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“Like all other patients in Rhode Island, people who use medical marijuana deserve to have access to safe medication, and they deserve to have accurate information about that medication.” -Rhode Island State Health Director Nicole Alexander-Scott, on licensing the state’s first medical Cannabis testing lab, Green Peaks Analytical, to sample and test Cannabis products for pesticides, metals or solvents.
LEGALIZATION
east coast
CANNABIS SALES PREDICTED TO SURPASS $15 BILLION BY END OF 2020
MARYLAND CANNABIS COMPANY INVESTS $6 MILLION TO EXPAND OUTDOOR FACILITY
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arijuana sales continued to rise during the global pandemic, according to several data agencies and states, reports the Chicago Tribune. States including Florida and Arizona have set new monthly sales records for Cannabis sales in the past few months. Colorado saw a record $192 million in marijuana sales in May, and Oregon crossed the $100 million mark for the first time since 2015. Projects from the Marijuana Business Facebook expect Cannabis sales to pass $15 billion by the end of this year. That represents a 40 percent rise in the legal marijuana market between this year and last. Should the projections be borne out, that will mean weed produces more annual revenue than the NBA, toothpaste and hard seltzer, combined.
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Maryland Cannabis cultivation company Culta is tripling the size of its outdoor cultivation facility this year. The expansion will increase Culta’s capacity at their Cambridge, Md. location from one acre to three, according to the company. Culta produces Cannabis flower and extracts, and bills itself as the East Coast’s first outdoor cultivator. According to company officials, with the success of the first harvest in 2019, Culta invested more in technology and expansion.
the south
DEPUTY & K-9 FIND 78 LBS OF WEED DURING TEXAS TRAFFIC STOP
aklEAF.COM
The Chambers County Sheriff’s Department seized about 78 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop in Baytown, Texas, reports 12 News. After being pulled over for failing to drive in one lane, a 2020 Chevrolet Silverado traveling eastbound on I-10 was approached by Deputy Ethan Kahla. He began talking with the driver, Donald Barrows, 27, of Tacoma, Wash. Barrows appeared “extremely nervous,” according to the report. Deputy Kahla asked to search the vehicle, and after Barrows did not give consent for the search, Harvey the K-9 officer was called in. Harvey alerted on the vehicle, which qualifies as probable cause for a search. The search revealed 78 vacuum sealed, clear bags of Cannabis weighing one pound each, according to the report. The weed was in four suitcases inside the vehicle, according to Deputy Kahla.
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recreational marijuana dispensary locations are operated in Michigan by the chain Oz Cannabis, the latest in Ypsilanti, that city’s first.
AUG, 2020
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U.S. states and the District of Columbia have moved to either legalize or decriminalize Cannabis, a shocking plurality.
DISABLED VETERAN FACING FIVE YEARS IN PRISON IN ALABAMA FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA
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ean Worsley, a disabled Iraq War veteran with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is facing five years in prison for possession of medical marijuana after being busted in tiny Gordo, Ala. Worsley got his medical Cannabis authorization back in Arizona, where voters legalized medical Cannabis in 2011. Worsley had relied on Cannabis for years to calm his nightmares and soothe his back THE LEGAL FIGHT WHICH ENSUED HAS pain, reports The Washington Post. So, after his music caught the attention of a local PLUNGED WORSLEY police officer, he consented to a search after the cop claimed he smelled weed in INTO HOMELESSNESS, Worsley’s car. But Alabama doesn’t cut any slack for medical marijuana authorizations. COST HIM THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN COURT The legal fight which ensued has plunged Worsley into homelessness, cost him FINES, AND RECENTLY thousands of dollars in court fines, and recently got him a five-year prison sentence. GOT HIM A FIVE-YEAR “I feel like I’m being thrown away by a country I went and served for,” Worsley wrote in PRISON SENTENCE. a letter from the Pickens County Jail to criminal justice organization Alabama Appleseed. Marijuana isn’t allowed for any purpose, medicinal or recreational, in Alabama.
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marijuana dispensaries are now operating in Canada, less than two years after the country legalized recreational Cannabis.
in legal fees may be required to be reimbursed to former CFO James Parker by MedMen, the LA-based pot shop chain.
was the total amount three Massachusetts medical marijuana dispensaries were fined for various infractions last month.
in revenue was brought in by legal marijuana sales in Illinois during the first half of 2020, the governor’s office announced.
By STEVE ELLIOTT, AUTHOR OF THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF MARIJUANA
