Month: March 2020

A majority of Americans believe that medical cannabis dispensaries should be kept open as “essential services” amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll.

The survey asked simply: “Do you believe medical marijuana dispensaries should or should not be considered essential services?”

Fifty-three percent said the cannabis providers should be regarded as essential, 26 percent said they shouldn’t and 21 percent said they didn’t know.

As state governments across the country grapple with the COVID-10 outbreak, officials have had to make difficult decisions about which businesses are critical enough to remain open and which should be forced to temporarily shut down. In many states with legal cannabis—including California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey—officials have determined that medical marijuana dispensaries are, in fact, essential services that can continue to operate.

Many states have also given the “essential” designation to recreational marijuana stores, though some have enacted policies stipulating that consumers can only obtain cannabis products through curbside pickup or delivery services to encourage social distancing.

It’s a trend that has reflected the mainstreaming of marijuana in U.S. society, with governments increasingly recognizing that the medicine is valuable and that dispensaries should be treated like other necessary businesses like pharmacies.

YouGov conducted the new online poll, which involved nearly 5,400 people on Wednesday.

A breakdown of demographics shows that, as in generally the case with cannabis reform issues, Democratic respondents were more likely (62 percent) than Republicans (43 percent) to agree that dispensaries should be considered essential services exempt from business closure requirements. Fifty-two percent of those who identify as independent said the shops should stay open for patients.

A majority of people across all age groups except those 55 and older said dispensaries are essential.

But while dispensaries in many states can continue to serve patients, COVID-19 has had a deleterious impact on drug policy reform efforts across the country.

In California, campaigns to amend the state’s cannabis program and legalize psilocybin mushrooms are suspending in-person activities and asking the state to allow for electronic signature gathering. Activists in Washington, D.C. similarly requested that officials allow alternative signature collection for a measure to decriminalize a broad range of psychedelics.

More recently, a campaign to legalize medical cannabis in Nebraska put a temporary pause on its activities in accordance with guidance from health officials. In neighboring South Dakota, activists are urging voters to consider requesting absentee ballots to ensure that measures to legalize marijuana for medical and recreational purposes are successful.

Featured image by arindambanerjee/Shutterstock

This article has been republished from Marijuana Moment under a content-sharing agreement. Read the original article here.

The post Poll: Americans Want Medical Cannabis Dispensaries to stay open as 'Essential Services appeared first on Weedmaps News.

Source: wm

The champion of the first Weedmaps Strains Madness has been crowned. Your winner is none other than OG Kush.

Let’s take a look at the competition by the numbers:

• Strain with most votes: OG Kush (5,179)
• Strain with the least votes: MAC (831 votes) 
• Best performing seed: 5th seeds (Gelato, Pineapple Express, Cherry Pie, 9lb Hammer) 
• Worst performing seed: 7th seeds (Kush Mints, Northern Lights, Godfather OG, Harlequin)

And with that, let’s dive into how OG Kush won it all.   

Winner: OG Kush

OG Kush has been crowned the champion. Simply put: OG Kush dominated the competition. 

As a strain known for being high in THC and having a storied background in weed and rap culture, OG Kush brought it’s A-game to every matchup and dusted off some pretty sturdy competition in Pink Panties, Northern Lights, and Wedding Cake. OG faced it’s toughest competition in the fourth round when it met up with Gelato, perhaps the heir apparent of OG Kush’s place at the top of the “best strains” conversation. In a prior recap, I called this the “MJ v. LeBron debate, but for weed.” And just like that debate, it went in favor of the OG.  

When facing up against Pineapple Express in the finals, many of you were pretty vocal of your support of the kush in the Instagram post comments. Someone even said they would quit smoking if OG Kush didn’t win. As I said in the finals recap, Pineapple Express is a mainstream strain. In fact, the mainstream brought Pineapples Express to the world of weed, rather than the other way around, with the 2000s stoner classic, Pineapple Express. It’s easy to see OG Kush’s win as a signal that OG weed culture still runs strong in the Weedmaps audience. But OG Kush is a strain that can appeal to newer consumers, too. The reported effects (giggly, euphoric, focused) on OG Kush’s strain page gives it a broader appeal. 

Final thoughts: OG Kush’s reputation as a strong strain translated to its strength in the field of competition. It’s heartening to see a skunky classic like OG Kush win against popular, sugary newcomers like Gelato, Biscotti, and Wedding Cake. 

Discover more about OG Kush and other strains at Weedmaps Strains, where you’ll find reported effects and flavors, menus carrying specific strains, and prices.

The post WM Strains Madness: A Flower is Crowned appeared first on Weedmaps News.

Source: wm

Federal prosecutions for marijuana trafficking declined again in 2019, and drug possession cases overall saw an even more dramatic decline, according to a new report published by the U.S. Sentencing Commission on Monday.

While drug cases still represent the second most common category of crimes in the federal criminal justice system, the data indicates that the bulk of those instances are related to methamphetamine trafficking, which has steadily increased over the past decade.

But for marijuana, a different kind of trend has emerged. As more states have moved to legalize cannabis, federal prosecutions have consistently declined since 2012. To illustrate the shift, marijuana trafficking cases represented the most common drug type that was pursued in 2012, with about 7,000 cases. As of fiscal year 2019, those cases are now the second least common, with fewer than 2,000 cases.

Notably, the year of that peak, 2012, was when Colorado and Washington State became the first to legalize for recreational purposes. Though the report doesn’t attempt to explain why cannabis cases are on the decline, advocates have postulated that state-level marijuana reform has helped curb illicit trafficking by creating a regulated market for consumers to obtain the products.

“Twenty-five percent of the public now live in jurisdictions where the sale of marijuana to adults is legal,” Justin Strekal, political director of NORML, told Marijuana Moment. “Of course there will be a corresponding drop in the number of illegal sales.”

Another possibility is that evolving public opinion and state policies have contributed to a shift in perspective among prosecutors, who may no longer wish to prioritize enforcing cannabis prohibition in the era of legalization. While all marijuana sales—even in states with legalization laws—remain federally prohibited, the Trump administration has in practice continued the Obama-era approach of generally not interfering with the implementation of local policies even though then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions formally rescinded a memo on the topic from the prior administration.

In any case, the new U.S. Sentencing Commission report also shows a broader decline in drug possession cases in general. In fact, the most significant reduction in crime category for 2019 was drug possession, which fell from 777 federal cases the previous year down to 563 — a 28 percent drop.

It was just 2017 when drug offenses account for the majority of federal prosecutions. Two years later, that position is now occupied by immigration cases. Put another way, the report shows that 38.4 percent of crimes were related to immigration, compared to 26.6 percent for drug offenses.

While marijuana trafficking cases decreased, the average sentence for a conviction increased by two months, from 29 to 31.

Overall, drug trafficking prosecutions did increase by about 1,000 cases in 2019, though again that’s largely attributable to an increase in methamphetamine-related prosecutions.

Featured image by Justin Cannabis/Shutterstock

This article has been republished from Marijuana Moment under a content-sharing agreement. Read the original article here.

The post New Data: Feds Prosecuted Fewer Cannabis Cases in 2019 as more States go Legal appeared first on Weedmaps News.

Source: wm