Last Friday, December 7, the World Health Organization (“WHO”) Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (“ECDD”), was scheduled to make a recommendation about the international legal status of cannabis. The WHO is a “specialized agency” of the United Nations, and the ECCD is a WHO committee consisting of experts in the field of drugs and medicines,…
Last Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it was seeking public comments regarding “abuse potential, actual abuse, medical usefulness, trafficking, and impact of scheduling changes on availability for medical use ….” of cannabis and other substances currently under international review. If you want to take FDA up... Read more
U.S. border policy on Canadians and marijuana is tough. On the eve of the Canada’s cannabis legalization, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) held a teleconference to explain the agency’s enforcement policy and field questions from journalists. The on-the-record teleconference featured the head of the CBP’s Office... Read more
Congratulations to all of our Canadian readers! Today is the big day! Whether you are a cannabis business owner, consumer, lawyer, doctor, advocate, or even an opponent, you can surely appreciate this historic day. Canada has bucked international trends and become the first North American country to legalize recreational,... Read more
Canada’s cannabis legalization creates yet another wrinkle in the relations between the U.S. and its northern neighbor. U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions harbors a well known hatred towards anything cannabis and he clearly has no love for Canada’s Cannabis Act either. What will this mean though for Canadians who... Read more
DEA and FDA are in a bit of a tiff over CBD. Last week, following the highly-anticipated U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) approval of Epidiolex, G.W. Pharma’s oral cannabidiol (“CBD”) solution for the treatment of seizure associated with Lennox-Gastraut and Dravet syndrome, the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) issued... Read more
New rules at the Vancouver P.D. Despite a few employee victories across the country, states continue to allow employers to punish employees for off-work use of marijuana—even if they are medical marijuana users. Oregon and California tried and failed to pass legislation to protect off-work use of marijuana. The federal... Read more
I recently traveled to Montego Bay for the annual CanEx Jamaica conference. I spoke on a panel with attorneys from Jamaica and Canada about the legal challenges across international cannabis markets. Grace Lindo of Jamaican firm Nunes, Scholefield, DeLeon & Co. and Sandra Gogal of Canadian firm Miller Thomson LLP,... Read more
News broke recently that Tweed, Inc., a subsidiary of Canadian cannabis company Canopy Growth Corp., filed a Canadian trademark application on August 31, 2018 for CHRONIC BY DRE, which they subsequently withdrew, apologizing and calling it a mistake. As we’ve written before, the number of trademark filings covering cannabis... Read more
Our firm’s main practice areas include cannabis, China, trade and immigration. As such, it may not surprise you to learn that we get a lot of questions about the developing international cannabis trade. This is in large part due to the fact that Canada is on the verge of... Read more
