"The brief filed in regards to the Kettle Falls Five notes that 'This court determined that Rohrabacher-Farr prohibits the Department of Justice from spending funds for the prosecution of individuals who engaged in conduct permitted by the state medical marijuana laws and fully complied with the laws.'"
"The state is on a hiring binge to fill what eventually will be hundreds of new government positions by 2019 intended to bring order to the legal pot economy, from keeping watch on what’s seeping into streams near cannabis grows to running background checks on storefront sellers who want government licenses. Thousands of additional jobs are expected to be added by local governments. Last January, just 11 full-time workers were part of what’s now known as the Bureau of Cannabis Control, the state’s chief regulatory agency overseeing the pot market. Now, it’s more than doubled, and by February the agency expects to have more than 100 staffers."
"Many people didn't realize the tribe owned land in the area. The 31-acre plot is small, but there's nothing small about the built-from-scratch NuWu Cannabis Marketplace on Paiute Circle."
"Any day now, medical marijuana will legally start to grow in the state of Texas. It will be planted, grown and processed on a 10-acre parcel of land in Schulenburg, a small community east of San Antonio, now that the company that owns the property — Cansortium Texas — has received the state’s first license to do so. The low-level cannabidiol will be sold, under a 2015 law, to help Texans with intractable epilepsy if federally approved medication hasn’t helped."
"Nation-states are nothing but agreed-upon myths: we give up certain freedoms in order to secure others. But if that transaction no longer works, and we stop agreeing on the myth, it ceases to have power over us. So what might replace it? The trends that are pinching the nation-state are helping the city-state. In a highly connected, quasi-borderless world, cities are centres of commerce, growth, innovation, technology and finance."
"We’re seeing a huge uptick in provinces and territories seeking independence from their parent countries all over the globe."
"Tim Draper filed his proposed 2018 ballot initiative on Friday asking voters to split California into three new states: Northern California, California and Southern California. 'The citizens of the whole state would be better served by three smaller state governments while preserving the historical boundaries of the various counties, cities, and towns,' Draper wrote in the initiative's statement of findings."
"Originally, the bill protecting childhood entrepreneurs sought to guard home-based businesses against state intervention. However, many child-run lemonade stands are not operated solely on privately owned property. Often, these amateur businesses are operated on neighborhood street corners or sidewalks, which are unfortunately considered public property." Continue reading →
"The study, which was first outlined by the Washington Post, helped stir up the debate over how a legitimate cannabis market might be able to reduce the national opioid problem. That’s because the University of Georgia data shows when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful — and potentially deadly — prescription narcotics. Specifically, the researchers found that — in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013 — prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply, compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law." Continue reading →
The tax-haven U.S. states of Montana and New Hampshire fired first this week ahead of an ominous House hearing. Continue reading →