Success is EASY! Just Work Hard! It’s been 10 years since Boulder and Colorado launched the first legal recreational marijuana market in the world and became a pioneer in drug reform. Ten years ago, 2015,     Colorado experienced its first legal marijuana sales. As always, Colorado was a nationwide leader. Now, after well over a decade of work by activists, civilians, legislators, medical people, laboratory experts, marketing experts,  and the rest of us, we have marijuana sales recreationaly and medically. We have a lab-tested safe source of marijuana, absent mold, pesticides, and other... Read More

When we talk about policy changes regarding legalization of marijuana, there are always people that immediately go into “reefer-madness-code-red-alert!” mode out of concern for driver safety. Telling them to take a hit and calm down goes over like a lead balloon. So instead, let’s talk facts and be reasonable. Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and, like alcohol, the deterrent effect of a DUI arrest applies. In the first large-scale controlled study of drug and alcohol crash risk by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there is no significant increased crash risk associated... Read More

On Thursday, December 21, 2018, our president officially signed and passed the 2018 Farm Bill. This bill ends the prohibition of hemp in the United States, making it a historical day in our history. The passage of this bill will begin the regrowth of hemp as an agricultural crop in America. As important as this is, there is still much work to be done beginning at the state level to protect our rights and freedoms when it comes to growing, producing, and distributing hemp products that contain CBD. Last week we covered what the Farm Bill means for sports, and today we’re going to look at some... Read More

It was a monumental week for the cannabis industry as Congress approved the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, also referred to as the farm bill. The passing of this bill, once officially signed by the President, will legalize the production, processing, and sale of hemp. This will remove hemp from the Controlled Substances Act and make hemp just another commodity to be overseen by the US Department of Agriculture. This is a huge deal for hemp farmers interested in growing hemp at scale to be used for consumer goods like food, textiles, paper, plastics, and building materials, but what does the... Read More

I bet if you were asked what country was the first to legalize cannabis from production to consumption, you probably would not think, “duh, Uruguay!” But it’s true. Although recreational drug consumption has never been outlawed in this open minded, liberal country, the cultivation and sale of cannabis remained forbidden. This month, however, pot smokers in Uruguay became the first in the world to sign up to buy state-produced weed for recreational use. How the law works is somewhat fascinating. Legal marijuana will only be available at pharmacies. Those wanting to purchase legal cannabis... Read More

We have a cat fight, folks! Meow! Remember last week when Attorney General Jeff Sessions lowered a cloud of despair across the country with his revival of the War on Drugs? Well, a bipartisan, forward thinking group in Congress have introduced legislation to counteract Sessions. Let’s discuss. Our regressive Attorney General directed federal prosecutors to charge people with the most serious provable offenses to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. As we’ve discussed, these sentences provide for “one-size-fits-all” sentences of pre-determined lengths. They fail to consider the individual... Read More

As of this week, Vermont became the first state legislature to pass a bill to legalize recreational marijuana. That may be surprising to you, since eight other states currently have legal recreational weed. The difference? Those states passed public ballot initiatives. So, if signed by Republican Governor Phil Scott, Vermont will remove penalties for possessing one ounce of marijuana or less and allow adults to keep two mature plants. Ahhh, so nice to see a legislature opening its eyes to reasonable drug policy. Alas, in the same week of continued progress at the state level, “Debbie Downer”... Read More

Before I get too far with this blog entry, I want to clarify at the outset that I’m only discussing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Multiple states have additional laws in place to provide more encompassing employee protections. I am also not talking about people showing up to work stoned. With those caveats, let’s learn a little weed law. The ADA prohibits employers from discriminating against employees due to a disability. A disability is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.  Employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations... Read More

The countdown is on. Funding for the federal government runs out at midnight tonight. Will our broken Congress be able to agree on a new spending bill in time? Or, is Attorney General Jeff Sessions about to be green-lighted to get out his shotgun “Granny-style” on the doorsteps of medical marijuana shops? I see the confusion brewing. Let me explain why this spending bill has anything to do with legalized medical marijuana. In a nutshell, when the government’s funding ends, all non-essential government operations and agencies are suspended until a new budget is approved. By “non-essential”... Read More

To all our readers, happy 4/20! According to today’s CBS poll, 61% of America wants marijuana legalized. Happy 4/20, indeed. I’m excited to get back into another installment of Weed Law 101. As indicated in prior blogs, U.S. officials have been informed time and time again through scientific and objective studies that marijuana is not a “gateway drug”, does not cause violence, and does not induce addiction. Yet, federal policy has fluctuated greatly between being very strict to quite relaxed on cannabis. Why such inconsistency? The answer to that is not due to new revelations about the... Read More