trees

Nice to see math being ranked high (heh) and above guns even if I suck at it :P

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday appeared sympathetic to a marijuana user's challenge to a federal law that bars people who consume illegal drugs from having firearms.

Gun rights advocates argue the law falls afoul of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

Based on oral arguments, it appears a majority of the court could rule in favor of Texas-based Ali Danial Hemani, an alleged regular user of marijuana who had a handgun at his home in the Dallas area when it was searched by the FBI in 2022. The ruling could be limited in scope, based on concerns that prosecutors could not show that Hermani's use of marijuana made him a danger to society.

The governor of New York has signed legislation into law that revises zoning requirements for licensed marijuana businesses, granting more flexibility to retailers located within certain distances of schools and places of worship.

The bills, passed by the House and Senate and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Wednesday, also grandfather in more than 150 existing retailers whose locations were retroactively found to be out of compliance with zoning requirements that created a buffer between cannabis dispensaries and schools and churches.

Last year, New York regulators notified the licensed retailers that they were mistakenly granted approval for their locations because the way distance was measured placed them closer to schools or places of worship than was permitted under the law.

The Virginia House of Delegates has approved a bill to protect the rights of parents who use marijuana in compliance with state law.

The legislation from Del. Nadarius Clark (D) is consistent with a measure he sponsored last session that advanced through the legislature, only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). The latest version passed the House in a 62-37 vote on Tuesday.

Under the proposal, possession of use of cannabis by a parent or guardian on its own “shall not serve as a basis to deem a child abused or neglected unless other facts establish that such possession or consumption causes or creates a risk of physical or mental injury to the child.”

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Frank Dailey is poring through new rules that could allow his cannabis dispensary in Holyoke to open an on-site lounge where customers could eat, drink and smoke the products he sells.

The Commonwealth’s Cannabis Control Commission is now allowing a range of licensed Marijuana Establishments (MEs), to set aside areas where people may consume cannabis.

Dailey owns and operates Boston Bud Factory, where he manufactures and sells cannabis products. He wants to attract new business, including tourists from other states, by establishing an area where patrons can indulge in his edibles, tinctures and vapes.

After months of hearings and study, the legislature’s Joint Commission on the Future of Cannabis Sales is poised to roll out a final proposal Tuesday that would launch a legal, regulated adult-use cannabis retail market in Virginia — potentially ending five years of economic and legal uncertainty since the commonwealth legalized possession and cultivation in 2021.

The latest version — sponsored by Commission Chair Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, in the House of Delegates and Sens. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, in the Senate — scraps the controversial local-opt-out clause, increases local taxing authority and builds a licensing regime designed to privilege small, independent, Virginia-based businesses over large medical-marijuana operators.

An association of Massachusetts marijuana businesses is urging voters to tell local officials about any cases of misleading signature gathering tactics and “fraudulent messaging” by a campaign seeking to put an initiative on the ballot next year that would roll back the state’s adult-use legalization law.

The prohibitionist campaign, called the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, said last week that it’s “confident” they turned in enough signatures to qualify for ballot placement. Supporters need 74,574 valid signatures to make the cut.

But the signature gathering hasn’t been without controversy, as there have been allegations piling up that petitioners working on behalf of the campaign have shared misleading information about what the measure would accomplish—with claims that paid petitioners have used fake cover letters for other ballot measures on issues like affordable housing and same-day voter registration. The state attorney general’s office has confirmed it’s received complaints to that end

A trade group representing large marijuana companies in New York filed a complaint in state Supreme Court on Wednesday over the continued illegal “inversion” of illicit market and out-of-state product into legal stores.

By failing to timely impose track-and-trace requirements, the state Office of Cannabis Management and Cannabis Control Board “have allowed a prolific supply of illicit and unregulated cannabis to enter the licensed New York cannabis market,” the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association (NYMCIA) alleged.

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When Connecticut legalized recreational marijuana in 2021, the state’s lieutenant governor, Susan Bysiewicz, boasted that the new law was “crafted to repair the wounds left by the War on Drugs.” The move followed the same rationale that had motivated legalization in 18 other states: fewer resources exhausted on policing a drug that legalization advocates view as largely unharmful, fewer lives derailed by what they argue to be excessive lockups. In a sense, the plan worked: Possession arrests have fallen precipitously in the years since. But as Connecticut’s number of legal neighborhood weed shops has grown, so too has a problem that the state, like others that have eased marijuana laws, was seemingly ill-prepared to deal with: the rise of illegal marijuana shops.