In the past few years, legal cannabis has emerged as a booming
\nglobal industry, despite the fact that it remains prohibited both by U.S.
\nfederal law and the UN Single Convention treaty from 1961. This is a growing
\ncontradiction on the world stage, and there is a sense that fundamental change
\nis inevitable \u2014 despite deeply entrenched stigma and prohibitionist
\ndogma.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whether you want to know where to plan
\nyour next vacation or are sick of feeling behind on the constantly evolving
\nregulations, we\u2019ve got your back with an overview of the state of legal
\ncannabis today.<\/p>\n
Today, 11 states and Washington, D.C. have legal recreational
\ncannabis: Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, California, Massachusetts,
\nMaine, Nevada, Vermont, Michigan and Illinois. <\/p>\n
However, four of these states have not yet set up their legal cannabis markets. In 2014, voters in the District of Columbia approved cannabis consumption, although implementation of the market has been\u00a0bottlenecked by Congress<\/a>, which controls the district\u2019s budget. In January 2018, Vermont became the ninth state to legalize cannabis and the\u00a0first to do so by legislation<\/a> \u2014 but their law included no stipulations for setting up legal dispensaries. Michigan\u00a0voted to legalize<\/a>\u00a0in November 2018, and has yet to open any adult-use stores<\/a>. In May 2019, Illinois\u00a0became the second state to legalize via legislation<\/a>, and is similarly working to set up their legal market. <\/p>\n The Northern Mariana Islands, a self-governing commonwealth in association with the United States, in September 2018\u00a0became first U.S. territory<\/a>\u00a0to legalize adult-use cannabis. It was also the second U.S. jurisdiction after Vermont to do so by legislation rather than by popular ballot. This April, the U.S. territory of Guam\u00a0enacted\u00a0a cannabis legalization measure that calls for the establishment of an adult-use industry on the island.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a somewhat trickier question. California led the way with But there are some ambiguities here, as some states have restrictive And then there are the so-called \u201cCBD-only\u201d laws. Utah in 2014 passed a law allowing medical use of cannabis extracts that contain the non-psychoactive cannabinoid CBD. Several other states have since followed in passing\u00a0CBD-only laws<\/a>, including Wisconsin, Wyoming and Virginia. Texas and Florida allow low-THC CBD-heavy strains of herbaceous cannabis, but\u00a0bar actually smoking it,<\/a>\u00a0allowing only vaporization.<\/p>\n Only three states<\/a>\u00a0that have no medical marijuana provisions whatsoever: Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota. However, there has been some progress. South Dakota in 2017 passed a provision legalizing CBD contingent on approval by the state health department and Nebraska in 2015 passed a law that allowed for a CBD pilot program under the auspices of the state university. By this reckoning,\u00a0Idaho stands alone<\/a>\u00a0with no legal space for medical marijuana (very broadly defined) whatsoever. This is less significant since last year\u2019s Farm Bill legalized hemp-derived CBD coast to coast.<\/p>\n Amid all the progress, there are still states where cannabis is harshly prohibited \u2014 such as Louisiana, where even the medical program has been\u00a0bottlenecked by bureaucracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Quite a few. \u201cVirtually every legislature in the country is taking a close look at its marijuana policies, and many have adopted significant reforms in 2019,\u201d Karen O\u2019Keefe, who directs state policy at the\u00a0Marijuana Policy Project<\/a>, recently told\u00a0The Hill<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The MPP\u00a0released a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0in July on legislative progress for cannabis reform.\u00a0A record 27 states have considered cannabis legalization bills this year. High hopes were dashed when statehouses failed to approve legalization bills in New York, Connecticut and New Mexico. New Mexico legislators did, however,\u00a0vote to decriminalize<\/a>\u00a0cannabis. And in New York, lawmakers widened the state\u2019s decrim law as a\u00a0consolation prize<\/a>\u00a0to legalization advocates.<\/p>\n While there is much contestation about the details of what legalization would actually look like, in both New York and New Jersey, the\u00a0governors are officially on board.\u00a0<\/a>In\u00a0Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf has also just\u00a0come out in favor of legalization<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cannabis remains a Schedule I substance under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act \u2014 the most restrictive category, absurdly shared with heroin. There are\u00a0several pending measures<\/a>\u00a0in Congress to change that, and remove cannabis from the list of controlled substances. <\/p>\n On Sept. 25, the\u00a0House passed<\/a>\u00a0the SAFE Banking Act, which would\u00a0give cannabis businesses access to the federal banking system<\/a>. The bill now moves on to the Senate. In July, the House Judiciary Committee\u00a0held hearings<\/a>\u00a0on cannabis policy that advocates hailed as \u201chistoric,\u201d with numerous Congress members openly embracing legalization.<\/p>\n Hemp (defined as cannabis with less than 0.3% THC) and hemp-derived CBD were\u00a0officially legalized by passage of the 2018 Farm Bill last December, but\u00a0legal ambiguities persist<\/a>. Most significantly, the U.S.\u00a0Food and Drug Administration has still failed to promulgate regulations for use of CBD as an additive or ingredient. This means that any products adding in CBD are technically illegal in the eyes of the federal government, though it seems uninterested in enforcing this distinction.<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Agriculture has similarly failed to bring its regulations into conformity with the new federal law \u2014 leading to\u00a0litigation by would-be Native American producers<\/a>, who depend directly on USDA approval thanks to their unique jurisdictional status. The USDA is\u00a0now promising<\/a>\u00a0the regulations will issued this fall, in time for next year\u2019s planting season.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Only two countries on Earth have formally legalized cannabis \u2014 Uruguay in 2013 and Canada in 2018. (Here too, there is some contestation: two Canadian provinces have banned homegrown cannabis, recently a\u00a0matter of litigation<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Pressure to legalize cannabis is\u00a0fast mounting<\/a>\u00a0in several countries around the world.<\/p>\n Last October, the same month that legalization\u00a0took effect<\/a>\u00a0in Canada, Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court\u00a0issued a binding decision<\/a>\u00a0that cannabis prohibition is unconstitutional, and ordered the country\u2019s congress to amend the law. Mexican lawmakers in September\u00a0introduced a legalization bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n New Zealand has also\u00a0pledged a referendum<\/a>\u00a0on legalization, to be held next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n The recent fall of the conservative government in Italy has\u00a0raised hopes<\/a> that it could be the first European country to formally legalize. Bills to legalize were\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0in Portugal this year, but saw little progress. The Netherlands, contrary to widespread misconception, has not legalized cannabis, and its permissive decrim policy has recently\u00a0sparked a backlash<\/a>\u00a0from conservatives.<\/p>\n In the Middle East, legalization is being increasingly embraced by the political establishment\u00a0in Israel<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0in Lebanon<\/a>.<\/p>\n South Africa decriminalized cannabis last year, and neighboring Lesotho now has a\u00a0booming cannabis economy<\/a>\u00a0under what some have termed a policy of\u00a0de facto\u00a0<\/em>legalization.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> when do The post The State of Cannabis Today: Where Weed Is Legal Around the World<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In the past few years, legal cannabis has emerged as a booming global industry, despite the fact that it remains prohibited both by U.S. federal law and the UN Single Convention treaty from 1961. This is a growing contradiction on the world stage, and there is a sense that fundamentalContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[363,50,6899,10231,687,139,81,6165],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38615,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38614\/revisions\/38615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Do U.S. Territories Have Legal Cannabis? <\/h4>\n
What U.S. States Have Medical Cannabis?<\/h4>\n
\npassage of Prop 215 in 1996. Since then, 32 more states have passed medical
\nmarijuana laws (of widely varying degrees of leniency) either by legislation or
\nreferendum: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
\nFlorida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts,
\nMichigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire,
\nNew Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island,
\nTexas, Utah, Vermont and Washington. Guam, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
\nalso have medical marijuana laws on the books. <\/p>\n
\nrules that make it functionally quite difficult for citizens to get medical
\ncannabis. For example, the New York and Minnesota laws allow for medical use of
\nextracts, but not herbaceous cannabis. <\/p>\nWhat U.S. States Are Moving Forward with Cannabis Legalization?<\/h4>\n
What\u2019s the Federal Status of Cannabis?<\/h4>\n
What\u2019s the Federal Status of Hemp and CBD?<\/h4>\n
What Countries Are Moving Toward Cannabis Legalization?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nyou think cannabis will be federally legal? <\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: The State of Cannabis Today: Where Weed Is Legal Around the World<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"