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eattle in October became the largest U.S. city to allow adult cultivation and consumption of mushrooms and other psychedelics, as the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution to decriminalize non-commercial use around natural psychedelic substances. The Emerald City joins a handful of other enlightened cities in decriminalizing psilocybin and similar substances POLICE WILL since Denver MAKE IT AMONG kicked off a THEIR LOWEST wave of such PRIORITIES TO changes ARREST OR three years PROSECUTE ago. ANYONE IN Police ACTIVITIES will make it RELATED TO among their “ENTHEOGENS,” lowest priorities to arrest or prosecute anyone in activities related to “entheogens,” reports Bloomberg. That category includes natural substances like psilocybin and ayahuasca, often used for spiritual or religious purposes. Psilocybin, a mind-altering substance found in magic mushrooms, is a Schedule I drug, the most-restrictive category. Seattle becomes at least the ninth U.S. city to take such landmark action in recent years. It joins Denver, Washington D.C. and Ann Arbor, Michigan, among other cities. In 2020, Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use.
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suspects broke into a Norman, Oklahoma medical Cannabis dispensary in October and stole thousands of dollars worth of products.
NOV. 2021
politics
NBA AGREES TO END RANDOM DRUG TESTING
SEATTLE BECOMES LARGEST CITY TO DECRIMINALIZE PSYCHEDELICS
S
SOUTHWEST
NORMALIZATION
northwest
T
he NBA has agreed to not randomly test players for marijuana this season. “We have agreed with the NBPA to extend the suspension of random testing for marijuana for the 2021-22 season and focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in October. Marijuana remains prohibited in the league’s collective bargaining agreement. But negotiations between the league and players’ association loosened restrictions, reports ESPN. “Usage was already fairly common among players,” writes Dan Feldman at NBC Sports. “As momentum moves one direction both nationally and within the league, the NBA seems unlikely to take what’d now become the drastic step of reimplementing random testing.”
ARKANSANS ARE EMBRACING MMJ
“S
ince that first dispensary opened in 2019 in May, Arkansans have spent about $430 million to purchase almost 64,000 pounds of medical marijuana,” said Scott Hardin, with the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission. “Which I think it’s safe to say, that exceeds our expectation, because you never know how many people will participate.” Hardin said the medical Cannabis industry has thrived during the pandemic. Medical marijuana is taxed 10.5% in Arkansas. There’s a 6.5% sales tax on most retail items in the state. The 4% privilege tax goes to the University of Arkansas for Medical Science, to establish a national cancer institute. “If you walk into a dispensary and spend $100, you’ll spend $10.50 additionally in state taxes,” Hardin said. “Those two taxes – we’ve collected just under $50,000,000, $49.6 million to be specific.”
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new licenses were issued in October by the New Jersey Medical Marijuana Commission.
770
pounds of “high-grade” marijuana were found in a storage locker in Florida, according to the BCSO.
The groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 6
FEDERAL CANNABIS GROW OPENS IN NEW MEXICO
C
annabis has been in a cultural process of “mainstreaming” for awhile now, in New Mexico and nationwide. But the federal government has remained a stubborn roadblock to progress. However, federal officials are finally allowing the plant to be researched. The Bright Green Corporation has obtained a federal permit for a sanctioned marijuana grow in Grants, New Mexico, reports KOB 4. “We are one of three, in the United States of America, that are federally legal to handle Schedule I drugs,” said Terry Rafih, chairman of Bright Green Corporation. “We chose Grants, New Mexico because of the climate.” “If you look at the number of people that are dependent on opioids for many different pains and ailments that we deal with, the product that we are going “WE ARE ONE to be proOF THREE, IN ducing out of THE UNITED here and the patents that we STATES OF AMERICA, THAT have – hopeARE FEDERALLY fully – we’re LEGAL TO hoping it will HANDLE eliminate, SCHEDULE I eventually, DRUGS,” SAID opioids. That TERRY RAFIH, is our goal,” CHAIRMAN OF Rafih said. BRIGHT GREEN The strucCORPORATION. ture of a greenhouse has already been erected at the New Mexico facility. The entire facility will soon be a 115-acre research and manufacturing Cannabis plant. With more than 100 employees, company officials say it’s worth more than $300 million in investments.
64k
marijuana distribution charges were sealed by Virginia in October along with 330,000 simple possession charges.
CRIST PROMISES LEGAL MARIJUANA IF ELECTED FL. GOV.
F
lorida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist announced in October that he would legalize marijuana if elected governor next year, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Crist added he would also expunge misdemeanor or third-degree “IF I’M felony records ELECTED related to GOVERNOR Cannabis. I WILL “Let me LEGALIZE be clear, if MARIJUANA I’m elected IN THE governor I will SUNSHINE legalize marSTATE.” ijuana in the Sunshine State,” Crist said in a video posted on his Twitter. “This is the first part of the Crist contract with Florida,” the candidate said, reports The Hill. “For too long we have focused on incarceration, when we should be focusing on rehabilitation,” he said. “We know that people across racial and income levels use marijuana at the same rate. And yet, for decades, it’s been poor, Black, and/or Hispanic folks targeted for prison on marijuana charges,” Crist said in December 2020. “That tells me that marijuana has been legal now for a while, if you had the right skin tone or the right paycheck.”
$1b $2.1b
in legal marijuana sales were recorded in Nevada for the 2021 fiscal year.
deal makes Florida’s Trulieve the nation’s largest retailer of medical Cannabis, according to an October news release.
STORIES by STEVE ELLIOTT, AUTHOR OF THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF MARIJUANA
