Updated on July 19th 2023
To learn the outcomes of the cannabis legalization measures discussed below, read our follow-up article reviewing the 2020 election results.
These Five States Could Legalize Cannabis in 2020
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Montana’s Fight to Legalize Recreational Cannabis
Updated on July 19th 2023
Understandably, COVID-19 complicated the process of legalizing cannabis for states that have yet to do so. While more than two thirds of American States legalized the sale and use of cannabis for medicinal and/or recreational purposes before the pandemic’s onset, other states were slower to reach this milestone. Many advocates remained undeterred by obstacles to the legalization process. Unfortunately, social distancing created unprecedented barriers which undoubtedly complicated the road to cannabis legalization for many U.S. states. Cannabis-related campaigns stalled or stopped altogether in many locations stalled or stopped altogether in the months preceding 2020’s election – including those in Idaho, Ohio, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Nebraska. Advocates in these affected areas announced their resolution to continue legalization efforts in 2021. Other states weren’t so easily deterred by the unexpected virus – including the historically right-leaning state of Montana, where advocates continued working tirelessly toward cannabis legalization in the coming year.
New Colorado Bill Could Ban Firing Someone Over Legal Cannabis Use
Recreational cannabis use has been legal in Colorado for some time now. As far as the state of Colorado is concerned, cannabis and nicotine can both be legally consumed by adults above the age of 21. In other words, anything from a blunt to the PAX offerings of your favorite vape shop are totally permitted. Colorado law also says an employer can’t fire someone for things they do legally in the privacy of their own home, but there’s a loophole. Since cannabis is not yet legalized at a federal level, some employers argue that firing someone for off-duty smoking is still legal. State Representative Jovan Melton hopes to change that with a new bill.
Hemp Industry Sees First Changes In Half Century
If you pay attention to Cannabis news you’ve probably noticed all of the excitement surrounding Mitch McConnell and the passing of the 2018 Farm Bill. As of this writing, the bill has yet to be signed, but all media accounts suggest no opposition and expect President Trump to push the new legislation into action within days. Similar or accompanying legislation, however, was passed in Colorado just months ago with Amendment X – that redefined Hemp back to its federal definition. Prior to that Colorado voters had redefined the industrial product with Amendment 64 just a few years prior.
Historic MORE Act Reaches U.S. Congressional Victory
Earlier this month, members of United States Congress made history with their vote on cannabis-related legislature. By a majority of twenty-four to ten, the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act was approved by the United States House Judiciary Committee. With this vote, members of Congress have moved to federally deschedule marijuana by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act. If the bill can pass the Senate, states will be allowed to make their own rulings regarding cannabis and enforce them at the state level, free of undue complications from overarching federal limits.
Higher Education: Respected Colleges Offering Cannabis Curriculum
Today’s cannabis industry amasses almost fourteen billion dollars in annual earnings. Employers in the field have noted that there’s no shortage of applicants interested in working for the booming market. However, qualified applicants are harder to come by.
Jamie Warm co-founded Henry’s Original, a distributer and cultivator of marijuana products in Mendocino County, California. Warm explained that liquor and fashion industry regulars tend to have the strongest backgrounds of relevant experience to bring to the booming new cannabis market.
Marijuana and Flying: A Tale of Two Governments
Updated on July 19th 2023
Since the start of 2019, the United States had found itself in an unprecedented situation. More than half of the 50 states now allow some level of legal marijuana use. It’s a stoner’s paradise if there ever was one right? Well, not exactly. Take for instance the issue of flying. Or, more precisely, flying with marijuana. Let’s say you head to our lovely airport in Denver to grab a flight to LA for a weekend of fun in the sun. You’ve got the 1 ounce of cannabis that you’re allowed to carry according to Colorado law in your bag, along with rolling papers, glass pipes and other peripherals you picked up legally at your local head shop. And you’re flying to another state where recreational use of weed is also legally permitted. No problem, right? Wrong.
Crime and Cannabis: Comparing Studies to Lingering Stigmas
Throughout recent years surrounding cannabis legalization, a rather volatile (if quiet) debate has continued to echo down the halls of established mainstream media outlets. One question lies at the heart of the controversy – what social impact, if any, do cannabis dispensaries have on their surrounding communities? The United States and most other countries have had head shops, pipe shops and smoke shops for decades, many of which cater to the cannabis-friendly. For this reason, the concern seems almost strange. At last, the numbers are in to put this issue to rest – so put down that bong and take a look.
The Founding Fathers’ Love of Hemp
We all know that the founding fathers were industrious and pragmatic men. Benjamin Franklin literally wrote the book on practicality – with his famous work “An American Life” still quoted to this day.
“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
It should therefore come as no surprise that some of our nation’s most honored founders were enamored with a plant that was equally practical, industrious and versatile – hemp.
Twelve Top Presidential Candidates On Cannabis Legalization
Nearly fifteen months remain until the 2020 Presidential election, but the campaign trail’s already heating up with more than a dozen Democratic hopefuls striving to unseat President Donald Trump in his bid for re-election. While we get to know the current candidates and their take on issues dear to us, it’s worth considering their respective takes on cannabis and efforts toward its legalization – both Federally and in states across the nation. It’s time to explore the question on all of our minds – who’s for 420 in 2020? We’ve listed twelve top presidential candidates and detailed their reported stances on marijuana below.
O, Cannabis! Reviewing Canada’s Groundbreaking Federal Legalization
Last Fall, Canada became the second nation in the world (after Uruguay) to federally legalize the possession and recreational use of cannabis amongst its citizens. In its approval of the Cannabis Act, they’ve forged a path that the United States could theoretically follow, should our country reach the threshold for federal legalization. Currently, thirty-three of our fifty states have partially or fully approved the legal use of citizens at a state level. It’s baffling that the use and possession of cannabis, which permitted (to some degree) by laws in two-thirds of our nation’s states, are simultaneously considered felonious at the federal level. This creates a number of difficulties that affect industry workers and imbibers alike.
New Colorado Legislation Expands List of Conditions Approved for MMJ
The American opioid epidemic has damaged and ended countless lives across the nation, disproportionately ravaging communities affected by poverty, economic depression or limited access to social mobility. The lack of sufficient healthcare in many American communities further exacerbates the increasing reliance on prescription painkillers to manage the effects of chronic illnesses – and the inability for users to cease their reliance on addictive painkillers, whether or not the original symptoms remain.
Hemp Drives New Auto Industry Developments
In 1941, auto industry pioneer Henry Ford proposed a bold new concept: personal automobiles that everyday Americans can afford. Nearly eighty years later, his company Ford Motors is the fifth most popular auto brand worldwide – if you don’t drive a Ford yourself, you know someone who does. Many fans of Ford’s brand aren’t aware that his original vision for the personalized American automobile incorporated hemp products as a primary structural component. While his well-known Model-T wasn’t made from hemp products alone, they were incorporated into much of the car’s prototype. Ford’s original vision glistened with promise of a sustainable future.
The Scourge of Synthetic Marijuana Descends on Denver
Updated on July 19th 2023
For hour after hour ambulance lights sliced through the night in New Haven, Connecticut. Emergency rooms in hospitals just a stone’s throw from the stately halls of Yale University were overwhelmed with victims, many of them vomiting and convulsing. It had all the earmarks of a chemical gas attack. And in an indirect way that’s what it was. But this particular chemical attack didn’t come courtesy of a Scud missile or terrorist’s makeshift explosive device. No. The victims of this chemical attack administered the poison agent to themselves. Its name: K2, synthetic marijuana.
Erase Denver Pot Convictions
This was recently emailed to us from the City of Denver. We felt it was important to share and encourage everyone affected to take advantage of this program. -Russ
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Bringing Bongs on Vacation: How to Fly or Road Trip Safely
Updated on May 21st 2023
Every holiday season, many of us stoners find ourselves fumbling to book flights to visit our families in prohibition states. This can pose some alarm to the chronic cannabis user. The recreational use of weed may be legal where you live. Or, at the very least cannabis may have been decriminalized. But that doesn’t mean you will find smooth sailing if you want to take the bong you just bought at our pipe shop with you when you travel.
The Hemp Economy that Never Happened
The year was 1938 and a new contraption had just been patented that would remove months of dry rotting required to separate fiber from the hemp plant. What had, for millennia, been a seasonal process to rot the fiber out of the hemp stalks, had now become an afternoon of labor; a development that had huge implications for a number of already prosperous industries, from paper production to fuel.
Just What Is CBD? It’s Great, and You Should Have It in Your Life
Legislators have recently started to try and regulate this awesome compound – but what is it exactly? CBD is short for Cannabidiol, one of about 80 naturally occurring molecular compounds exclusive to Hemp and Cannabis plants. It is non-psychotropic, meaning it doesn’t produce any of the intoxicating effects usually associated with Cannabis. It does, however, help treat a tremendous range of medical conditions from inflammation to Multiple Sclerosis, Epilepsy and PTSD. In recent years CBD has become a fascination of medical studies and legislators alike – but individuals struggling with a myriad of health problems are the ones who bear the burden of floundering legal policies. Craziest of all: for the first time, it seems, the government has patented a plant.
First of The Kind: Denver’s Emergence Into Public Cannabis Consumption
Late in 2016, Denver, CO became the first city in the United States to approve the consumption of Cannabis in public areas with the passing of a four-year pilot program called Initiative 300. Over 300,000 citizens rolled in – many procrastinating until the final hours (can’t say I’m surprised) – skewing polling results projected during the election. The polls are in – and tourists and renters alike are now celebrating in specifically-allocated venues – but the new laws didn’t come without some opposition and a few guidelines to follow.
Social Marijuana Consumption Initiative Status
For years now, Denver has been working on getting a vast community of businesses together where we can all socially enjoy our great buds with our great buds, together in a public setting. It’s been a long wait, but the movement has been gaining traction and within the next couple months a handful of businesses that have already applied for their license should be up and running and within a year (if everything goes as planned) there should be an exciting variety of locations where social consumption is allowed, encouraged, and the heart of their business. All good news; however, the road up to getting to this point has not been easy.