First, thanks so much to my friend and Mexico City attorney Elias Lisbona Jassán of Perez Ferrer Abogados, who co-authored this piece with me. To answer the question in the headline, I think the legal term is “sort of.” This topic, of course, is important not...
On this day a year ago, I uploaded a post entitled, "Coronavirus Impacting Cannabis Industry." In fact it was my first post on the virus. It started as follows: "It is about all anyone is talking about, understandably." Mostly it was discussing the closing of travel...
In the classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five, whenever death arrives, author Kurt Vonnegut's somewhat tortured Billy Pilgrim shrugs and says, "So it goes." The phrase is actually repeated over 100 times in the book. It is not meant to be flip, as the time-traveling character knows...
As my faithful blogees may have noticed, I did not post an update last week. Why? Because business is getting busy! Plus, I think moving to every other week as we transition into the next phase of dealing with the pandemic makes sense. Since our...
As we zoom (pun intended) through another week, welcome to the latest edition of our blog series focused exclusively on the impact that COVID-19 has had on the cannabis and hemp industries. I pray for the day that I can provide you the last edition when...
The sun is shining, folks are figuring out what socially distant Memorial Day will look like (burgers and masks?), and many states are beginning to reopen while at the same time the COVID-19 death numbers continue to rise. It remains a very uncertain time for...
I am not, in general, a betting man. If so, I would have lost some hard-earned dough last year when I predicted that New York will legalize the adult use of cannabis in the legislative session during the first half of 2019. There are a...
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve, along with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and other agencies, issued guidance advising financial institutions, including banks, that they no longer need to file "suspicious activity reports" (SARs) with the U.S. Treasury when they take customers in the cannabis industry...
Earlier today, the US Department of Agriculture released "interim final" rules to implement the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (also known as the 2018 Farm Bill). The law removed hemp and hemp-derived products with less than 0.3% THC from being a Schedule I drug under...
In comments last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) has called for a multi-lateral meeting with his counterparts in neighboring states, including New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, to discuss legalizing adult use of cannabis. As reported by Politico, the Governor noted, “The federal government is doing nothing, what...