May 23, 2014 | MMJ News
By Jane Futcher
At Willits News
Growers must lobby for fair regs, lawyer says
A prominent San Francisco civil rights attorney told a gathering of medical cannabis cultivators in Laytonville Monday, May 19, that they must lobby the California Legislature immediately to ensure that a medical marijuana-licensing bill now making its way through the Legislature is fair to farmers, patients and dispensaries.
Attorney Matt Kumin also predicted that by November 2016 a voter initiative on the state ballot could give voters the opportunity to pass a “recreational” use law allowing the commercial distribution, cultivation, and production of cannabis products for all adult use, not limited to medical.
Kumin said that the way farming communities approach the regulation of medical cannabis, which may pass this year, could have a significant impact on how the voter initiative in 2016 is written. That’s why it’s important to get the medical licensing law right.
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May 21, 2014 | MMJ News
By Rob Garver
At The Fiscal Times
For most individuals and small business owners, having a relationship with a bank or credit union is as essential as basic utilities. You could no more open a restaurant without access to the payments system than you could without access to running water. Recently, though, there have been increasing reports of people learning that their accounts have been closed, or finding it difficult or impossible to open an account in the first place, because of the industry they work in, or who they are related to.
The most headline-grabbing examples of late have been porn stars. Adult film actor Teagan Presley and her husband, director Joshua Lehman went public with complaints about JP Morgan Chase closing both their business and personal accounts, allegedly because of their involvement in the adult entertainment industry. Others in the business have reported similar behavior by their banks.
The banks’ moves appear to be linked to a government program, “Operation Choke Point,” meant to address fraud in the payments system by “choking off” access to businesses deemed to present a high risk of illegal activity.
The problem is that the majority of the businesses that are being targets, while perhaps unsavory in the eyes of the government, aren’t illegal.
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Apr 12, 2014 | MMJ News
By Carly Schwartz
At Huffington Post
After multiple failed attempts at regulating California’s haphazard medical marijuana program, one state lawmaker has introduced legislation he believes will finally establish some order to the state’s multibillion-dollar industry.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), whose measure, introduced last month, would create a statewide set of rules for California’s marijuana businesses. “People have seen that the more regulation you have, the less chaos you have.”
In recent years, Ammiano has sponsored a number of similar bills, each of which has stalled or was stopped by opponents who argued the legislation didn’t address key issues, such as the environmental impacts of marijuana cultivation or the ability of local governments to tax the product. Ammiano says his latest measure, AB 1894, addresses every concern and more.
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Feb 27, 2014 | MMJ News
Todd Harrison, CEO and founder of financial media company Minyanville, thinks marijuana “will be the single best investment idea for the next 10 years.” He says that a lot of the penny stocks are volatile and are best left alone. The two companies that are established and that are worth looking into are GW Pharmaceuticals (GWPH) and Advanced Cannabis Solutions (CANN) both of these marijuana related companies have had tremendous upside in the last year. The marijuana industry is being described as the next dot.com boom. Long story short, there is a lot of money to be made in this industry if you invest wisely.
Read more about marijuana investment opportunities at www.minyanville.com.
Feb 14, 2014 | MMJ News
By David Ingram and Jason Lange
At Reuters
The Obama administration on Friday sought to lessen the fear of prosecution for banks doing business with licensed marijuana companies, further encouraging U.S. states such as Colorado and Washington that are experimenting with legalizing the drug.
The Justice and Treasury departments outlined the policy in writing to federal prosecutors and financial institutions nationwide. The guidance stopped short of promising immunity for banks, but made clear that criminal prosecution for money laundering and other crimes was unlikely if they met a series of conditions, officials said.
The guidance was intended to increase the availability of banking services, such as savings and checking accounts, to marijuana shops that typically deal in cash.
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Feb 13, 2014 | MMJ News
By Katy Steinmetz
At Time.com
More than a dozen members of Congress called on President Barack Obama on Wednesday to remove marijuana from the federal government’s list of hard drugs, seizing upon his own comments in a recent interview that pot is no more dangerous than alcohol.
“We were encouraged by your recent comments,” the letter from 17 Democrats and one Republican said. “We request that you take action to help alleviate the harms to society caused by the federal Schedule I classification of marijuana. … You said that you don’t believe marijuana is any more dangerous than alcohol: a fully legalized substance. …. Marijuana, however, remains listed in the federal Controlled Substances Act at Schedule I, the strictest classification.
“This makes no sense,” the lawmakers added.
Obama recently told the New Yorker that marijuana isn’t more harmful than alcohol when it comes to “its impact on the individual consumer.” Legalization advocates quickly jumped on those remarks and started a petition on Change.org, saying Obama should put his money where his mouth is and remove pot from Schedule I list of drugs, where it currently resides alongside substances like heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
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Jan 14, 2014 | MMJ News
By Heesun Wee
At CNBC.com
As legalized marijuana sales take off in Colorado , here’s what a pot business model and mature marketplace might look like.
Twenty states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana-and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a medical marijuana plan in his State of the State speech last week.
But voters in Colorado and Washington state went a step further in 2012, becoming the first in the nation to legalize small plant amounts for adult recreational use and to regulate it like alcohol. Colorado sales began on New Year’s Day. Marijuana retailers are scheduled to open in Washington state later this year.
Amid this historic backdrop, a small merchant -focused pot industry is growing, alongside forerunners to national-potentially public-cannabis companies. The legal marijuana sector could unfold and function like the beer industry, with small batch varieties nabbing market share amid larger brands.
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Dec 27, 2013 | MMJ News
By Peter Hecht
At The Sacramento Bee
On New Year’s Day in Colorado, state-licensed marijuana stores will begin selling pot purely for pleasurable consumption.
Colorado, already home to the nation’s most regulated medical marijuana industry, expects to open its first two dozen stores selling recreational cannabis users up to an ounce of pot each. Another 400 applications are pending for retail marijuana shops, commercial cultivators or pot product producers.
In Washington, where voters also legalized recreational marijuana use in November 2012, the state is reviewing a flood of applications for 340 state licenses for marijuana stores expected to begin opening this spring.
Now in California, where a recent Field poll showed 55 percent voter support for marijuana legalization beyond medical use, four pot legalization ballot initiatives have emerged as contenders for the November ballot.
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Dec 20, 2013 | MMJ News
By Jane Wells
At CNBC.com
As legalization of marijuana grows, so too is the outlook of companies catering to the pot business.
One such firm, WeedMaps.com, a website that allows users to rate and review medical marijuana dispensaries, expects to post $30 million in revenue this year and increase that by 20 percent next year.
The company was started five years ago by Justin Hartfield, a pot smoker who also has a degree in computer science from the University of California at Irvine.
“I started it because I wanted to find where the medical marijuana dispensaries were in my area,” said Hartfield. “It was a very selfish thing for me and my friends, and it turned into a business.”
WeedMaps makes money by charging dispensaries for access to certain information, the ability to respond to reviews and getting professional photos and videos posted. Hartfield said he expects sales of $30 million this year to grow at least another $6 million next year now that the company has rolled out a new Groupon-style “Deals” option.
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Dec 19, 2013 | MMJ News
By Stephen Fishman, J.D.
At Nolo.com
What happens, legally speaking, when a group of people get together and decide to perform some task without filing any legal paperwork or establishing any formal legal structure? Whether they know it or not, they have formed an unincorporated association. “Unincorporated association” means an unincorporated group of two or more persons joined by mutual consent for a common lawful purpose, whether organized for profit or not.
Now, if the lawful purpose they’ve joined together to accomplish includes earning a profit, their association is automatically a partnership or joint venture for tax and most other legal purposes. For example, if two people get together and decide to operate a food truck, they’ve formed a partnership, even if they file no paperwork.
But, if the purpose for the association is to benefit the public some way, and does not include earning a profit, the association’s members have formed an unincorporated nonprofit association. People form nonprofit unincorporated associations all the time; often without being aware of it. For example, if you and several of your neighbors get together to help raise funds to keep your local library branch open, you’ve formed an unincorporated nonprofit association.
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