• Cannabis-related firms again face hurdles in qualifying for financial relief under the newly enacted $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, but the door has opened wider for hard-hit companies, especially small and economically disadvantaged businesses.

  The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) includes three programs worth exploring, marijuana industry experts said.

  Two offer billions of dollars in loans and grants, while another provides tax credits:

  • State Small Business Credit Initiative: More than $10 billion is being funneled to states to support small businesses, economically disadvantaged businesses and micro-businesses. Some experts believe state rather than federal rules should apply, potentially opening up funds for marijuana businesses operating in state-legal markets.
  • Employee Retention Credit: Requirements for these payroll tax credits have been relaxed some, and credits now could be in play for cannabis-related firms that have experienced a year-to-year drop in receipts of 20% or more (the previous standard was 50%).
  • Payroll protection loans and grants: The same strict requirements persist from the two previous economic stimulus rounds, but experts note that banks, which issue the loans and grants, ultimately determine whether a business qualifies.

  Overall, though, it’s tough for cannabis-related businesses to tap the funds, especially those that are plant-touching.

  “Once again, the cannabis industry has (largely) been left out of coronavirus relief, and likely that will only change once marijuana is legal federally,” said Josh Kappel, a founding partner of Denver-based law firm Vicente Sederberg.

  Potential help through states

  Steve Schain, a senior attorney in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the Hoban Law Group, views the situation more bullishly.

  He sees the State Small Business Credit Initiative as a funding possibility for both ancillary and plant-touching businesses. The initiative provides the following funding to state-run, small business-financing programs, Schain said:

  • $10 billion to support small businesses recovering from pandemic impacts.
  • $2.5 billion to support small businesses majority-owned by social and economically disadvantaged individuals.
  • $500 million to “very small businesses” with fewer than 10 employees.

  Some of those funds “could be in play for marijuana companies,” Schain said.

  To Continue Reading go to: Marijuana Business Daily

HELENA, Mont. — Bill Stocker could be considered the archetype of a conservative voter: He’s a retired Marine and former police officer who voted for President Donald Trump. But he’s also among the majority of South Dakota voters who broadly legalized marijuana this month.

Stocker, 61, said enforcing marijuana laws gets in the way of pursuing other drug crimes and called warnings about the ills of marijuana “a bunch of baloney” that even people in a Republican stronghold like South Dakota no longer believe.

South Dakota’s values of “personal responsibility and freedom” won out, said Stocker, who lives in Sioux Falls.

The 2020 election helped prove how broadly accepted marijuana has become throughout the United States, with measures to legalize recreational pot also breezing to victory in progressive New Jersey, moderate Arizona and conservative Montana. Fifteen states have now broadly legalized it, while 36 states allow medical marijuana.

Voters in Mississippi overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana this month, giving the drug another foothold in the South.

A Gallup Poll released Nov. 9 indicated that 68% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana — double the approval rate in 2003. That wide margin was evident in the election, with marijuana measures passing with strong bipartisan support.

In South Dakota and Montana — where Republicans swept to victory in the key races — recreational marijuana passed with at least 16 percentage points more support than Democratic President-elect Joe Biden received. South Dakota also approved medical pot, which outpolled Biden by 34 percentage points.

“We’ve waged a war against this plant for a century and by any reasonable metric, that war has been an abject failure,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors legalization. “All it’s done is incarcerate millions of Americans, it has perpetuated racism in this country, and perhaps the worst injustice of all is that it’s deprived us of medical marijuana research.”

Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, hurting veterans who can’t be prescribed medical pot at Veterans Affairs clinics, he said.

They “come home with chronic pain and we’re pushing them to opioids,” Schweich said. “That’s crazy. That’s unpatriotic and it’s a disgrace.”

Continue reading at ABCNews.com

Between the presidential election, governor races, and down-ballot contests, this year’s election features a lot of important choices. Among those, voters in five states will have a chance to legalize marijuana for recreational or medical uses.

In Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota, voters could legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. In Mississippi and South Dakota (in a ballot initiative separate from the full legalization measure), voters could also legalize medical marijuana.

If all these measures are approved, the United States would go from having 11 states in which marijuana is legal to 15. Counting by population, that would mean more than one-third of Americans would live in a state with legalized marijuana, up from more than a quarter today.

The ballot initiatives represent a massive shift in drug policy. A decade ago, zero states had legalized marijuana. Then, in 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize cannabis for recreational use and sales — and many others followed.

Despite the success of state measures, marijuana remains illegal at the federal level. But since the Obama administration, the federal government has generally taken a hands-off approach to states’ marijuana initiatives. There are still hurdles — banking is a challenge for marijuana businesses under federal prohibition — but for the most part the federal government has not interfered in states’ laws since 2013.

That policy may reflect a change in public opinion: As it stands, public opinion surveys show that even a majority of Republicans, who tend to take more anti-marijuana views than their Democratic and independent peers, support legalization.

In that context, legalization advocates are optimistic about their prospects this year, even in historically red states like Arizona, Montana, and South Dakota. If all these measures are successful, the US will have taken a major step forward both in undoing its drug war, and in undoing some of the damage it has done to communities of color.

Continue at MSN NEWS

During the last six months, the size of Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program has surged due to the anxiety-producing effects of COVID-19 and some favorable changes to regulation.

The number of patient visits at cannabis dispensaries has risen by more than 70 percent — rising from 70,000 a week in February to 120,000 each week in August.

Retail sales also have exploded. Since February, dispensaries have sold as much marijuana as they had during the previous two years combined, according to statistics released last week by the state Department of Health, which governs the cannabis program.

Patients bought about $385 million in legal marijuana products from the state’s 89 cannabis dispensaries during the period, according to the state Office of Medical Marijuana. Until February, total retail sales since the inception of the highly regulated industry two years ago in the Keystone State had totaled only about $400 million. There are at least 27 dispensaries now operating in the five-county region.

“The program is doing really well,” said Chris Woods, CEO of Terrapin Care Station, a cannabis grower and processor upstate in Clinton County. “It’s hard not to draw a correlation with COVID-19. In unsettled times, cannabis is a medicine that seems to help people cope with anxiety.”

Anxiety remains one of the most cited reasons for getting a state medical marijuana card. It comes in second only to chronic pain. Post traumatic stress disorder is a distant third.

Why has marijuana suddenly taken off?

It is chiefly attributable to temporary changes to the regulations implemented by the Wolf administration. Marijuana dispensaries were among the first businesses deemed “essential” by Gov. Tom Wolf. But Wolf also streamlined access to medical marijuana in ways that made it safer to join the program.

Continue Reading at MSN.com

Arkansas regulators approved a sixth cultivation license to support a rapidly growing medical cannabis market nearing $100 million in total sales.

Carpenter Farms Medical Group, a minority-owned company, was awarded the license Tuesday, according to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission awarded the sixth cultivation license after accepting a settlement agreement that resolved a lawsuit by Carpenter Farms, according to the Democrat Gazette.Currently, only three growers have sold products, but two additional ones are expected to harvest soon.

Read more at MJBizDaily.com

Minnesota’s Red Lake Nation voted May 20 to approve a referendum that legalizes the production, regulation and distribution of medical cannabis, according to a Duluth News Tribune report.

The referendum passed with an overwhelming 80.5% of the vote, the news outlet reported.

The tribal nation is the first in the state to legalize medical cannabis, as well as the first entity in Minnesota to allow the sale of cannabis flower, which is prohibited in the state’s medical cannabis program, Duluth News Tribune reported.

Although it is unclear how the rollout of the program will be handled, who will qualify for medical cannabis and when patients will have access, Kevin Jones Jr., an organizer of the referendum, said depression, chronic pain and opioid addiction will likely be on the list of qualifying conditions, according to the Duluth News Tribune.

A big and long-awaited boost for cannabis – and those who offer financial products to cannabis businesses – now in the hands of Congress may not only help usher the industry through the coming pandemic-ridden economic slump, it could have an impact akin to putting the sector on steroids.

The leadership of the U.S. House has included wording from the SAFE Banking Act in the latest proposed coronavirus economic relief package. A House vote on the COVID-19 package, a relief bill with a potential $3 trillion price tag that is being met with considerable political headwind, is expected as early as Friday.

The proposed Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or the HEROES Act, includes more stimulus checks, moratoriums on evictions, pandemic pay for essential workers, and SAFE Banking provisions. The SAFE Banking bill had bipartisan momentum in the House until it stalled in committee last fall.

If the SAFE Banking language remains the relief bill, and that bill is passed, it will pave the way for several large commercial carriers to get right into the cannabis market, as well as reinvigorate reinsurance interest, enable much-needed banking services, and bring in more capital, said Ian Stewart, a partner in Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP.

“If it stays in there, it will put the cannabis industry on steroids,” Stewart said.

Read More at InsuranceJournal.com

Over the weekend, Governor Ralph Northam approved House Bill 972/Senate Bill 02, decriminalizing cannabis in Virginia. Decriminalization, which begins on July 1, 2020 means that cannabis possession of up to one ounce can only result in a maximum $25 citation and also means Virginians cannot be arrested or criminally charged for it. Additionally, amendments to HB 972 makes it so that past criminal records regarding cannabis charges are sealed preventing potential employers from knowing about cannabis-related charges and that what was formerly considered “hashish” now falls under the same category of cannabis.

“Virginians have long opposed the criminalization of personal marijuana possession, and Governor Northam’s signature turns that public opinion into public policy,” Jenn Michelle Pedini executive director of Virginia National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) said.

Currently, possession of cannabis in Virginia is a Class 1 misdemeanor and a first offense can result in 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $500. Subsequent offenses can lead to up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

In February, when it seemed as though decriminalization would likely pass in Virginia, local news affiliate ABC 8 noted that decriminalization would drastically reduce the number of arrests for cannabis possession in the state. “According to data from the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission, more than 15,000 people were convicted for a first or second marijuana possession offense from July 2018 to June 2019,” ABC 8 reported. “The vast majority were sentenced to probation but more than 1,300 served time in jail for an average of about nine days.”

Continue reading at OutlawReport.com

As the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic piles up, U.S. cities and states are set to face significant lost revenue given the loss of business activity.

But, as DataTrek Research’s Jessica Rabe writes in a note, “there’s a simple and effective solution for states and cities to help cover their huge budget shortfalls after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides: legalize recreational sales of marijuana.”

New York, the epicenter of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., might see a revenue drop of $4 billion to $7 billion compared to what it was expecting, according to the state comptroller. With a budget of $87.9 billion, that’s significant.

“We’ve been thinking a lot about how life will change post-virus, and one big difference will be that state and local governments are going to encounter large unexpected tax receipt shortages,” Rabe wrote. “That’s particularly true when it comes to sales and income taxes amid stressed consumer balance sheets and massive layoffs. And unlike the Federal government, states can’t print unlimited amounts of money.”

Legalization of cannabis for adults, Rabe points out, could be a really easy way to shore up tax basis without driving people out of state, as raising income tax might do. Already it has been successful at raising “hundreds of millions of dollars annually in states like Colorado,” she said. There are currently 11 states with legalized recreational cannabis and another 15 that have decriminalized the drug in one way or another.

Continue Reading at Yahoo.com