Cannabis Trade Organizations Sue Los Angeles Over Delivery Licenses
Southern California Coalition and the California Cannabis Couriers Association say restrictions on the licenses have barred them from participating in the market until 2025.
Two cannabis trade organizations, Southern California Coalition and the California Cannabis Couriers Association, filed a lawsuit Oct. 19 against Los Angeles over the city’s delivery licenses, according to an AP News report.
The suit, which was filed alongside Zachary Pitts, CEO of delivery service Ganja Goddess, says restrictions on the licenses have barred the plaintiffs from participating in the market until 2025, the news outlet reported. The plaintiffs are asking a judge to overturn rules approved earlier this year that gave only social equity applicants initial access to the delivery licenses.
While the lawsuit does not seek to limit social equity applicants’ access to the licenses, it is asking the court to allow other standalone delivery business to apply, according to AP News.
The lawsuit claims that the Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation was initially required to issue 20 licenses to non-social equity applicants under a delivery pilot program, but that the agency never accepted applications for those licenses, the news outlet reported.
Instead, new regulations were adopted, and only social equity applicants could apply for new retail and delivery licenses until 2025, according to AP News.
Los Angeles’ cannabis licensing process has been marred with controversy since last fall, when the city launched a first-come, first-serve process in September 2019 for businesses to apply for 100 new retail licenses. After some stakeholders alleged that some of the applicants gained early access to the online application system while others were locked out due to slow internet speeds, the licensing process underwent a third-party audit, which ultimately determined that the process was fair.
In April, unsuccessful retail applicants sued the city, arguing that the licensing process was flawed.
Massachusetts Lawmakers Voice Opposition to Cannabis Delivery Regulations
A bipartisan group of legislators have asked the Cannabis Control Commission to eliminate the wholesale delivery license type, leaving only the limited delivery license.
A bipartisan group of Massachusetts lawmakers has voiced opposition to the Cannabis Control Commission’s (CCC) cannabis delivery regulations, according to a MassLive.com report.
The draft regulations, which were established last month, would create two types of delivery licenses—a “limited delivery license,” which would allow a licensee to charge a fee to deliver from licensed cannabis dispensaries, and a “wholesale delivery license,” which would allow a licensee to buy cannabis wholesale from licensed cultivators and manufacturers, store it in a warehouse and sell it to consumers.
Nineteen state lawmakers drafted a letter to the CCC last week, indicating that they “believe that the wholesale delivery license was not contemplated, nor supported, by the enabling legislation,” MassLive.com reported.
The lawmakers asked the CCC to reconsider its final vote on the proposed delivery regulations, which is expected to take place Oct. 20, according to the news outlet.
Photo courtesy of Canndescent
Canndescent CEO Adrian Sedlin on Justice Joints Partnership with Last Prisoner Project
A commitment to core values such as “excellence” and “gratitude” prompted the California cultivator to donate 100% of profits from Justice Joints to cannabis prisoner release, reentry and expungement.
This year, Canndescent’s leadership decided to address cannabis incarceration and its disproportionate effects on black and brown people. To determine how best to do that, the company looked within.
Adrian Sedlin, founder and CEO of the California cultivator, said the May 25 death of George Floyd was “a flashpoint” to him and the business, as it was to many people, of the terrors of racial injustice and police brutality. Individuals, businesses and organizations in the cannabis industry have acknowledged that they benefit from legalization while minorities continue to be disproportionately incarcerated for marijuana convictions.
“We had a very long internal conversation, and sometimes there were tears in the room, to be honest, where people want[ed] us to act faster and [felt] like we have to do something,” Sedlin recalled to Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary.
At Canndescent, that flashpoint became a call to #sparkchange. The company’s core values, such as “excellence,” “gratitude” and “boldness” have enabled it to become a formidable player in the legal cannabis market. In 2020, they’ve led the company to launch Justice Joints, a preroll collaboration with the Last Prisoner Project (LPP). All profits from the product line of sativa, indica and hybrid prerolls will fund LPP’s efforts of prisoner release, reentry into society and criminal record expungement.
With an internal “on-shelf” date of Oct. 27, Sedlin said Canndescent’s distribution team may start transporting Justice Joints to California dispensaries as soon as Oct. 28. About 30 to 40 dispensaries will begin selling the product in early- or mid-November. Six to nine months afterward, Sedlin anticipates selling the product to approximately 200 stores.
Justice Joints’ text-heavy packaging will educate and remind consumers—and dispensary managers and employees—that there are 40,000 people incarcerated for charges related to cannabis, that 10% of cannabis business owners are people of color and that people are arrested for cannabis in the U.S. “every 48 seconds.”
Not only did the company’s decision to launch Justice Joints align with its core values, but also its mission to “empower consumers to turn down the noise, unlock the moment and transform their lives with exceptional cannabis products,” as Sedlin (and the business’s website, similarly) put it.
“Our job is to build solutions and turn down the noise, and for us, this was a way to do it,” he said. “This was a way for us to do something really constructive that’s lasting and meaningful. So that was the standard.” If Canndescent was to reduce people’s anxieties rather than inflame them, giving a one-time donation or smaller portions of proceeds wouldn’t be enough. In addition, the company wanted to continually express its gratitude to the people who led the way for the cannabis industry, including those who have been imprisoned.
Photo courtesy of Canndescent
Over the summer of 2020, Sedlin said he reached out to the Last Prisoner Project founder Steve DeAngelo (also the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Harborside) about working together.
“We have three long-term gifting platforms in mind for Justice Joints,” Sedlin said. “But expungement, release and reentry for nonviolent cannabis prisoners was the first of the three. And Steve and the Last Prisoner Project became the logical next call.” (Sedlin said the other two platforms would be working with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to establish curricula to encourage graduates to enter the cannabis industry, and issuing grants to increase the equity of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) in the industry.)
Registered as a 501(c)(3) in 2019, the Last Prisoner Project has been growing since. It works in different capacities with cannabis businessesacross the U.S., as well as musicians such as Stephen and Damian Marley and Rebelution’s Eric Rachmany, and started a letter-writing program.
Addressing the partnership with Canndescent in a statement provided to CBT and CD, Mary Bailey, managing director of LPP, said:
“Last Prisoner Project is thrilled about the launch of Justice Joints and we simply can't thank Canndescent enough for the support. Not only will Justice Joints raise much needed funding to support criminal justice reform in the cannabis space, but it also brings awareness to consumers about this important issue. Most Americans don't realize that there are still over 40,000 people incarcerated for cannabis in our country.”
Buying In
Prior to Justice Joints, Canndescent ran three brands: Candescent, goodbrands and Baker’s Cannabis Co., Sedlin said. A fourth made sense with Justice Joints because employees would knowingly be spending a portion of their time serving the cause, and it would become “hardwired” into the company. With the new brand, Sedlin said, employees can say, “‘We grow cannabis for a living. We distribute cannabis for a living. Let’s make this part of our daily exercise as professionals.’”
The company will negotiate with suppliers on costs associated with Justice Joints, Sedlin said. “We’re going to try to get them to lower their cost structure to Justice Joints. Charge us what you will for Canndescent and our other brands, but will they lower the cost structure knowing 100% of what we don't spend on them goes to the charity?”
When asked if other cannabis companies should advocate for prisoner release, reentry and expungement, Sedlin said there are other urgent problems in the U.S. and world as well, like climate change and sex trafficking, and he wouldn’t judge companies for addressing those issues. Before that, though, he said companies should “build a great organization.” He explained:
“The cannabis industry is really hard. Lots of people lost a lot of money trying to build companies. But if company is at a point where they're beginning to become more successful, as traditionally defined in thebusiness community, I'd say, ‘It's time to pick up an axe and chop some wood off of something.’ It's sort of the culture of cannabis. We're a space of fighters and advocates, so let’s have a whole industry fight for better things.”
Dharma Pharmaceuticals' First Day of Sales Marks Opening of Virginia Medical Cannabis Market
The company kicked off retail sales Oct. 17, and now looks ahead to expanding in southwest Virginia.
The long-awaited Opening Day for the Virginia medical cannabis market arrived Oct. 17 with patients congregating in the city of Bristol to purchase products from Dharma Pharmaceuticals.
“It was overwhelming,” COO Jack Page said. “And, honestly, it was just truly emotional. We’ve been working seven days a week for two and a half years to get this thing up and running, and to finally actually see patients and see our hard work and money that we invested was pretty amazing.”
Currently, Dharma is operating out of a retrofitted former JCPenney building, part of a larger mall facility. A $150-million resort casino is slated to occupy that property, however, so Page and the Dharma team are designing a new space about 20 miles down the road. It’s an example of some of the unique real estate hurdles that can accompany any new business opening—and certainly cannabis businesses working to develop a new marketplace.
It’s been a long road since legislators approved the medical cannabis plan several years ago, and Page said that the opportunity to open the first retail storefront in the commonwealth has been a critical stepping stone to Dharma’s plans for success.
“We are just absolutely thrilled to share this opening of the Virginia medical cannabis program with all of our patients across the commonwealth,” Virginia Medical Cannabis Coalition Executive Director Katie Hellebush said.
The state gave Dharma the green light to open on Oct. 13, so Page and his team reached out to some of their locally based pre-registered patients for a soft opening Oct. 14 to work out any last-minute operational and logistics issues. From there, they looked forward to a busy Opening Day.
“We're seeing people from all across the state,” Page said. “It's nice to see that Southwest Virginia, which is usually an afterthought, has kind of risen to the top and people are coming across the state, seeing a part of the state that they've never even been to before. We’re driving some economic tourism to our area.”
Virginia Medical Cannabis Coalition
Bristol is located along the Tennessee border, closer to Knoxville than any other major Virginia city. It is part of Health Service Area III, one of five HSAs in the commonwealth as described by medical cannabis regulations. Each HSA is allotted one licensee, and that company is permitted to open an additional five dispensaries in that area.
HSA III is the largest Health Service Area of the five by pure geographic reach, including more than two dozen counties.
The other active licensees include: Dalitso (Jushi Holdings), Green Leaf Medical of Virginia and Columbia Care.
“Virginia is a very large marketplace in terms of our rural and urban areas,” Hellebush said. “We’re looking for innovative ideas and making sure we’re able to serve everyone.”
sergign | Adobe Stock
Amicus Briefs Filed in Support of Dr. Sue Sisley’s Petition to Facilitate Medical Cannabis Research for Veterans with PTSD
Sisley is petitioning the Ninth Circuit to rule that the DEA’s five-part test to assess if a drug has medical use and can be rescheduled is arbitrary and capricious.
Several organizations have filed amicus briefs in support of Dr. Sue Sisley, who is petitioning the Ninth Circuit to rule that the DEA’s five-part test to assess if a drug has medical use and can be rescheduled is arbitrary and capricious.
Rice University’s Baker Institute, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and several doctors filed the amicus briefs Oct. 6 in support of Sisley’s petition, which ultimately seeks to facilitate medical cannabis research for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The briefs urge the court to grant Sisley’s Petition for Review, which would allow researchers to study the effects of cannabis as a treatment for PTSD.
Cannabis has long been classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, which severely limits researchers’ ability to access cannabis for clinical trials.
“The Veterans Administration can’t do anything with medical marijuana because it’s a Schedule I substance, [and] Sue Sisley and her company couldn’t go and get marijuana for her clinical trial from anyone other than a government-authorized supplier because it is a Schedule I drug,” Susman Godfrey attorney Erica Harris, who represented IAVA in its amicus brief in support of Sisley’s petition, told Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary.
Sisley and other researchers have been critical of the quality of the medical cannabis produced by the University of Mississippi, the only organization licensed to grow cannabis for medical research in the U.S.
The DEA announced in August 2016 that it would begin accepting new cultivation license applications and received 25 applications in the year following the announcement, but the agency has not approved or denied a single one.
Following Sisley’s lawsuit, a federal court ordered the DEA to explain why it has not responded to the applications, and the agency announced in August 2019 that it would take steps to approve additional cultivation licenses from the pool of applications that have been pending since 2016.
In October 2019, a federal court dismissed Sisley’s lawsuit after a judge ruled that the DEA’s announcement made the case moot.
Sisley’s new petition comes after the DEA denied a veteran’s request to reschedule cannabis in an effort to advance research on medical cannabis and PTSD. While this most recent unsuccessful request to reschedule cannabis is certainly not the first, Harris said Sisley’s petition likely stems from recent changes to the Chevron Deference Standard for Administrative Rulings.
“Basically, they’ve ordered the DEA to re-assess it because it makes no sense what they’re doing,” Harris said. “There are 33 states and all these territories that are using medical marijuana. There’s all this evidence in literature saying medical marijuana can have all these different medical uses, and it doesn’t make sense to keep it on a Schedule I status because that prevents all sorts of studies and good things from happening to better understand this drug.”
The IAVA represents more than 400,000 veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and its main priority is to reduce the veteran suicide rate, Harris said.
“They’ve worked very hard and they’ve obtained legislation in prior years to prioritize reducing veteran suicide and to get them more resources, but nothing is helping in the sense that the veteran suicide rate keeps going up,” she said.
There are only two drugs authorized by the FDA to treat PTSD, Harris said, and neither gives relief to a sizeable percentage of the veteran population suffering from PTSD. The IAVA, therefore, wants medical cannabis to be studied as a potential treatment, and for it to be covered by veterans’ benefits.
“IAVA is not taking a position on whether medical marijuana should be allowed as treatment for PTSD or not,” Harris said. “IAVA’s position is, we need clinical studies of what’s on the market to know whether that’s safe and effective for the long-term for the treatment of our veterans because if it’s not, they should be able to know that and not use it, and doctors should stop prescribing it. And if it is, that’s a life-saving treatment because you can control the symptoms of PTSD and decrease the suicide rate.”
The Ninth Circuit must decide whether they will hear oral arguments in the case, and if not, Harris said they will issue an opinion.
If the court orders the DEA to re-assess cannabis’s classification as a Schedule I drug, she said it could have a tremendous impact on the industry, as well as veterans suffering from PTSD.
“If marijuana is removed from Schedule I and moved to a different schedule, it will open up the ability of the Veterans Administration and other groups of scientists, like Sisley’s organization and others, to perform clinical studies on the type of marijuana that is prescribed legally by doctors in states where it’s legally prescribed and the type of marijuana people buy at their local dispensary in the states and territories where it’s legal,” Harris said. “If that evidence shows that medical marijuana is an effective treatment for the symptoms of PTSD, that would be life-changing for these veterans, a certain percentage of whom come back from our wars with this syndrome.”
The federal government has indicated that preventing veteran suicide is one of the nation’s highest priorities, she added, and while Congress has passed legislation saying it is important to conduct clinical studies on potential treatments for PTSD, the DEA has consistently said it will not move cannabis from Schedule I.
“It’s so inconsistent with what they’re saying we need to prioritize as a nation, and it’s so detrimental to a population to which the country owes a debt,” Harris said. “I’m very hopeful that the petition is granted and marijuana is rescheduled, and over the course of the next 10 years, we see the science come out."
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