Regulatory

Until a few weeks ago, everyone in the hemp world thought the next big development would come from the federal Food and Drug Administration (after all, the FDA recently submitted proposed guidance to the White House, which has yet to be released). Unfortunately, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) dropped a surprise interim hemp rule a […]

Perhaps the most exciting announcement in the world of celebrity cannabis companies came last week with the announcement of Martha Stewart’s new line of hemp-derived CBD products, which include tinctures, soft gels, and “pâte des fruit.” The products are manufactured and sold through Canadian company Canopy Growth Corporation, which also produces Snoop Dogg’s cannabis brand

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) took effect at the beginning of the year. CCPA is a massive privacy law similar in scope to the European Union’s infamous General Data Protection Regulation, and applies to many businesses (not just cannabis businesses) that are based in or even “do business” in California. I wrote about the

Recently, in Cannabis is Coming! The Latest on Colombia and Mexico, we wrote about legislative initiatives regarding cannabis in two of Latin America’s most important economies. Today we turn our attention to another of the region’s traditional powerhouses, Argentina, which is seeing developments not just at the national level, but also in its provinces and

Yesterday, my Harris Bricken colleague Vince Sliwoski wrote a post entitled, “The Oregon Fires and Cannabis“. Given how fires have been ravaging California for the past few weeks, I thought I’d write on how California’s fires are affected the cannabis industry. For the past few weeks, our California cannabis attorneys have been told by a

Wildfires are ravaging Oregon, Washington and California. They are truly terrible. Here in Oregon, a full 500,000 residents have been evacuated as I write this blog post on the evening of September 9. Portland smells like burning ash and the suburbs are in evacuation protocols. It’s awful even here. For the cannabis industry, things look

Due to the federal illegality of cannabis, cannabis businesses don’t receive normal treatment from the federal government (with maybe one or two exceptions, like the NLRB and the 2014 FinCEN guidance for access to financial institutions). This obviously mucks up the ability of a cannabis business to operate in a consistent and reliable way, and

Everyone in the hemp industry knows that last fall the U.S. Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) released its interim hemp rules governing the production of hemp. Our hemp-CBD attorneys have written extensively about the new hemp rules and their shortcomings, as well as the panoply of different hemp regulations at the state level and the DEA’s

At long last, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (“LCB”) has finished revising its “True Party of Interest” rule (TPI). This process started way back in August of 2018 and after many revisions and multiple legislative changes. The LCB approved the new rule on September 2, 2020 and they will go into effect on

Buying and selling Oregon cannabis properties can be pretty interesting. We have helped negotiate and paper a ton of these sales going back to 2015 or so. At this point, our deal book includes everything from small commercial lots in the City of Portland (for retail dispensaries) to large sawmill properties in Southern Oregon (for