In 1996, California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use. Since then, however, the state’s voters beat back a 2010 initiative (Proposition 19) that would have legalized marijuana for recreational use among adults.

The California Secretary of State’s office last Tuesday certified that the latest effort to legalize marijuana had shown enough legal signatures to qualify for the November 8 ballot. If the measure passes, California will join Colorado, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon in the group of states that allow recreational use of cannabis.

A coalition of law enforcement and health groups oppose the law, and even though they have raised just $125,000 to fight the measure according to the Los Angeles Times, a similar coalition was successful in helping defeat Proposition 19 back in 2010.

Supporters of the measure have raised $3.7 million and believe that they have addressed most of the substantive concerns that led to the 2010 defeat. A poll conducted in May indicated that 60% of likely California voters think that recreational marijuana use should be legal compared with 37% who do not.

In his announcement that the initiative had qualified for the ballot, Secretary of State Alex Padilla cited the state’s analysis of the financial impact of legalizing marijuana:

Net reduced costs ranging from tens of millions of dollars to potentially exceeding $100 million annually to state and local governments related to enforcing certain marijuana-related offenses, handling the related criminal cases in the court system, and incarcerating and supervising certain marijuana offenders. Net additional state and local tax revenues potentially ranging from the high hundreds of millions of dollars to over $1 billion annually related to the production and sale of marijuana. Most of these funds would be required to be spent for specific purposes such as substance use disorder education, prevention, and treatment.

Lawmakers Press DEA on Rescheduling Marijuana
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced in April that it hoped to make a decision on whether or not to reclassify marijuana under federal law “in the first half of 2016.”

The clock is ticking: Thursday marks the last day of the sixth month of the year, but DEA still hasn’t announced if it will move cannabis out of its current status as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

Now, a bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers is pressing DEA to hurry up and make up its mind already.

“We request that you take immediate action to remove ‘cannabis’ and ‘tetrahydrocannabinols’ from Schedule I,” the lawmakers, led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), wrote on Thursday to DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg.

Read more at Marijuana.com.

Are Illegal Marijuana Growers Thriving in Oregon?
In the wake of a $5 million marijuana bust in Yamhill County, many are wondering if illegal growers are flourishing in the state now that legal, licensed operations exist.

With the start of legal marijuana sales in Oregon last October came the promise of a black market wipeout.

Generally speaking, that seems to be happening. But experts say legal weed has also created a dynamic that can, and does, feed black market sales.

Cannaman Farms owner Brian Stroh says because the price of weed in legal states is steadily dropping, black market sellers from other regions are still around.

Some local growers are still willing to risk their safety for the promise of big profits.

Read more at KOIN 6.

Why the Marijuana Business is Appealing to Female Entrepreneurs

In this mountain town [Denver], which began allowing the recreational sale of marijuana in 2014, businesswomen and female entrepreneurs say they are launching marijuana-centric companies with the hope that they can avoid the glass ceiling some say prevented them from reaching board rooms and corner offices in other industries.

In the past several years, women have become a driving force in the growth of the cannabis industry here and across the United States. As one magazine coverproclaimed recently, “Legal marijuana could be the first billion-dollar industry not dominated by men.”

Numbers would seem to bear those sentiments out. According to Marijuana Business Daily, women make up about 36 percent of executives in the legal-marijuana industry, compared to about 22 percent of senior managers in other industries. Women hold just 4.2 percent of the CEO positions at S&P 500 companies. At tech companies like Google and Twitter, disproportionately few executives and engineers are women.

Read more at The Atlantic.

Ganja ATMs! — Port Kiosks to Issue Tourists with Medical Cards to Buy Weed
If the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) has its way, Jamaica’s air- and seaports will have kiosks or dedicated desks where visitors can pick up a licence to sample some of the ‘good herb’ to enhance their island experience. The CLA is already looking at the framework for the operation of the entities.

“We’ve had our first meeting, and my thinking is that we’d need a few weeks to turn out an appropriate policy document,” reported chairman of the Medical Committee of the CLA, Dr Winston De La Haye.

Speaking at a recent Gleaner Editors’ Forum on Jamaica’s burgeoning ganja industry, De La Haye said the country needs to move quickly to plug any potential gap in proper regulations for that.

Read more at The Jamaica Gleaner.

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