Three countries in collapse. Three cannabis economies that survived. What Lebanon, Myanmar and Afghanistan reveal about the plant when the state disappears. Key Takeaways Western legalization, designed without traditional smallholders in mind, threatens to replace one form of exclusion with another — devastating the survival economies it never acknowledged. When legal agriculture yields drop below… Keep Reading
Schedule III didn’t change a thing for truckers. A new USDOT memo confirms that safety-sensitive transportation workers still can’t use marijuana, and a state medical card won’t save your drug test. If you drive a truck, fly a plane, or operate a bus for a living, the federal rescheduling of marijuana changed nothing for you.… Keep Reading
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed the bill that would have launched legal adult-use cannabis sales, five years after the state legalized possession. She campaigned on supporting a retail market. The veto likely pushes any legal sales to 2028 or later. Virginians still can’t legally buy the weed they’ve been allowed to possess since 2021. Gov.… Keep Reading
ONDCP director Sara Carter Bailey told Newsmax this week that marijuana is “still illegal” after the April 23 rescheduling order. The line is doing a lot of work. Schedule III moved state-licensed medical cannabis into the same federal category as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. What’s still illegal in the strict sense is everything outside… Keep Reading
In 1994, Melanie Dreher published a study showing that cannabis-exposed babies thrived. The medical establishment went silent. Thirty years later, she’s still trying to finish the work — and pregnant women are still being jailed. More than 25 years ago, a landmark study quietly challenged one of modern medicine’s most deeply rooted assumptions: Cannabis use… Keep Reading
The federal paraphernalia statute that helped send Jerome Baker Designs founder Jason Harris to jail is still on the books. Twenty years later, he is relaunching in New York anyway. In 2003, John Ashcroft went on national television to announce that the federal government had just targeted the functional glass industry. Jason Harris watched it… Keep Reading
Mother’s Day is coming. If the mama in your life is a cannabis consumer, she deserves something that actually reflects who she is. Here are three woman-owned brands worth celebrating this year. When it comes to cannabis-friendly Mother’s Day gifts, we wanted to spotlight women who are actually building something in the space. These three… Keep Reading
In Indiana, the drugs that nearly destroyed my life were perfectly legal. Doctors administered them through IV lines while I lay in hospital beds: morphine, fentanyl, Dilaudid. I wasn’t chasing a high. I was a patient, and I trusted the system. Between 2014 and 2019, my life became a revolving door of hospital admissions. I… Keep Reading
Chile is advancing a controversial reform that could impose harsher penalties for cannabis possession by shifting legal criteria from quantity to perceived “potential harm.” The move has sparked a constitutional challenge, raising concerns about legal ambiguity and the risk of criminalizing users, growers, and patients. Last week, the Chilean Congress advanced an amendment to Law… Keep Reading
The ending feels almost tragic, especially for a story that, when it came to adult-use cannabis, once seemed destined to succeed. In 2022, Thailand made history by becoming the first country in Southeast Asia to decriminalize adult-use cannabis, removing flower from the narcotics list and expanding a liberalization process that had begun in 2018 with… Keep Reading
