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New York Senate Subcommittee on Cannabis will have its first hearing on cannabis.
The hearing will be conducted in collaboration with the Finance, Agriculture, and Investigations and Government Operations committees.
Who: The full list of who will testify will be released shortly before the hearing, but expect lawmakers, regulators, and advocates.
What: A hearing that Subcommittee Chair Sen. Jeremy Cooney pitched on Thursday as an information-gathering exercise ahead of the start of the state legislative in January.
Where: Albany
When: Oct. 30 at 11 a.m.
Why: There is a lot to tackle this legislative session when it comes to cannabis policy, much of which is clearly going to be focused on the “clean up” phase.
A couple of noteworthy statements from lawmakers about the hearing:
“While we knew there would be challenges in implementing a law as historic as MRTA, we never anticipated that so many would work to stop us from moving forward, thousands of illicit sellers would open before the legal market even got off the ground, or national cannabis corporations would file repeated lawsuits to try to block the prioritization of social equity applicants,” Sen. Liz Krueger said in a statement.
“It’s well over two years since recreational marijuana was legalized and not a single dispensary is open in some regions of the state, including the Hudson Valley,” Sen. James Skoufis, chair of the Senate Investigations and Government Operations Committee, said in a statement. “This reality reflects a failure to properly implement the law and it’s critical the legislature step in, provide oversight, and advance amendments to the statute, if necessary. I thank Senator Cooney for his leadership on this issue and look forward to righting this ship.”
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians votes in favor of adult use.
As we reported in this newsletter earlier this week, the tribe, located within North Carolina, was set to vote on Thursday on the issue of adult use legalization. (The impending vote even prompted a member of Congress to introduce a bill to pull funding from tribes that choose to legalize.)
The final vote tally came to 2,464 yes and 1,057 no.
The question posed to voters: “Do you support legalizing the possession and use of cannabis for persons who are at least twenty-one(21) years old, and require the EBCI Tribal Council to develop legislation to regulate the market?”
With a confirmed final vote of yes, the Council will get to work on the legislation. But this is the first, firm step toward what is likely to be the only avenue for legal adult use cannabis in the state for years to come.
How much tax revenue will adult use legalization bring to Ohio?
As we reported in this newsletter last month, adult use legalization will be on the ballot this November in Ohio.
The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law’s Drug Enforcement and Policy Center has released an updated report that estimates just how much tax revenue the state could see, should voters say “yes.”
After assessing data from other adult use markets, the authors suggest that, after five years, tax revenue could range from $276 million a year to $403 million a year.
The authors focus on Michigan in particular, due to the overlap between the tax structure that is being proposed in Ohio and what exists in Michigan, as well as other similarities between the two states.
Here is a look at the tax revenue since 2018 from the states considered for the report:
Another strange chapter for High Times.
A company called Lucy Scientific Discovery, which describes itself as “a leading psychotropic innovator,” announced a deal to acquire the “IP of High Times,” which will include “international and domestic rights of the brand High Times, Cannabis Cup, and 420.com brands, and its respective domain names.”
Lucy, which is listed on NASDAQ, plans to “license the right to operate retail stores and manufacture and sell THC products in the United States back to High Times, in return for a license fee of $1.0M per year, increasing to $2.0M per year upon Federal legalization.”
+ More on High Times: Back in 2020, Cannabis Wire co-founder Nushin Rashidian wrote an op-ed for the Columbia Journalism Review on how High Times has changed over the decades.
