More than 15,000 people who were convicted for low-level marijuana possession in Nevada have been automatically pardoned under a resolution from the governor that was unanimously approved by the state’s Board of Pardons Commissioners on Wednesday.
The measure extends unconditional clemency to individuals with possession convictions of up to one ounce from January 1986 to January 2017. It was introduced to the board by Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) last week.
In the legal market, licensed companies are currently sitting on a surplus of roughly one million pounds, enough to keep the state stoned at current levels for six years. Meanwhile, Oregon’s illicit growers just keep doing what they’ve always done, supplying unlicensed cannabis to appreciative consumers in states where a combination of restrictive laws and poor climate make for a net cannabis deficit.
A 2018 regional cannabis summit created a template that East Coast governors used in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker was hit with a suit Wednesday by several recreational cannabis dispensaries and a medicinal marijuana patient who claim his executive orders shutting down the stores during the COVID-19 pandemic are crushing their businesses and hurting public health.
The legalization of recreational cannabis can put a big dent in a state’s pre-existing medical marijuana market.
Patient counts in Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada and Oregon – the only states with both an active recreational marijuana industry and a pre-existing MMJ patient database – have all suffered in the months and years since the launch of an adult-use market in each.
In each state shown in the chart above, MMJ customers pay less in taxes than recreational consumers.
A majority of the United States has legalized cannabis in some way, and it’s very exciting, I get it. Fewer people are being arrested, more people are getting off opioids, and accurately dosed pot chocolates might be the best thing to happen to weekends since the invention of television. But this state-by-state legalization thing that we’re doing is kind of a mess, mostly because federal prohibition hampers the whole thing from the get-go.