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A Nebraska bill containing a provision to set a 25 percent tax rate on hemp and CBD products<\/a>\u2014down from an initially proposed rate of 100 percent\u2014fell apart this week, with its sponsor acknowledging on the final day of the state\u2019s legislative session that it did not have the votes to overcome a filibuster.<\/p>\n Sen. Lou Ann Linehan (R) asked the measure be pulled from the agenda on Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m willing to come back this summer, this fall, whenever,\u201d Linehan said during floor debate. \u201cBut I hope we have a lot of conversations between now and then about all your perfect answers to this problem. Because it\u2019s easy to say, \u2018No, no, no.\u2019 That\u2019s real easy. So everybody who\u2019s saying we can do better, I hope you have those ideas to the Revenue Committee by the end of June.\u201d<\/p>\n The measure,\u00a0LB 388<\/a>, is part of a broader debate on how lawmakers want to balance sources of state revenue. Residents, many lawmakers have argued, regularly complain property taxes are too high, and proponents of the bill have said raising sales taxes would prevent further state reliance on property taxes to fund schools. Opponents, however, criticized the bill\u2019s overall increase in taxes, with some Democrats noting that sales taxes in particular would hit poorer Nebraskans hardest.<\/p>\n The failure of the bill and its included hemp and CBD provisions, among a host of other changes, means the legislature is likely headed to a special session to deal with tax issues this summer.<\/p>\n As for the proposed hemp and CBD sales tax hike, Linehan\u2019s initial proposal contained a 100 percent tax rate on CBD and consumable hemp products. An amendment approved last week, however, reduced that rate to 25 percent, which lawmakers said was the result of negotiations with industry representatives,<\/p>\n \u201cThe 100% tax was unworkable for CBD companies in our state. They were concerned it would drive them out of business,\u201d Sen. Anna Wishart (D), who\u2019s backed past efforts to end marijuana prohibition in the state, told Marijuana Moment in an email at the time. \u201cIn talking with representatives from a group of CBD companies in the state, I worked with them and other senators to negotiate the tax down to 25%.\u201d<\/p>\n Linehan\u2019s office did not respond to Marijuana Moment\u2019s request for comment about the updated tax rate last week, although in March she had told local media that the 100 percent hemp tax proposal was intended as a starting point for negotiations<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAre we going to keep it 100 percent? No, we\u2019re not,\u201d Linehan said.<\/p>\n Some lawmakers had said in an earlier debate on the proposal that the tax was out of step with rates set on CBD and hemp products in other states and that, if the goal of the bill was to raise revenue, Nebraska should consider legalizing and regulating marijuana.<\/p>\n \u201cI looked around. I saw some statistics on other states\u2014neighboring states\u2014and it\u2019s a lot lower. Definitely not 100 percent,\u201d Sen. Terrell McKinney (D) said. \u201cSo we\u2019re not going to be comparable to our neighboring states if we tax it at 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly speaking, what we really need to have a conversation about in our state, in the state of Nebraska, is our refusal to open ourselves up to other revenue streams,\u201d he continued. \u201cOne revenue stream that we should open ourselves up to is the legalization of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither medical nor adult-use cannabis are legal in Nebraska, though activists are working to change that this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a brain-drain issue,\u201d said Sen. Jen Day (D), \u201cand we refused to recognize that and address it from the other policy perspectives that caused the issues with brain drain\u2014one of those being the fact that we have chosen year after year after year not to legalize even medical cannabis in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThrough the end of 2022, states have reported a combined total of more than $15 billion in tax revenue from legal adult-use cannabis sales,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n Adam Morfeld, a former Nebraska state senator who now co-chairs the advocacy group Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, posted to social media ahead of last week\u2019s amendment that the situation showed that the state\u2019s \u201cpolicies dealing with hemp, CBD and marijuana are so backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n Some lawmakers have lamented that the complex measure\u2019s many provisions seemed to come out of nowhere, although sponsor Linehan and others said on the floor last month that the details were taken from other bills that lawmakers had introduced and debated. The hemp and CBD tax, for instance, ostensibly came out of LB 1341, introduced in January by Sen. Justin Wayne (D) and apparently never acted on by lawmakers.<\/p>\n That bill as introduced indeed would have increased taxes on consumable hemp, but only to 7.5 percent.<\/p>\n \u2014 The proposal comes as the state, like many others across the country, witnesses an explosion of hemp-derived products, including intoxicating cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC. Late last year, the state\u2019s attorney general, Mike Hilgers (R),\u00a0filed suit against retailers in the state over their sale of delta-8 products<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, activists are hoping to qualify two medical cannabis initiatives for November\u2019s ballot.<\/p>\n A recent poll by the campaign\u00a0found 70 percent support in the state for legalizing medical marijuana<\/a>.<\/p>\n Organizers at Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana (NMM)\u00a0have been petitioning for the change since July<\/a>, about two months after\u00a0turning in a pair of complementary ballot proposals to the secretary of state\u2019s office<\/a>.<\/p>\n The governor has already voiced opposition to the reform effort, saying in September that legalization \u201cposes demonstrated harms to our children,\u201d and that medical cannabis should only be accessible if its approved by FDA.<\/p>\n Late last year, NMM told Marijuana Moment that the governor\u2019s argument was a \u201ccop out,\u201d and she says the campaign will let voters decide for themselves.<\/p>\n One of NMM\u2019s earlier campaigns gathered enough signatures for ballot placement in 2020, but the\u00a0measure was invalidated by the state Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0following a single-subject challenge. Supporters then\u00a0came up short on signatures for revised petitions<\/a>\u00a0in 2022 due in large part to the loss of funding after one of their key donors died in a plane crash.<\/p>\n Nebraska lawmakers, including campaign co-chair Sen. Anna Wishart (D), have also attempted to enact the reform legislatively, but cannabis bills have consistently stalled out in the conservative legislature.<\/p>\n Wishart\u2019s\u00a0medical cannabis bill received a hearing<\/a>\u00a0in the unicameral Judiciary Committee in February, but it did not advance. She attributed the inaction to changes in committee membership. An earlier version of the measure ultimately\u00a0stalled out in the GOP-controlled legislature<\/a>\u00a0amid a filibuster that supporters could not overcome.<\/p>\n GOP Congressman Claims Top Federal Drug Official \u2018Adamantly Opposes\u2019 Marijuana Rescheduling, But Agency Endorsed FDA Recommendation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Nebraska Bill With 25% Tax Rate On CBD And Consumable Hemp Products Is Dead As Legislative Session Draws To Close<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A Nebraska bill containing a provision to set a 25 percent tax rate on hemp and CBD products\u2014down from an initially proposed rate of 100 percent\u2014fell apart this week, with its sponsor acknowledging on the final day of the state\u2019s legislative session that it did not have the votes toContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":74452,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74451"}],"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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74453,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74451\/revisions\/74453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Nebraska Bill With 25% Tax Rate On CBD And Consumable Hemp Products Is Dead As Legislative Session Draws To Close<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"