” — Lancaster via the Associated Press

A week later, the Court gave conditional approval for the measure to appear on the November ballot while it looked into the SBEC’s denial but did not rule whether or not the vote would actually matter. On September 13, the Court issued a writ of mandamus requiring the secretary of state to decide the sufficiency of the measure, Arkansas Online reports. The secretary of state was ordered to file proof of the decision by Wednesday, September 14, the report said.

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Montana Looks to Extend Cannabis License Moratorium

9/15/2022

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Cannabis industry trade groups in Montana have put their support behind lawmakers’ efforts to extend the state’s moratorium on new adult-use cannabis shops until 2025, the Helena Independent Record reports. The legislation may have a dual effect in protecting legacy cannabis operators who do not want an over-saturated market and mollifying conservative lawmakers who do not want to see more cannabis businesses in the state.

The proposal is in an interim legislative committee and will need to pass the full legislature, then be signed by the governor, the Record notes.

The effort would be an extension of an 18-month moratorium put in place in 2021 to regulate Montana‘s adult-use cannabis system. That moratorium was an extension of a one-year hold on new cannabis shops that had been part of the state’s 2020 legalization ballot measure and which was intended to protect existing cannabis operators while they figure out the market and get settled before large cannabis corporations enter the space.

State Sen. Jason Ellsworth (R), testifying at the Senate Economic Affairs Committee, said, “We’re a year and a half into this program. This allows us more time to see how these changes take effect.” He added he does not think the state should issue any more cannabis licenses, the Record points out.

State Sen. Jason Ellsworth, testifying at the Senate Economic Affairs Committee, said he does not think the state should issue any more cannabis licenses.

“We’re a year and a half into this program. This allows us more time to see how these changes take effect.” — Ellsworth, in his testimony

JD “Pepper” Petersen, President of the Montana Cannabis Guild, said local jurisdictions are still navigating the new regulations. Peterson believes if the moratorium is not extended, out-of-state cannabis firms with “large, powerful interests with teams of lawyers” could influence how the Montana adult-use cannabis system moves forward.

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New York Lawmakers Send Letter to NYC Mayor Urging Him to ‘Move Swiftly’ Against Unregulated Cannabis Sales

9/15/2022

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New York lawmakers on September 9 sent a letter to New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) urging him to clamp down on illegal cannabis sales. The letter describes the businesses as “unscrupulous entities” that “have taken advantage of New Yorkers’ and visitors’ confusion about the law to open dozens of illicit marijuana shops and trucks throughout the city.”

The letter claims that state Sen. Brad Hoylman’s staff had identified more than two dozen storefronts or mobile stores in his district “that were purporting to sell cannabis to the public as if they had a valid license to do so.”  

“While adult use and possession of cannabis is now legal, it remains illegal to sell cannabis without a license, and no person or entity has been awarded a recreational license to sell in New York State. … These stores are deceptive to consumers, hazardous to public health, cheating on their taxes, undermining the State’s equity-based and legal cannabis rollout, and have little incentive to inspect IDs to ensure they are not selling to minors.” — Sen. Hoylman, Sen. Dick Gottfried, NYC Council Member Erik Bottcher in the letter 

In mid-August, the New York City Police Department seized 19 vehicles that were owned by individuals accused of selling cannabis in Times Square and officers issued six criminal court summonses.   

In June, Adams urged no “heavy-handedness” in the enforcement of gifting or unlicensed cannabis sales in the city while the state moves toward regulated sales.  

The letter asks Adams “to move swiftly in stopping these brazen businesses from selling unregulated products.” 

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First Pro Athlete Granted Therapeutic Use Exemption for Medical Cannabis Dies from Cancer

9/15/2022

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Elias Theodorou, a mixed martial arts fighter and cannabis advocate, died on Sunday of liver cancer, Yahoo Sports reports. He was 34 years old. The black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu had reportedly only shared the diagnosis with those close to him. 

On Feb. 19, 2020, Theodorou became the first professional athlete to receive a therapeutic use exemption for medical cannabis use when he was granted it by the British Columbia Athletic Commission. He was again granted the exemption in May 2021. 

Theodorou made his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debut on April 16, 2014, in a victory against Sheldon Wescott in “The Ultimate Fighter Nations Finale.” His UFC record was 8-3 while his overall MMA record was 19-3. His last fight was on Dec. 18, 2021, against Bryan Baker, which he won. 

Theodorou also served as the “ring boy” for the all-female Invicta Fighting Championship. 

“Our sincere condolences to his friends and family. Elias was truly a kind, humble and charismatic personality who will be missed greatly by all.” — Invicta via Twitter  

Theodorou was born May 31, 1988, in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. He appeared on the third season of “The Amazing Race Canada,” with his then-girlfriend, Max Altamuro. His motto on the show was, “Don’t look dumb on TV and don’t die.” 

He had a Bachelor of Arts from Humber College in Toronto in Creative Advertising and also worked as a stuntman, actor, and producer. 

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Shane Pennington: Suing the DEA to Unlock Cannabis Research

9/15/2022

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For decades, cannabis research in the U.S. was hindered by steep federal requirements, foot-dragging enforcement agencies, and an archaic rule limiting the source of research-grade cannabis to just one cultivator in Mississippi. But thanks to a lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) by Dr. Sue Sisley MD, a doctor who spent years trying to get federal approval for her study that sought to investigate the therapeutic effects of cannabis for veterans with PTSD, the path for real cannabis research has never been more clear.

Shane Pennington was the attorney who worked pro bono with Dr. Sisley to see that lawsuit to fruition. In this podcast interview, our host TG Branfalt returns to discuss those developments with Shane as well as other significant rulings. Shane also discusses his background before joining the cannabis cause, his current work with Vicente Sederberg LLP, his advice for lawyers or law students who are interested in cannabis, and more.

You can listen to the full interview via the player below, or keep scrolling down to find a full transcript.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

Kevin Lance Murray: This episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast is brought to you by The Sesh, a new podcast from the Outlaw Report, the essential news source for cannabis politics, business, and culture in the Mid-Atlantic region. I’m Kevin Lance Murray, host of The Sesh, and you can listen to all our episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or by visiting the outlawreport.com/podcast.

TG Branfalt: Hey, there. I’m your host TG Branfalt and thank you for listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. It’s been a long time since I’ve hosted an episode of the podcast, but recently I had the opportunity to interview Shane Pennington, the lead council for New York-based Vicente Sederberg LLP, which is a cannabis-focused legal practice, about a letter that he had written to the DEA that sort of sparked this controversy about seeds. But before we get into that, how you doing, Shane?

Shane Pennington: Doing great. Thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt: It’s a pleasure. Like I said, we had spoken about the seeds issue a couple of weeks ago, and we started sort of jawing about your history and how you got into the space. And I was really fascinated by that. And so I was like, “Let me host another podcast and get this on record.” So let’s start with you, man. What is your background?

Shane Pennington: Yeah, so I graduated law school in 2010 and went very kind of square route for several years, that I clerked for several federal judges, had a above top secret clearance with the federal government where I was doing FISA, which is like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act stuff in DC, and then went and joined a Supreme Court practice of a big law firm in Houston, where I’m originally from. And after several years of doing Supreme Court cases for companies like Halliburton and Valero and that kind of thing, I decided… I got offered this pro bono gig to help a scientist named Dr. Sue Sisley try to get her application to grow cannabis for research out of a delay hold at DEA. So it was kind of just stuck and DEA wasn’t getting back to her. And I knew nothing about cannabis policy, I knew nothing about the Controlled Substances Act, I had zero background. I mean, my dad’s a Methodist minister. I grew up very straight laced.

And there was no judgment, I’m actually kind of a libertarian politically. So I had no judgment, but just my life, it had just had never been an issue for me. But since what Dr. Sisley was doing was for vets, she was trying to research cannabis for veterans suffering from treatment resistant PTSD and chronic pain, I thought, “Well, I’ll try to help her,” and dug into it and ended up beating the DEA in a series of lawsuits from 2019 to 2021. And now she has a license to grow her own cannabis and her studies are going forward. And in the process of doing all of that, I became obsessed with… I mean, learned all about it, realized how meaningful the work was and so I was like, “Man, these cases for Valero and Halliburton just aren’t as interesting or as meaningful. I mean, to me.” And so I left the big firm and came and joined Vicente Sederberg and now do impact litigation for cannabis reform full-time.

TG Branfalt: So you say you had no experience in cannabis, what in your background did you draw from most to sort of enter this space or get really acquainted with it?

Shane Pennington: That’s a great question. So turns out cannabis law, and this is kind of nerdy, but I mean, it’s not really its own thing. People think of it as cannabis law, but it’s not. It’s actually administrative law because administrative law is the law of agencies, it’s how agencies regulate people. So your car is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the food you eat is the USDA, the Department of Agriculture and so forth, your taxes are by the Internal Revenue Service, which is a federal agency, right? And so I specialized in suing those federal agencies on behalf of regulated parties, like Halliburton often has to deal with the EPA and the SEC and all of this. And even pharmaceutical companies, I would help them as well with FDA and FTC and all these different agencies.

That’s what I specialize in, it’s a very nerdy, very nuanced, very complex area of law. And it turns out that cannabis is governed by federal agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, Alcohol Tobacco Firearms, Customs Border Protection, which is Homeland Security. So you just go down the list and I was like, “Man, that’s right up my alley.” Now the laws are different for each regulated industry, but it turns out that I was a specialist in exactly what these substances, the laws that govern them, and so when I got involved in it, even though I wasn’t familiar with the particular regulations and so forth, I was very, very, very prepared to sue the DEA. And that’s why… DEA’s not used to getting sued like that. I mean, I guess they get sued a lot, but it’s no offense to people who are practicing in this space, it’s just that I’m a specialist in this.

Most people who get a cannabis case are the ex-prosecutor or the guy from some local Bar Association who takes a traffic ticket case and then they do the best that they can with it and they… Look at what they do, they kick the shit out of me, but this is what I specialize in and I don’t think DEA was used to getting fastballs coming over the plate like that and so we got a series of quick victories. And I should say, I should add quickly, that I wasn’t doing this alone I had a lot of help from a lot of different people, but the point is it was really exhilarating to get to apply skills that I’d been using on behalf of refiners and Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies to help a scientist struggling to do research for vets.

TG Branfalt: Is that why you made the switch, because to you it’s a bit more… I don’t know, friendly?

Shane Pennington: I mean, it’s a lot more meaningful to me and I don’t mean to say it’s not meaningful to help big companies, it’s just that there’s so many lawyers. I knew when I left the firm I was at, I was at a firm called Baker Botts, which is a great big Am Law 100 law firm, it’s a great law firm, great people, very, very, very talented lawyers there. And I went to another law firm called Yetter Coleman, which is a top boutique firm, it’s a few lawyers and they’re all very, very talented, very well compensated too and a lot of they’re all still my good friends. And look, the work they’re doing is tip of the spear of legal work, no doubt about it. But I knew when I left, there would be 20 very talented lawyers there to fill my spot, you know what I mean? Harvard and University of Chicago, et cetera, are going to keep pumping out lawyers and they’re going to keep filling those spots.

Whereas there was nobody really doing this work, that level of work, in this space because the federal government hadn’t been enforcing the law. So there’s no demand for it. Everybody was trying to avoid the federal regulators, not engage them. But Sue Sicily was this exception, because she’s this scientist who’s trying to do everything by the book. And she was getting stonewalled by the federal agency. And they’re not used to having people fight back against them cause nobody wants to screw with the DEA. But under these particular circumstances, we definitely did want to throw down and we did. And that was very meaningful. I felt like I was doing something that nobody else was doing at this particular moment in history and with federal legalization around the corner. And of course it’s a bigger corner than I thought at the time, it’s taken longer than I realized when I came in as a newbie.

Yeah. But I mean, like I said, I didn’t know that much about the politics. Anyway, I knew that it was coming and so I thought, “Man, I could get in here and start shaking things up right before legalization and maybe I’ll be able to have a practice out of this on the other side.” But it was worth it just to do all the impact litigation, all the pro bono work was very meaningful. It meant a pay cut for me, but the compensation in terms of bringing meaning to my life and making it possible for me to use my skills in a way that no one else was there… no one else was doing this. That was very exciting.

TG Branfalt: So when you get the call or however you get in touch with Sue Sisley, what is your initial sort of reaction? What’s your gut tell you?

Shane Pennington: Yeah, so it’s actually funny how I got the call. So I said I was at this firm Yetter Coleman just before I made this switch, and there’s a guy there named Matt Zorn, who is… he’s a very talented, very, very skilled litigator at this firm, too, in Houston and he went to Columbia Law School, brilliant guy. And we had never worked together on a case, but he went to South by Southwest in Austin and I didn’t go, he went. He met Dr. Sisley there, she gave a talk and she was like, “Nobody will represent me. My application to DEA is stalled out. Nobody’s going to help me. I can’t get a lawyer. I don’t have any money.” And Matt’s like, “Man, I know the guy who sues agencies, he’s the guy two doors down from me. That’s all he does is sue federal agencies. And he’s really good at it. I should go see if he’ll take it on.”

So he came back and he was like… I mean and he and I had talked and we got along pretty well, but we had never worked together, we had never spent that much time together, but he came into my office and he was like, “Hey man, there’s this scientist that I met at South by and she’s a cannabis scientist.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And he’s like, “Yeah, and she’s got this case and her thing is stalled, her application is stalled at DEA.” And so when he said that, I was like, “Look, man, it’s not going to work.” Because basically when you sue an agency, the first thing the court’s going to ask is, “What is it that the agency did that you’re saying they did wrong?” And if your answer to that is, “They haven’t done anything and I want them to do something.” In other words, it’s their failure to act that is illegal, you’re fight…

I mean, that’s like, it’s hard enough to sue the government when they’ve done something clearly wrong, right? They took your house from you because they said that it was on waters of the United States or something like that with the Clean Water Act. Even if it’s clearly wrong, it’s still very difficult to sue the federal government. When the federal government’s up against you in court, there’s a presumption that the government is right and you’re wrong. That’s just how it is and you’re fighting that uphill battle no matter what. But when you’re saying the government should have done something and it hasn’t, that is three times as hard. And the reason is because the court doesn’t want to tell an agency how to prioritize its duties. So say an agency has lot, and they do, they have lots of things to do, they have a limited budget, no court wants to tell them, “You’ve got to do this first and that second and third,” because that’s considered an agency’s decision, they get to decide. Even if they have to do it, they get to decide when they do it and how they do it.

And so I told him, I was like, “Look, dude, that’s a losing battle. You’re not winning that.” He was like, “Will you just look at it because it’s been years that they’ve been sitting on this. They won’t talk to her.” I was like, “I’ll look at it, but I’m telling you, it’s going to be very, very challenging and I don’t think we’re going to win. And that’s why she hadn’t been able to find a lawyer.” So I started looking at it and I knew it would be very, very difficult, but her story was just so compelling. I mean, she is a legit scientist, she’s never broken a law, she’s straight down the middle, trying to… I started looking at it’s like the government is saying cannabis needs to be in Schedule I because there’s no research. And so then she’s trying to do the research and they won’t let her.

TG Branfalt: And, I’m sorry, but if I’m not mistaken, this was during the period of time where they’d said that they were going to open more licenses.

Shane Pennington: Yeah. Yeah. In 2016, that’s right. Now, that’s a very important point. They actually solicited the application. And here’s the deal, it was at the tail end of the Obama administration. This is 2016, they solicit the applications as Obama is on his way out the door and in comes the Trump administration in Jeff Sessions and all of a sudden they slam the door shut, it’s radio silence and as somebody who works on these cases all the time, of course, I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see this. It’s like, that’s obviously political. And so that didn’t look good and even though the standard was going to be very difficult to overcome, I felt like it was worth a shot at least to raise awareness of the issue. And so we went to court over it. And as soon as we did, we wrote a really scathing opening brief. And we went to a court I clerked on so I knew how things worked there and-

TG Branfalt: That’s smart.

Shane Pennington: Yeah. And pretty soon the DEA folded. They didn’t want to fight it, they just went ahead and started processing her application.

TG Branfalt: Really?

Shane Pennington: Yeah. Yeah. And actually a series of dominoes fell, man. It’s insane. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to cover, but suffice to say… Let me just give you the punchline first, okay? By the time it was said and done, it turned out, everybody wanted to know why were they not processing these applications? What was the deal? They said they wanted them, why are they not processing them? And they’d actually gotten letters from senators on both sides of the aisle and other lawmakers, right? Democrats, Republicans, what is going on? Tell us the explanation. They had hauled multiple acting attorneys general in front of different committees of the Senate saying, “What’s up, we need this. There’s a veteran suicide epidemic. We have heard that this cannabis is helping these vets, but we don’t know what the risks are, if it’s helpful. You guys say we need the research, what’s going on?”

And DEA would say, “We’re processing the applications as fast as we can. We’re doing everything we can.” For years this was said. So everybody wanted to know what the answer was. Well, our lawsuits uncovered the answer and it’s unbelievable how it all went down. But the answer was that there was a secret memo from the office of legal counsel, this like Jedi council of secretive legal ninjas that operate in the executive branch, and their whole job is to settle disputes within the executive branch. So if like DEA disagrees with FDA or something like that, they will send it to this OLC and this OLC is just very, like I said, most people haven’t even heard of them. And it’s this little group of brilliant attorneys who just sit in this room and write opinions that govern the executive branch. So no matter what any agency says, if OLC says it’s X, Y, and Z, that’s the law on the executive branch.

And so what happened here was… And oh, and all its opinions are secret unless they decide to publish them. So it’s this, if you remember-

TG Branfalt: Or they get leaked.

Shane Pennington: What’s that?

TG Branfalt: Or they get leaked.

Shane Pennington: They do get leaked. So if you remember the Torture Memos under Bush, that was OLC. When the Russia stuff was going on, the Mueller investigation, OLC got involved there. They’re in the background of all the biggest stuff that’s happening in the executive branch. I mean, this is very spy versus spy type stuff.

TG Branfalt: So was it your case that brought these memos to light?

Shane Pennington: A settlement in a case that we brought actually forced DOJ to release the OLC opinion, but explained why they were delaying the applications, were refusing to process them and the answer, get this. The reason they weren’t processing them was because DEA’s policy, called the NIDA Monopoly, had been violating international law for 50 years.

TG Branfalt: And you’re talking about the farm in Mississippi?

Shane Pennington: Yep. Yep. In particular, there’s a treaty called the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and it says that a single government agency has to govern marijuana cultivation if a country’s going to allow marijuana cultivation. This is ’61. So this is back when international… and it still is, this still is international law. But it sounds crazy because all these countries now allow marijuana cultivation, it’s obviously happening. That’s still the law under this treaty that the US and all these other countries are signatory to. It says a single government agency has to govern, but in the United States, NIDA and DEA, NIDA is the National Institute on Drug Abuse and DEA, which is of course two agencies, violates the convention and so the OLC said, “We are not in compliance with this treaty because of your NIDA Monopoly and so we can’t move forward with anything until you fix that.”

So DEA had to make all new rules. That’s why these new rules came out in 2020, or I guess it was 2021 by the time they actually were final, and then they got the process going. But they were just sitting on it because DEA… Nobody was very eager to tell Congress, “Yeah, we’ve been violating international law for half a century.” And what’s crazy about it too is… but that’s true. You can look it up. You can look it up, it’s on DOJ’s website. It’s called Licensing Marijuana Cultivation and Compliance With a Single Convention. If you Google that, you will find the OLC opinion that they publicized as part of a settlement. I’ll send it to you. I’ll send you the settlement.

TG Branfalt: This is unbelievable.

Shane Pennington: Right. Yeah. No. And I mean, it’s one of those things where you just start pulling the thread on the sweater and you just keep pulling it and pulling it and pulling it, and finally the emperor’s just standing there naked.

TG Branfalt: Were you just floored by all this? I mean, you’ve been doing administrative law, was there anything even close to this that you’d ever…?

Shane Pennington: That’s why I quit my lucrative, high-powered job to come do this all the time. I was like, “Listen, if it’s low hanging fruit like this.” And there is. There is a lot of stuff. And I mean, dude, this was a secret opinion. So what’s crazy is no one will ever understand this is such nerdy stuff when I try to explain it to people that their eyes kind of glaze over, but for me as an administrative law nerd, this was like… I’m sitting there, Matt and I are in the office and I honestly can’t remember which of us… how it happened… what the exact conversation was, but we’re sitting there and we’re trying to figure out what the answer to this question was. And one of us, and I don’t remember whom, said, “It’s got to be an OLC, I think.” Because it’s…

TG Branfalt: So you just knew that in your gut?

Shane Pennington: Because that would be the only thing that could be secret that they wouldn’t want to tell that could cause DEA not to move forward because they can’t, because PLC said so and yet it wouldn’t be public. And so what we did was we sued under the Freedom of Information Act and we said, “Listen, if you’ve changed the policy that’s governing our client, you’ve got to tell us that policy.” Which is true. And so we sued them and we said, “And also we need to do it on an emergency basis because we shouldn’t have to wait.” And at first the DOJ attorney on the other side was like, “You guys are insane. This is not happening. I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, but nobody gets…”

TG Branfalt: Really?

Shane Pennington: And then a week later, two weeks from the day we filed the lawsuit, the FOIA lawsuit, Freedom of Information Act, two weeks later, the guy called us and he was like, “Okay, yeah. We’re ready to settle it. We’ll post it on the website.” And we were like, “Oh man.” That’s like zero to 60 instantly. That never happens. And yeah, we were totally floored. I was like… I thought we were going to… Honestly I was like, “Dude, we’re going to be famous, man. This is big time.” But of course it happened during COVID and nobody cared and that’s stuff that I think people care when you tell them, but it’s so hard to understand it. And the federal government did everything they could do. They didn’t go to Congress and say, “Hey guys, remember all those times we testified to you and told you we didn’t know what the reason was. We’d like to correct the record.” Nobody ever did that. Nobody ever followed up.

TG Branfalt: Well, and from… I mean, a settlement’s also a lot quieter. You don’t go through all the motions of a trial and dates.

Shane Pennington: And we didn’t want to go blow the lid on it too much at the time, because we were trying to get our client her license. I mean, at the end of the day, this was cool for us. It’s like the little tiny highlight reel that my mom plays at family reunions or whatever about her son doing cool stuff or whatever. It is cool for me, but ultimately we have a client, we wanted her to get her license. So the settlement was we’re not going to press this. You published it, we get access to it. We’ll move forward. And our client got the license, but now years later, obviously it’s… Not years, but a year later, I can talk about it and it’s not violating the settlement agreement.

But another funny thing about it, the guy who wrote the OLC opinion, his name is Henry Whitaker. This guy is now the Solicitor General of Florida, he clerked for the same judge that I clerked for on the DC Circuit so I’d see him at law clerk unions and stuff, and the judge that we clerked for, David Sentelle, he’s this legendary DC Circuit judge, and one day we were out, he smoked cigars in DC with his clerks, and it’s the chance to get to talk to the judge, ask him for life advice or whatever. So one day I asked him, I was like, “Who’s your best clerk ever? Who’s the best, the smartest, the brightest, the best writer or whatever?” He’s like, “Henry Whitaker by far is the best clerk I’ve ever had.”

So when I saw Henry Whitaker wrote this thing, I was like, “Oh my God.” And of course it’s brilliantly reasoned, it’s perfect and it says, yeah, “DEA, since the very first day the NIDA monopoly ever existed, it was illegal and it caused the United States to be out of compliance with international law for half a century and it’s got to be corrected.” So yeah, I mean, that’s just insane. And I actually was giving a talk to a bunch of solicitors general last week about cannabis policy because all the states are very interested now in what’s about to happen, right? And so I was talking to them and I was talking about this case and I was looking out, I was like, “Man, is Henry Whitaker here?” Cause that dude still… He still intimidates me because this is legend to Sentelle clerks everywhere. But yeah, pretty crazy.

TG Branfalt: So what’s interesting is that the reason we sat initially was for your letter and about the seeds and I’m not going to rehash that, but that seemed to have got sort of a lot more traction than the sort of mind-blowing OLC opinion and that sort of thing.

Shane Pennington: Which is crazy. What does that say about our industry and the law? Everybody notices more a seed letter than they do this OLC thing, right?

TG Branfalt: Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that really struck me when we first talked was you had one very, very straight message that you wanted to send. Why was it so important for you to make sure that it was out there the way that you wanted it out there?

Shane Pennington: Well, because… So that seed letter… I mean basically long story short on that was after the 2018 Farm Bill, we figured out that seeds, tissue, cultures, genetics, because they’re below 0.3%, they’re hemp, not marijuana and their federal law, therefore at least at the federal law part, there’s no barrier to interstate shipment of them, which is a huge deal to people out there who, everybody under the state legal markets who are having to… they can’t get IP and genetics. There’s no way if you have genetics in California to get them to New York, for example, without breaking federal law, the assumption was and so you had to have all these work arounds. So we knew that was a big deal and so we wanted to let people know, “Hey, federal law is not a barrier here. I wrote to DEA, got them to say on the record that seeds are hemp and therefore they’re not marijuana under federal law.”

And that created this big splash, but I also knew that the law is incredibly complicated. And so just having DEA say that about federal law doesn’t mean that you can now just go put a bunch of seeds and clippings in a box, take it to Amazon and have them ship it all over the country and advertise it online. That is a much more complicated question cause you have to look at state law and all this, it gets incredibly complicated. But I knew as soon as we let that drop about what DEA had said, that all the folks out there who that was big news for were just going to immediately start shipping stuff and ignore all of the complexities and just say, “Yay, we can ship things everywhere.” And so I wanted to get it out there that that’s not true. There’s a lot more to it than that, you have to be very careful.

We let it drop, I said it a million times every time we would publish something, I’d be like, “Listen, this is complicated. This only resolves one piece of it.” And still the next day I wake up, I’m drinking my coffee and I’m looking at the news, and of course I have a lot of Google alerts for cannabis, marijuana, whatever, and I’m looking and sure enough, the first thing up there is One Simple Trick to Mail Cannabis. And I was like, “Oh no. The plane is crashing into the mountain.” And so I was glad that when we got to talk, I was able to tell people, get a bigger megaphone to be able to say, and let me say it again now that we’re on this podcast, do not think that you could just open up a seed business and start shipping interstate. It may be possible, but you need a very, very talented team of lawyers to help you do that. And I’m not just saying that because I mean, I got plenty of work, it’s not that, it’s just you will get arrested probably so be careful.

TG Branfalt: I do want to ask you too, because we only have a couple minutes, what role do you think that you and other cannabis-focused attorneys have in sort of relegating in some way information and disinformation in this industry?

Shane Pennington: Yeah. I mean, I think that right now, unfortunately, and, dude, it sounds like I’m bashing on other attorneys, I do not mean to do that at all, but I do need to say that attorneys need to know how to stay in their lane. I stay in my lane. I’m not an IP attorney. I told you my buddy Matt Zorn is and he’s an intellectual property attorney. I don’t tell him how to practice intellectual property. He doesn’t tell me how to practice federal administrative law.

In cannabis though, there has been no federal stuff going on for so long that there have been these shops that have opened up that are just do-it-all kind of attorneys. And frankly, the people in this industry are not risk averse and their attorneys have an appetite for risk too. And so these are the type of people who will be like, “Yeah, we can do it. Let’s do it.” There’s an F1 car sitting out there on a track and they’d be like “I can drive it, just give me the keys. I’m sure I can handle it.”

Whereas I come from a different way of thinking where I’m never going to go outside my lane. And I think that as the industry-

TG Branfalt: No F1’s for you?

Shane Pennington: What’s that?

TG Branfalt: No F1’s for you?

Shane Pennington: Not without a lot of lessons, man. Do you know how expensive an F1 car is? I think they light on fire easily, too, like, nah, that ain’t for me. So anyway, I think that as we get more sophisticated, more money pours into the industry, things start to open up, there are going to be a lot more attorneys with more areas of specialization who are going to come in and they’re going to discipline things. They’re going to tell their clients what I’m telling them, “Pump the breaks, let’s think this through.” And that’s going to be very important as things get more sophisticated.

I mean, that was a shock for me coming from big law where every client I have has a general counsel’s office with a hundred attorneys in it who then hire outside council for specialized things. Here, it’s just like everybody’s just Wild West, “We want to sue the government. Okay, let’s just do it. Let’s just write the complaint and just throw it out there.” And I’m like, “Man, we should think about this.” And I think there’s going to be a lot of that kind of self-regulating, learning to think before we leap more as the industry progresses and becomes more above ground, basically.

TG Branfalt: Dude, this has been so much fun and I know that you have very important lawyer things to do. So I don’t want to keep you too much longer. But let’s say that a law student who’s interested in taking sort of… going into the cannabis side of law, what would your advice to them be?

Shane Pennington: If you’re in law school and you’re wanting to do this kind of stuff, get in contact with me because I need help. And what I need is… Well, what I need is I need people who can write and I need hard workers. That’s the main thing. And I guess that if you’re not in law school and you’re thinking about doing this, or if you’re early on, I guess there are a couple of things. First thing is, you need to know your business and you need to have a business sense, because this is an up and coming industry and it’s going to start getting plugged into new things like the Amazons of the world are going to start getting involved, all these new regulators are going to come online. You need to learn economics, you need to learn business, you need to be kind of a Jack of all trades, but you really need to know your business.

We need people who understand this plant and how it works, and frankly, better than I do. I don’t know anything about it. That’s my weakness. That’s why I went to Vicente Sederberg where there are all these experts who do know. But that’s something you’re going to need to know. And then you’re going to have to work on writing. Writing is going to be a premium. I mean, I’m a pretty good writer and we need a lot of good writers and we need people who have experience in the federal government, too. So taking a few years to be a prosecutor, taking a few years to work at DOJ or being a public defender and then coming back would be very helpful because all my years clerking have helped me to understand how things work inside the government. That way, now that I’m on this side, I’m able to have thoughts like, “Oh, that’s probably an OLC opinion,” and then how to get it.

So I guess the bottom line is there’s no straight line to success as a lawyer. Everybody kind of takes all their experiences and they use them all and we all have different things we bring to the table. And so I would encourage people who want to do a practice like the one that I have to go do something else, honestly. Go get other experience and then come back to this. Because, again, I mean the biggest lesson that I’ve learned and the secret that I know that a lot of people don’t, is that there’s no such thing as cannabis law. There’s just law. And everybody who wants to do it because it seems cool or whatever, I mean, this is a complex area of law. You need to screw your thinking cap on tight and you need to really dot your Is and cross your Ts.

Cause I’ll tell you, one thing you’re going to find is that courts are very skeptical of cannabis cases. Every lawyer needs to look legit when they walk in the room, they need to look very professional. But if you’re representing a cannabis client, you need to look four times more professional. If the person on the other side of you has gold plated credentials, yours need to be platinum, you know what I mean? Because it’s almost like there’s still this stigma, especially among federal judges, some of whom are older. I’m not saying that they’re…. I don’t think they intend to do anything corrupt or unfair, it’s just there’s this latent bias that I think people have. I had it, man. When that case came across my desk, I had my eyebrow raised from the get-go cause I was like cannabis, what? What is this Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or something. We take serious lawsuits here at this law firm. What is this all about?

And I had to read for a long time to realize that there are kids with epilepsy, there are people terminally ill with cancer, it’s not all… There’s a lot more to this and that the federal government for many, many years was blocking science, which is insane to me, science on things that could help people. And I think that once you get to where you can communicate that message in the right way, that’s when you can start making progress. But in order to do that, you need to work hard, get your grades right, get your experience right and then get hooked up with the right mentor, which would be me. So holler at your boy whenever you’re ready.

TG Branfalt: If people were trying to holler at your boy, Shane Pennington, how would they get in touch with you?

Shane Pennington: So they could email me at S.Pennington@VicenteSederberg.com, that would be the easiest way. And you can just go to Vicente Sederberg’s website, look me up, Shane Pennington, you’ll see my phone number there and all that. So, that’d be the easiest way.

TG Branfalt: Awesome. Dude, it’s been a pleasure. I’m really delighted that we got to do this after, cause when we were hanging up the phone last time I was like, “I want to talk to this guy for like another 45 minutes to an hour.” So I really…

Shane Pennington: Yeah. No, I’m glad you did it. I really am. I mean it’s important stuff and I appreciate you shining a spotlight on it.

TG Branfalt: No, thanks so much for being on the show and I’m sure I’ll find something with your name on it in the future come across my desk.

Shane Pennington: Absolutely. I hope so. If not, then something bad’s happened to me.

TG Branfalt: I’ll be in touch to make sure nothing bad happens to you.

Shane Pennington: All right, man. Good talking with you.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes at the ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com on Spotify and in the Apple iTunes store. On the ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest in cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by us. I’ve been your host TG Branfalt.

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Sackville & Co and Sackville Studios: Representing the Cannabis Consumer Through Branding & Accessories

9/14/2022

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Haley Dineen and Lana Van Brunt are the co-founders of Sackville & Co, an online boutique of aesthetic consumer goods curated for people who want their commonly used cannabis accessories to integrate seamlessly with their style. Since its founding, the pair have both negotiated the sale of the company and fought to regain ownership due to a breach of contract, all while starting an entirely new business: Sackville Studios. With those challenges behind them, they are moving forward to create lasting products for consumers and branded moments for clients. Sitting in conversation with either entrepreneur, it’s clear the women simply love what they do. “We’re genuinely trying to create something beautiful and are beyond excited that anyone is interested,” said Van Brunt.

With their first endeavor, S&Co, the duo set out to design useful, gorgeous cannabis accessories. The online boutique goes far beyond your corner store headshop, instead centering on experience, creativity, and culture. “Cannabis is so much more than just the act of consuming,” Dineen said, “it’s so much more about connecting to different parts of yourself.” S&Co products are meant to help people explore those nuanced parts, and to create commonly used cannabis accessories that blend with one’s home decor. Imagine a wine and charcuterie night with friends: the glasses are gorgeous and the cheese board is ornate – why shouldn’t the grinder, papers, and lighter match the vibe? That’s the question Van Brunt and Dineen seek to answer with S&Co.

The team was intentional with every step of the branding process – the name was to be vaguely cannabis adjacent but not on the nose, and the brand was to remain genderless. But the women-founded business was consigned to the wellness category immediately, which did not gel with their vision. In response, the pair pulled back the launch and purposefully rebranded to spill outside the trite lines of gender. “We wanted to be a brand that existed in a genderless space. Any woman who’s running a brand, all of a sudden it’s a brand for women. Our decision in updating the brand was to make sure that we weren’t creating guardrails for our opportunity to grow because of how would be defined,” said Van Brunt.

A short time into its run, the company was growing and required more funds to continue. After months of meetings and multiple deals falling through after term sheets, they had found their ideal partner but soon the negotiations turned from discussing investment to the full purchase of the company. The pair negotiated the contract and learned a lot about each other in the process — specifically, how to stand your ground when being bullied into signing a contract. To Van Brunt it came down to gut instinct, “When I get something in my gut that just feels wrong, I would rather lose on my own terms than somebody else’s.”

Dineen credits Van Brunt’s fortitude in those meetings as those negotiations were vital in recovering S&Co, “It was those very deal points that we were really standing our ground on that ended up giving us the room to sue for breach of contract and it ended in us getting Sackville back.”

After eight months of negotiations, a contract was drawn up that met the founders’ standards and they signed — but the parent company had a change of control and they learned S&Co would be bankrupted as the new CEO didn’t see value in the brand. Dineen and Van Brunt immediately entered litigation and began the fight to regain control of the brand they had built. Unfortunately, the effort was expensive so during that time, they pivoted into taking on private clients, an endeavor that soon evolved into Sackville Studios. This work funded the women as they pursued ownership of their former business. And eventually, they won it back.

In the meantime, Sackville Studios has become an established multidisciplinary cannabis design and production studio working with clients like Playboy and Select. Studios’ offerings are unique in the space, as many brands have overlooked the power of building a culture around their lines. Studios builds a lifestyle in an honest way that doesn’t pander but rather shows that the brand is listening and responding to their clientele – just like they did with S&Co. This may be a natural step in the right direction for cannabis, where the focus is on genetics while branding is in varying levels of disarray from state to state.

“Not having a lifestyle brand means nobody has any brand affinity or brand loyalty. People are shopping by price at dispensaries, it has become a really difficult space to play in because people weren’t investing in building that connection with their consumer. Additionally, swag and merchandise has become a bit of a dirty word but ultimately, everybody wants something beautiful they can use in their home that has a utility and fits their aesthetic, and boom — it’s also a marketing opportunity for you,” said Van Brunt, who considers the moving pieces to arrange the big picture.

And Dineen, who hones that big picture into the finer details, continued, “Most consumers don’t really have a good handle on how to read a label or approach cannabis to get what they’re looking for out of it. When you can express that to them through product touch points that are so easily recognizable by them, and really set the vibe, and the tone, and the feeling for what the experience is, … it’s just like, oh yeah, that’s a full circle moment!”

With Studios, Van Brunt and Dineen work for the client, and with S&Co, they work for the consumer, but both companies are designed to attract the right consumer to a product they’ll love, and to do this they use their experience and natural talents.

To learn more about Sackville & Co visit sackville.co, where you can learn about limited edition collabs like their recent release with Flatbush Zombies that sold out in a weekend. Check out the Sackville Studios portfolio at sackvillestudios.co.

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Federal Bill Would Let Small Cannabis Growers Sell Directly to Consumers Across State Lines

9/14/2022

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U.S. Reps. Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) filed a bill on Wednesday to help small-scale cannabis cultivators compete with larger industry players by shipping and selling products directly to consumers across state lines, Marijuana Moment reports.

The Small and Homestead Independent Producers (SHIP) Act seeks to address concerns that when the federal prohibition of cannabis finally comes to an end, the industry could easily — and to the detriment of small business owners — be consolidated under the multi-state operators which already dominate many of the state markets. But giving small-scale operators the ability to operate on a direct-to-consumer model could help small growers save money on distribution costs or working directly with retailers.

The bill would take effect following the plant’s eventual federal legalization.

“It is a daunting business environment that they’re facing. Markets are consolidating. The huge multinational corporations are certainly going to do very well, but we want to make sure that the smaller operations have a chance to compete and succeed.” — Huffman, via Marijuana Moment

The bill states that a “small cultivator of marijuana and a small manufacturer of a marijuana product may ship and sell marijuana or a marijuana product to an individual located in that State or another State in which possession of marijuana or the marijuana product is lawful by that individual, using the Postal Service or any private or commercial interstate carrier.”

According to the report, small cultivators are considered in the bill to be operators with up to one acre of outdoor cannabis canopy, up to 22,000 square feet of greenhouse cannabis canopy, or up to 5,000 square feet for indoor cannabis canopy. Small-scale manufacturers, meanwhile, are defined as those producing manufactured cannabis products such as salves, tinctures, edibles, or concentrates but which have gross annual revenue of less than $5,000,000.

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Brooklyn Prosecutors Seek to Dismiss 378 Cases Linked to Corrupt NYPD Cops

9/14/2022

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Prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York last week asked a judge to dismiss 378 criminal convictions – mostly low-level drug and traffic offenses – from 1999 to 2017 that relied on 13 New York Police Department officers who were later convicted of crimes related to their official duties, the New York Times reports. If approved, it would be the largest mass dismissal of convictions in the nation, according to the National Registry of Exonerations outlined by the Times.

Last year, the Queens district attorney moved to dismiss 60 convictions while the Bronx district attorney vacated more than 250 convictions that relied on the work of one officer, Joseph Franco, a former narcotics detective, who was charged with perjury and other offenses in connection with his testimony with prosecutors and undercover work. In all, the total is expected to rise to 496, the report says. Franco was fired and awaiting trial. Franco was also involved in the cases in Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan that district attorneys have vacated or are seeking to vacate, the report says.   

None of the 13 officers in the Brooklyn cases are still with the force and all have been convicted of crimes that they committed while undercover and street-level cases. Charles Linehan, a former Manhattan prosecutor who has run the Brooklyn district attorney’s conviction review unit since January described the crimes as “quick hits with little oversight.”

Of the Brooklyn cases, 331 were misdemeanor convictions and 47 felonies and about half of them involved four officers who were involved in a corruption scandal more than a decade ago involving the police department’s narcotics operations in Brooklyn. In that case, officers were found to have planted evidence, falsified records, and rewarded informants with drugs.

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Study: Allowing Legal Cannabis Companies May Increase Local Home Prices

9/14/2022

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A new study suggests that allowing licensed cannabis businesses in a town or city increases home values, NORML reports. The study was conducted by Rutgers University with funding help from the New Jersey State Policy Lab.

Researchers found a nearly 2% bump in home prices in cities that embraced legal cannabis compared to cities that adopted cannabis bands. They said it was unclear if there was a direct correlation between higher home prices and cannabis establishments but they were ultimately confident that “allowing cannabis-related businesses does not negatively impact home sales prices.”

“In terms of policy recommendations, our results suggest state and local policymakers can be cautiously optimistic about the short-run impacts of allowing cannabis-related businesses in their jurisdictions.” — Study authors, via the NORML report

The report also notes that other studies have returned similar results, while even others suggest that allowing cannabis businesses in a community leads to faster job creation rates than those without cannabis businesses.

“It’s time for local officials to put an end to the NIMBYism [Not In My Backyard] and unwarranted fears surrounding the establishment of licensed marijuana retailers,” NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. “Cannabis is here and here to stay. Municipalities need to embrace this reality and provide the necessary oversight in order to hold these businesses accountable and to make this marketplace safe, transparent and profitable for the community.”

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