Featured guest: Amanda Ostrowitz, co-founder of CannaRegs.
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT
• Will visitors to Sin City be able to light up in July or what might delay Nevada’s recreational marijuana rollout?
• With legalization of recreational weed, California’s massive marijuana market is facing regulation upheavals. What surprises are found in the pages of new rules?
• Facing the regulatory storm: Some states are a nightmare, some just a challenge.
• Cannabis & Country Music: Janae suggests some 420-friendly honkytonk remixes.
• A Jake Browne hot topic: Edibles labeled “sativa” or “indica.”
Watch: More videos on YouTube about marijuana in Colorado and beyond
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TOP MARIJUANA NEWS
Marijuana Policy Project’s bank closing account amid fears of DOJ crackdown: One of the nation’s leading marijuana legalization groups says PNC Bank has notified it that it will close the organization’s 22-year-old accounts, a sign of growing concerns in the financial industry that the Trump administration will crack down on the marijuana industry in states that have legalized it. The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) lobbies to eliminate punishments for marijuana use but is not involved in growing or distributing the drug – an important distinction for federally regulated banks and other institutions that do business with such advocacy groups. Nick Field, MPP’s chief operating officer, said a PNC Bank representative told him in May that the organization’s bank accounts would be permanently closed July 7 because an audit of the organization’s accounts revealed it received funding from marijuana businesses that handle the plant directly. “They told me it is too risky. The bank can’t assume the risk,” Field said. –Report by The Washington Post’s Nicole Lewis
Kentucky man arrested in Colorado drug sting for trying to buy 10 pounds of weed (and some meth and some coke): A Kentucky man told an undercover federal agent that he wanted 10 pounds of Kush — but made it clear the marijuana wasn’t for his own use. Federal agents filed a forfeiture claim on Monday to confiscate the $15,471 that 25-year-old Cory Wilbur brought to Colorado in May 2016 to buy marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine. Since then, Wilbur has been convicted of a drug charge in Montezuma County and served a 90-day sentence. Wilbur is part of a steady influx of criminals to Colorado from other states where pot is illegal, believing the Western state’s lenient drug laws translate to easy pickings for their nefarious drug enterprises. –Report by The Denver Post’s Kirk Mitchell
Opinion: Jeff Sessions’ drug policies will expand black market, not reduce crime Attorney General Jeff Sessions took to the pages of The Washington Post recently to write an op-ed. Sessions is rescinding an Obama administration policy that instructed federal prosecutors to avoid seeking mandatory minimums in some drug cases. In Sessions’ defense, he did get one thing right, although he seemed to utterly miss the significance of it. And then he got a lot of things wrong. So many, in fact, that only a line-by-line review will do the whole thing justice.So let’s get to it. Sessions begins:
“Drug trafficking is an inherently violent business. If you want to collect a drug debt, you can’t, and don’t, file a lawsuit in court. You collect it by the barrel of a gun.”
–Op-Ed by Radley Balko, Special To The Washington Post
QUICK HIT
Forbidden medicine: Caught between a doctor’s CBD advice and federal laws: Seizures are a constant in Nancy Pasiecznik’s life. In a typical month, they come by the dozen. In some months, they have come on the order of 100. Attempts to control the uncontrollable have been practically futile and, in some instances, nearly fatal for Pasiecznik, 59, who lives in a state-run facility in western New York. At one point, roughly five years back, the dosages on her medications were ratcheted up too high, hurtling her into a life-threatening, prolonged seizure.
A different course of treatment had to be charted.
Last October, her neurologist recommended that Nancy receive a daily half-milliliter dose of Charlotte’s Web, a whole plant hemp extract oil formulated and developed by Colorado-based CW Hemp. The oil is rich in cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive cannabis compound that has been highly touted for its potential medicinal benefits and attracted national attention for its claimed ability to reduce seizures for some patients. –Report by The Cannabist’s Alicia Wallace
POT QUIZ
This week’s game is “Pot or Not.” In a list of 10 items, 5 are marijuana strains. Can you guess which are pot, and which are not?