A political action committee supporting a citizen-backed measure to regulate and tax commercial marijuana in San Bernardino delivered more than 11,000 signatures from registered voters to the City Clerk’s Office on Monday, June 25, city officials confirmed. If the signatures are certified by the Registrar of Voters, the measure... Read more
California has 58 counties and 482 incorporated cities across the state, each with the option to create its own rules or ban marijuana altogether. In this California Cannabis Countdown series, we cover who is banning cannabis, who is embracing cannabis (and how), and everyone in between. For each city... Read more
Alison Ettel, CEO of TreatWell Health, was thrust into the national limelight over the weekend after she was caught on video while allegedly calling the police on an 8-year-old black girl who was selling water on a sidewalk in San Francisco. According to news reports, Ettel, who is white,... Read more
Big win today for GW Pharma. In a previous post, we discussed GW Pharmaceuticals, the leading developer of cannabis-based pharmaceuticals. Today, the FDA announced the approval of GW Pharmaceutical’s drug Epidiolex (cannabidiol), an oral solution for treatment of seizures associated with two rare forms of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and... Read more
On June 13, the U.S. Tax Court issued an opinion regarding the application of IRC §280E. In Alterman v Commissioner of Internal Revenue (“Alterman“) the Court held, yet again, that IRC §280E operates to disallow a cannabis businesses’ tax deductions. A few days later, the Court also issued Loughman vs.... Read more
In Part 1 of this series we discussed how mediation works in most cannabis disputes. Today, we discuss some strategic considerations to increase the likelihood of success in cannabis mediation. Know your audience(s): Unlike in litigation or arbitration, where your audience is a disinterested third party judge, jury,... Read more
…with your California cannabis lease. The current state of enforcement in California tends to be dominated by headlines about the Department of Justice, Jeff Sessions, the DEA, and the Controlled Substances Act. And for good reason—under the constitution, federal law is the law of the land, and commercial landlords... Read more
Well Seed Investors, It’s finally happening! Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday the official date for marijuana legalization in Canada, and that date is October 17, 2018. After a tense journey through the Senate and House of Commons which saw the Senate make over 50 amendments, it was... Read more
Copyright is an aspect of intellectual property (IP) law less frequently considered by cannabis businesses than trademark, trade secrets or even patents it seems. Yet, like these other forms of intellectual property, copyrights can afford their holders with market dominance and profitability when utilized correctly. Almost all marijuana businesses... Read more
This week the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has decided that marijuana will remain classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act. The decision to keep marijuana in the category reserved for drugs with no accepted medical uses and a high potential for abuse was, according to... Read more
