Month: July 2024

Cypress Brake Cannabis Company and Delta One Brands are proud to announce the launch of its premium cannabis brand and cultivation facility in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. The company is on a mission to bring artisanal, award-winning cannabis products to the burgeoning medical cannabis industry of Mississippi.

“We’re a team of visionaries, dreamers, and doers, passionately committed to shaping the future of regenerative agriculture across food and all-natural medicine,” said Matt Beaman, Chief Marketing Officer of Cypress Brake. “Thanks to our partnership with Angela TenBroech of Delta Grows, we are excited to build a first-of-its-kind cannabis company that not only produces exceptional cannabis but also fresh pesticide-free produce for the local community.”

Cypress Brake is pioneering a revolutionary approach called Cann-Aquatic Regenerative Agriculture (CARA). This closed-loop system combines cannabis cultivation with aquaponics to produce nutrient-dense food with near-zero environmental impact. Fresh lettuce, celery, greens, herbs, tomatoes, and other produce will be grown adjacent to premium cannabis flower, helping to address food insecurity while conserving water and energy.

CARA’s novel energy-saving system harnesses excess heat generated from the cultivation process to create a controlled environment for greenhouse agriculture that enables food production every month of the year. That means 12 months

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Whether you support them or not, intoxicating hemp products are probably not going to be around for much longer in their current form. States, municipalities, and even the federal government have begun a clampdown on these products. In no particular order, I’ll address a few reasons why the back half of 2024 will be a bad stretch for intoxicating hemp products.

First, let’s talk about Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, a 2024 US Supreme Court decision. Loper ended what’s often referred to as “Chevron deference.” To vastly oversimplify, Chevron deference required federal courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, even if courts did not agree with those interpretations. With Chevron dead, courts will not be required to defer to agencies and courts can decide, on their own, whether an agency’s interpretation was within its statutory authority.

Ever since Loper was decided, there have been a million different theories on how it could affect the cannabis and hemp industries. [For the record, I agree with folks like Shane Pennington who argue that Loper will not affect rescheduling.]

When it comes to hemp though, Loper may in theory have more of an impact, as my colleague, Vince Sliwoski, argued prior to Loper‘s publication. That’s because the DEA

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The Philippines House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday to legalize medical cannabis but the proposal faces an uncertain future in the Senate, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports. The proposal was passed in the House with 177 lawmakers in support, nine in opposition, and nine abstaining from the vote.

If passed, the bill would legalize medical cannabis access for patients with specific qualifying conditions and only

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, said the bill is intended only to benefit patients; the chair of the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, meanwhile, said the medical cannabis proposal would not be a stepping stone to adult-use legalization — and that cannabis would remain listed as a federally prohibited substance.

“By no means is this bill a gateway to the recreational use of cannabis.” — The committee chair, via the Phillippine Daily Inquirer

The proposal is the second medical cannabis legalization bill passed by the Philippines House but the last proposal — considered by lawmakers in 2019 — ultimately failed in the Senate after then-president Rodrigo Duterte changed his mind on the issue. The Senate is currently considering the issue once more but the reforms are

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Virginia officials last year issued fines to more than 300 hemp product retailers collectively totaling nearly $10.8 million for the sale of restricted products, Axios reports.

The companies were fined for selling intoxicating, delta-8 THC products that are now banned under a 2023 law that caps THC levels in consumable hemp products at 2 milligrams, requires hemp product retailers to register with the state, and requires edible hemp products to be lab-tested and clearly labeled. Another provision of the bill requires topical products containing hemp-derived cannabinoids to include bittering products to dissuade people from consuming them to get high.

Per data from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ hemp enforcement team, 346 out of 424 hemp product retailers (82%) inspected by officials were violating the new state law, with a collective total of 17,715 violations. Officials also said they assessed $10,772,250 in civil penalties and have so far collected $433,262 in penalties.

THC-rich cannabis products have been legal to consume and possess in Virginia since 2021 but there is not a regulated market for adults looking to purchase safe, intoxicating cannabis products. Lawmakers passed a proposal this year that would have established a legal and regulated adult-use cannabis marketplace

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An overwhelming number of comments submitted to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on the proposal to reschedule cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act favored the reforms or urged the government to deschedule cannabis entirely, according to an analysis by cannabis intelligence firm Headset. The analysis found 57% of comments submitted during the public comment period favored descheduling cannabis entirely, 35% supported rescheduling cannabis, and just 8% opposed the reforms, favoring keeping cannabis as a Schedule I drug. 

According to the data, most comments were submitted on the very last day of the period. Of those, 5,093 favored either rescheduling or descheduling, with just 169 comments opposed. Not during a single day of the comment period were there more comments opposed to the reforms than in support. On July 15, there were 497 opposition comments submitted and 539 in support – marking the thinnest daily margin during the period.

“These numbers paint a clear picture: over 9 out of 10 individuals who took the time to comment believe that cannabis should not remain a Schedule I substance. Moreover, the majority of commenters went beyond the proposed rescheduling to Schedule III, arguing for complete removal from the

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A federal judge last week denied imposing an injunction against the Iowa law regulating consumable hemp products and imposing THC caps on the products, The Gazette reports. Judge Stephanie Rose of the Southern District of Iowa said in her rulings that the companies behind the injunction failed to prove that the law, which took effect July 17, violates the U.S. Constitution.  

Rose had previously expressed concerns about the vague definition of “serving” in the law but last week’s decisions indicated that the state had cleared up the vagueness.

“Now that the Final Rules have been promulgated and are in effect, there is no longer a viable argument that ‘serving’ as set forth in the Hemp Amendments is an unconstitutionally vague term.” — Rose, in the ruling, via The Gazette 

Rose also ruled against the plaintiffs – a group of hemp companies – on their claim that the state Health and Human Services department can arbitrarily enforce the new standards and reject some products that should be allowed under the law. The judge ruled that even if the law is being improperly applied, the application doesn’t make the law unconstitutionally vague. 

“The crux of the

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Multistate medical cannabis operator Trulieve has contributed another $5 million to the campaign seeking to legalize adult use cannabis in Florida, according to finance reports outlined by NPR-affiliate WUSF. The July 15 contribution brings the company’s total to $60.39 million. 

In all, the Smart & Safe Florida political committee had raised $66.475 million in cash and $129,000 in in-kind contributions as of July 19, according to state Division of Elections Data, and has spent $53.963 million so far on the campaign. 

Trulieve contributed $500,000 to the campaign in October 2023 and another $15 million the following December. 

The cannabis legalization reforms are opposed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis who in June launched the Florida Freedom Fund to combat both the adult-use cannabis campaign and the ballot initiative on abortion access. In the fund’s first five weeks, it raised just $10,000; however, earlier this month a cohort of hemp businesses in the state donated $5 million to the Republican Party of Florida after the governor vetoed a bill to regulate hemp-derived intoxicating cannabinoids.  

According to a Marijuana Moment report, as of July 15, the

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded nearly $6.2 million in grants to the Hemp Building Institute, a Nashville-based nonprofit that works with hempcrete and other agriculture-based construction materials, Marijuana Moment reports. The grant money was awarded under a $160 million EPA funding round announced last month for projects aimed at reducing emissions and costs in construction materials and products.

The Hemp Building Institute received $6,186,200 from the feds to develop Environmental Product Declarations and Life Cycle Assessments for biogenic materials like those made from hemp or other crops like soy or straw bale, the report said. The project’s overarching goal is to essentially build credibility for hempcrete and similar materials for construction projects.

“The overall goal of the project is to assemble the assessments, protocols, tools and training in an ecosystem designed to increase adoption of biogenic building materials from agricultural crops.” — EPA description of the grant award, in the report

The Hemp Building Institute is partnering with the Maryland-based business incubator EntreVator on The Biogenic Building Materials project, which aims to “develop an open-source database for biogenic materials and provide extensive education, training, and technical assistance,” officials said. The grant money is expected to be invested in

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While there are fewer cannabis consumers in the U.S. than alcohol consumers, there are more daily cannabis consumers than daily drinkers, according to a recent YouGov survey. The poll was conducted online from June 7-10, 2024, and surveyed 1,116 U.S. adults with an approximate margin of error of 4%. The survey comes on the heels of similar findings from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, published in May.

The survey found that 8% of American adults consume cannabis daily (5% several times per day, 3% once per day) while 5% of Americans are daily drinkers (2% several times per day, 3% once per day).

The results match an analysis of the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health that was published in the journal Addiction in May.

The YouGov survey results also showed that outside of daily consumption, alcohol consumption continues to outpace cannabis use in nearly every other metric: alcohol consumption, for example, outpaces cannabis consumption when it comes to consuming a few times per week (12% alcohol, 5% cannabis), once per week (8% alcohol, 1% cannabis), a few times per month (10% alcohol, 2% cannabis), or just once per month (6% alcohol, 1% cannabis). Additionally,

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Thailand may drop its plans to re-list cannabis as a narcotic and could instead seek to better regulate the adult-use industry, according to a TIME report.

The move is a significant departure from a proposal endorsed earlier this year by Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin to undo the country’s 2022 cannabis decriminalization policy, under which a robust but largely unregulated industry has sprouted.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Anutin Charnvirakul — who leads the Bhumjaithai Party, the second-largest group in Srettha’s coalition government — said on Tuesday after a meeting with the prime minister and public health minister that the government is set to consider a draft bill expanding the country’s cannabis regulations.

“I thank the Prime Minister for considering this and deciding on legislation.” — Anutin to reporters on Tuesday, via TIME

Anutin, who is a member of the Narcotics Control Board and has said he opposes the effort to recriminalize cannabis, previously pushed for the country’s decriminalization policy while serving as Minister of Public Health from 2019 to 2023.

Public Health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin noted in the report, however, that the proposal to re-list cannabis was so far unchanged and had not been withdrawn.

Earlier this year,

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