Cannabis Law Prof Blog

The "Pandora's Box" of Marijuana and Insurance

We've mentioned before the problems quasi-legal marijuana has for insurers and their insureds.  Fox Business has a nice rundown of the issues involved.  There's not much new, but it's a good overview.  Here's a sample:

Conflicting laws a 'huge Pandora's box'

    Where does this awkward federal-state split over marijuana enforcement leave consumers and insurers?

    "I think the problem is a huge Pandora's box, and nobody wants to touch it," says Brenda Wells, director of the risk management and insurance program at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

    Wells researched the legal precedents of pot-related insurance claims in her 2014 paper, "Marijuana Legalization: Implications for Property/Casualty Insurance." She found that, perhaps surprisingly, standard home and personal auto policies contained no exclusions of coverage for marijuana-related losses -- at least not yet.

    That means your home insurance conceivably could be made to pay for the loss of your medical pot or the theft of your recreational stash in states that have legalized marijuana. The same could hold true for pot that goes up in smoke in a home fire, although proving it was there pre-inferno could be a challenge.

Homeowners coverage for pot plants?

    Wells says even backyard growers may be covered, though maybe not generously, under current policy boilerplate.

    "You have a limit in your standard homeowners policy of $500 for trees, shrubs or bushes, so the insurer possibly could limit it under that," she says.

    Similarly, a homeowner's liability coverage could come into play for damages caused by a guest who drives home stoned, or legal actions arising from exposing a child to the drug.

    "If they're using the standard forms in places like Colorado and Washington and they haven't reworded them, right now they would have to cover marijuana for loss or theft," says Wells. "If the insurance industry is smart, they're going to put an exclusion in the standard policy. ... If they don't, they could be on the hook for some big claims."

One caveat to this that the article doesn't note.  Yes, you might get these positive results in state courts, who would treat marijuana as legal for state-law purposes.  But many insurers have the ability to move cases to federal court (because they are not resident in all the states they do business) and federal courts have been holding that covering marijuana losses is not permissible under federal law.

Fired Arizona Pot Researcher Gets Colorado Grant

Arizona medical marijuana researcher Suzanne Sisley's research will go forward, thanks to a grant from the state of Colorado.  Dr. Sisley. whose work had been done under the auspices of the University of Arizona, saw her funding removed and her position eliminated earlier this year.  She's now got the money to go ahead with the research:

    After her research team secured preliminary approval this week for a $2 million grant from the state of Colorado to study how marijuana affects veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, a metro Phoenix doctor said she no longer needs an Arizona university to house the study.

    Sue Sisley was ousted from her University of Arizona position earlier this year for what she believes were political reasons after she clashed with state lawmakers over medical-marijuana research. Northern Arizona University refused to hire her, and Arizona State University has not said whether it will offer a position.

    But Sisley said that Colorado's decision to fund her marijuana study allows her to pursue the study even without an Arizona university lab.

    "That's the beauty of this grant," Sisley said in an e-mail. "The Colorado health department believed in the quality of this research regardless of whether I was aligned with an Arizona university or not."

    Sisley said a revised plan will split the study in two locations. Half of the 76 participating veterans will get marijuana at a yet-to-be-determined location in Arizona. The other group will be studied at Johns Hopkins University. Ryan Vandrey, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's behavioral pharmacology research unit, will coordinate the Johns Hopkins half of the study.

Good news all around.

Colorado Pot Shops Welcome You to "Green Friday"

 

Capitalist Colorado marijuana producers are putting an emphasis on green on Black Friday -- both selling it and making it.

More evidence that consumer-driven markets always emerge, whether "black" or "legitimate."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Texas A&M Agriculture Law Blog Named to ABA's Top 100

I also want to give a shout out to my colleague Tiffany Dowell, an assistant professor with TAMU's AgriLife Extension and an adjunct professor here at the Law School.  Her Texas Agriculture Law Blog has been nominated as one of the ABA Journal's top 100 Blawgs for 2014.  In fact, at the present moment it's the top vote-getter in the "niche" category.

The blog is interesting and useful to lawyers, but I particularly like it because Tiffany does a good job of explaining complex issues (e.g., the Endangered Species Act, fracking regulation, mineral rights, GMO rules) in a way that farmers and ranchers can understand.  There's a good reason it's popular.

Medical Marijuana "Cautiously" Moving Forward in Queensland

Australian states are following the lead of their U.S. counterparts in moving toward marijuana legalization.  According to the Sydney Morning Herald, legislators in Brisbane will soon be following New South Wales's lead in debating a bill to begin medical marijuana trials in Australia's third-most-populous state:

    The legalisation of medical marijuana is creeping closer – albeit "cautiously".

    Queensland Coalition Senator Ian Macdonald said he would co-sponsor the Regulator of Medical Cannabis Bill when it is introduced to the federal Senate on Thursday, but indicated he would not automatically support every part of the bill.

    Produced by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy and Law Reform, the bill seeks to introduce medical cannabis trials.

    Senator Macdonald said he believed attitudes were changing and the time was right to debate the issue.

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    "If I am to properly represent the people of Queensland, and the members of my party, then I need to promote robust debate on this issue," he said in a statement.

    The LNP state conference, held in Townsville over the weekend, passed two motions in support of medical marijuana trials, one calling for the party to support the "Commonwealth Multi-party Group's Bill to allow medical trials for the use of cannabis oil in the treatment of illness" while the other called for Queensland trials to begin.

    Premier Campbell Newman has repeatedly said he was "sympathetic" to the issue, but he believed the question on whether it should be legalised for medical treatment was best answered by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

    New South Wales has taken carriage of a national clinical trial which the Australian Capital Territory is considering joining.

    Victoria is also considering legislation which would allow for trials in that state.

Marijuana and Real Estate: Five Issues for Property Owners

As states grope toward a model for handling marijuana legalization, property owners are starting to face some new issues.

At MarketWatch, personal finance writer Amy Hoak has some thoughts on 5 ways marijuana legalization affects real estate:

 Increased industrial property explosions

    One of the more popular marijuana products is hash oil, a more concentrated form of THC that you can ingest by putting it under your tongue or sprinkling it on food. Problem is, the process to make this oil involves butane (also required to make meth), and that is a big reason why explosions can happen during production, said Megan Booth, senior policy representative for the National Association of Realtors. In states including Colorado, Washington and California, property explosions have gone up dramatically, she said.

    For that reason, if you’re an owner of an industrial property, you’d likely be extra careful before leasing to someone who intends to manufacture hash oil on the premises, Booth said.

Danger of civil asset forfeiture

    Whether you’re the owner of a shopping center where a dispensary wants to open, you own an industrial property where marijuana could be grown or you’re a landlord renting an apartment to someone who uses or grows marijuana, you likely have at least some fear of civil asset forfeiture. That’s where the federal government can seize your property if it was used to conduct illegal activity (that was known or should have been known to the owner), or was purchased with the proceeds of an illegal activity, Booth said.

    Since marijuana is illegal under federal law, property owners may forbid the growing or use of marijuana, just to steer clear of the possibility they’d lose their property because of it.

    “Essentially, from the perspective of property managers, the challenge we have is trying to come up with the best practices for operating properties in an environment where we don’t have clarity about the enforcement or the interpretation of the laws,” said Fred Prassas, past president of the Institute of Real Estate Management and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Harder for marijuana-related businesses to get mortgages

    Banks are federally chartered, and because marijuana is illegal on a federal level, many lenders have no interest in approving a mortgage for someone interested in starting up some sort of marijuana-related business.

    “It’s hard for these businesses to get loans,” Booth said. That’s why financing for these businesses is often done through private investors, she added.

Keeping smells and mold out

    For landlords who have a non-smoking policy on their property, it’s likely not difficult to keep people from smoking pot (enforcing the rules is another story). But if people are vaporizing their marijuana, it often comes in sweet flavors like strawberry—and can soak through the drywall, and be hard to remove, Booth said.

Growing marijuana requires lots of water, which can contribute to mold issues—becoming a worry for landlords, homeowners associations and individual home buyers deciding whether to make a purchase.

Home buyers should search for mold problems in a home suspected to be a grow house; sometimes, odd wiring systems used for lighting the plants and strange ventilation systems could be tip-offs, Booth said. While growing marijuana is permitted in some places, there are often limits and restrictions.

Grow houses, dispensaries have stigmas

    Even when it’s legal by state law, there’s often a stigma associated with houses where pot was grown.

    “I showed a house that was in a beautiful location on the Puget Sound…that had been used for a grow operation,” said Kevin Lisota, a real-estate broker in Seattle. “The plant just permeated everything in the house and it sat on the market for a very long time, despite its sweet location,” he said.

    There’s certainly growing acceptance of marijuana use: Fifty-two percent of Americans said the use of marijuana should be legal in 2014, compared with 12% who said the same in 1969, according to the Pew Research Center. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people want it in their neighborhood, Lisota said.

    Even having a dispensary nearby can be a negative, Lisota said. “I don’t think it improves your home value to be located near recreational or medical dispensaries, in the same way you wouldn’t want to be close to a liquor store,” he said. “You don’t need people coming three doors down to get their weed,” he said.

These are all excellent points.  My advice to landlords:  Demand a lot of money and get it paid in advance.

Congratulations to Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform Blog!

Doug Berman's MLP&R has deservedly been nominated for the ABA Journal list of the Top 100 Blawgs.  It's particularly great to see that, because Doug's work -- and that of his co-bloggers Alex Kreit and Rob Mikos -- was an inspiration for me to get started.

I'm a business law guy, and while the kind of overarching policy issues that Doug, Alex, and Rob deal with were always interesting, there really wasn't a marijuana business until this year.  So now that lawyers are actually involved in planning, advising, structuring, and representing marijuana businesses, there are things for me to talk about that I actually know something about.  Doug in particular encouraged me to start blogging on the theory that the more of us writing about this stuff, the better.

By all means take a few minutes, go over to the ABA site, and cast a vote.  MLP&R is nominated in the "niche" category.

New Bill Would Allow Veterans Administration to Recommend Medical Marijuana

Two Congressmen -- an Oregon Democrat and a California Republican -- have introduced legislation to permit VA physicians to recommend marijuana for some patients.  The Washington Post has the story:

    Arguing that medical marijuana may help wounded warriors with anxiety and stress disorders to “survive and thrive,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) have introduced legislation that would allow Department of Veterans Affairs’ doctors to recommend the drug for some patients.

    The Veterans Equal Access Act and would challenge the Va’s policy that forbids doctors from consulting about medical pot use. Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported about the issue.

    “We should be allowing these wounded warriors access to the medicine that will help them survive and thrive, including medical marijuana, not treating them like criminals and forcing them into the shadows,” said Blumenauer in a statement

Add . . . Georgia Legalization Bills . . .

The Washington Post has more on the Georgia proposals to legalize medical and recreational marijuana.  The embedded links are to the texts of the two bills:

    A Georgia state senator has introduced two pieces of legislation Monday that would  legalize both medical and recreational marijuana in the state.

    SB 6 would allow those at least 21-years-old to purchase a “limited” amount of marijuana and taxes and fees from the sale would be split equally between education and transportation infrastructure.

    SB 7 would authorize marijuana for medical use for those with a “debilitating medical condition,” which includes but isn’t limited to cancer, glaucoma, HIV, Alzheimer’s disease, and any “chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition.”

    “Few would disagree that physicians need every good tool in their medical toolbox to provide the best healthcare possible to their patients,” Sen. Curt Thompson (D), the bills’ sponsor, said in a statement. “During the 2015 legislative session, we will have the opportunity to provide our doctors with an additional tool by legalizing marijuana for medical use.”

    According to a poll conducted for WSB-TV in Atlanta of 750 registered voters by Landmark/RosettaStone, 54 percent of respondents support medical marijuana, and 30 percent are opposed. The remaining 16 percent are undecided.

    A bill that would have legalized cannabis oil for medical use sponsored by Rep. Allen Peake (R) failed to pass the legislature in March.

"Conservative" Marijuana Regulation?

In a recent National Review piece, Mark Kleiman makes the case for what he calls "conservative" legalization of marijuana.  In Cannabis, Conservatively, he argues that "There's a middle ground between prohibition and commercial production" of marijuana, and he offers a variety of thoughts on what that might entail.

The one that he seems to prefer is a government-run command-and-control system that would impose detailed regulation on every aspect of the business -- substance abuse counseling training for sales clerks, retail price regulation based on regular detailed surveys of black market prices,  even mandatory individual disclosure of marijuana consumption so that it can be monitored by the government.  The goal would be to legalize pot, but to make it more expensive (and perhaps more difficult) to get.

Whether any of this is a good idea -- and as I note below, I don't think it is -- it's not "conservative" in any ordinary use of the term.  It's a radical and untried departure from either of two well-trodden options (prohibition and regulated commercial markets) with which we have extensive experience in the context of alcohol.  And it's inventing this new regulatory scheme before we every know which problems will be more serious and which less serious than we expect.  Preemptive buraucratic regulation is the opposite of the conservative "wait-and-see" approach.  Nor is it "conservative" in the political sense -- it's a the creation of a brand-new "expert"-controlled bureaucracy.  Those who like free enterprise and limited government won't much like that approach.

As for the merits, I don't see them.  First, as a practical matter, I don't think that the government responsible for the VA, the TSA, and the Post Office is all that good at implementing highly sensitive and fine-tuned regulations.  Yes, that's an easy gibe to make, but the fact is that it's a leap of faith to assume that any new agency is going to function markedly better than the ones we already have.  Some of us lack that faith and would need a lot more detail before we'd jump into a new TSA for marijuana.  Our reluctance on that score is only increased by the fact the fact that it will necessarily be designed in the dark -- regulating a hypothetical market before the market exists.

Second, a scheme that depends on high prices to deter consumption will fail unless the black market can be stamped out.  Heavy users already have suppliers, and decriminalization gives them no reason to worry about buying illegally.  (Do we want to make possession of untaxed marijuana a new crime?)  To stamp out the black market we'll need something -- let's call it a "War on Drugs" -- to root out and punish people who are growing and selling marijuana without paying taxes.  Presumably the SWAT teams, drug-sniffing dogs, helicopters, and warrantless wiretaps will come from BATF and the IRS instead of the DEA, but that seems unlikely to make it the war less invasive less expensive, or less destructive of lives.

Third, the new bureaucracy will come with substantial costs.  The cost of obtaining regular street prices of marijuana across the nation, and implementing a system of regular price fluctuations by administrative order -- in effect, bureaucratically recreating all the price signals used by the market -- would be formidable.  Even if we drop the idea of adding the special tax to drive up prices, marijuana sold through the regulated system will necessarily cost more than unregulated (black market) marijuana, simply because of the additional overhead.  To get the price down to street level, taxpayers may well have to pay for a bureaucracy that costs more than it raises.

Fourth, at a philosophical level, the proposal involves massive interference with personal liberty in the name of "public health" before we even know how serious the problem is going to be.  Legalization of recreational pot may or may not cause a drastic rise in consumption.  Even if there is a substantial rise, that may or may not be a bad thing from a public health perspective, depending on the effect that the increase has on alcohol and tobacco use -- and even on incidence of other diseases.  We may discover that we want to encourage people to smoke marijuana as a less harmful alternative to either cigarettes or booze.  (Super Bowl ads for both marijuana and alcohol may actually be preferable to ads just for alcohol.)  Until we've seen what the market does, we're purely speculating.  And controlling what people can do based on mere speculation is, for many of us, a problem.

To me, the chief argument for legalization is to cut back on the destruction done by the War on Drugs.  The surest and quickest way to do that is to allow full commercialization.  There's no black market when products are sold in competitive environments and available at any local store.  We see cigarette smuggling not because smugglers can produce cigarettes cheaper than Philip Morris, but because the regulatory burden (in the form of taxes) artificially increases costs.  That's likely what would happen under the proposed scheme.

The "conservative" approach would be to stop the war, let free enterprise do its thing, observe the market for a while, and then start figuring out how regulation might make things better.

George State Senator Files Bill to Legalize Recreationial Pot

This report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

    A state senator is proposing to fully legalize marijuana in Georgia, providing Colorado-style access at licensed retail shops while also allowing its use through medical providers for treatment of conditions including cancer, glaucoma and HIV/AIDS.

    State Sen. Curt Thompson, D-Norcross, filed the joint proposals Monday for consideration by the state Legislature next year. The legislative session starts Jan. 12.

    Thompson’s Senate Bill 7 would allow doctors to prescribe marijuana of up to two ounces for specific debilitating medical conditions and its use would be strictly regulated by the state.

    Additionally, Senate Resolution 6 is a proposed amendment to the state constitution. Requiring voter approval, it would legalize, regulate and tax the sale of retail marijuana. Tax revenue from the sale of marijuana would be constitutionally earmarked for education and transportation infrastructure.

 

Folks (Apparently) Aren't Noticing Mark Kleiman's New Work

One of the difficult things about having opinions is that we all think that ours are reasonable, and that other people's are crazy.  Here's marijuana expert Mark Kleiman on the reception he's got to four recent columns:

    Over the past couple of weeks, my essays in search of temperate cannabis policies have appeared in Slate, Vice, the New York Times, and now National Review. Other than the expected trolling from pot fans, pot-industry flacks, and fundamentalist libertarians, they haven’t drawn much response. I sometimes think that trying to talk reasonably about cannabis is a little bit like trying to talk reasonably about football on sports-talk radio. It’s a subject so hard to think clearly about, and so easy to get angry about, that saying anything other than “Racist drug war! Legalize it!” or “Brain damage! What about the children?” seems to miss the whole point of the exercise. But I’m grateful to all the editors involved for giving me the space.

Note the rhetorical move here.  (1) If you disagree with him that pot should be legalized, you're not merely stupid, you're probably so morally bankrupt that you're probably even a Republican.  (2) If you disagree with him on his own particular government-run tax-it-to-death strategy, you're a stoner zealot or a libertarian wingnut.  (3) If you ignore him, you're not interested in rational discussion.

This kind of argument gets made a lot in politics.  In legal academia, where I live, not so much.

Related articles

Gray Lady's "Room for Debate": Is "Big Marijuana Inevitable?"

Trying to Talk Sense About Cannabis

How Should Colorado Regulate Edibles?

Michigan Prosecutor's "Diatribe" Against Medical Marijuana Dooms Pot Conviction

A Michigan court of appeals has reversed the conviction of a man convicted for growing 22 marijuana plants because of a "personal diatribe" against medical marijuana that the prosecutor made to the jury. 

Alger County Prosecuting Attorney Karen Bahrman is a career prosecutor with more than 30 years of experience, and her public website suggests that she's competent, caring, and level-headed.  But she's battled a lot of drunk driving in the "U.P." (the frozen north end of Michigan where abusing booze is as popular as ice fishing) and she's on record as being against marijuana legalization:

    From where I’m sitting, a place with a panoramic view of crimes fueled by alcohol, lives ruined by alcohol and lives lost to alcohol, its hard to understand why anyone would want to add another intoxicating and addictive substance to the legal table on the theory that its no worse than what’s already there.

    The argument that surrender is warranted by the cost/benefit analysis I do understand, in fact I would prefer almost anything to the current de facto legalization of marihuana, meaning that our medical marihuana act is so broad that virtually anyone can obtain a medical marihuana card by saying the right things to the right physician; its hard to listen to long time recreational users who are otherwise perfectly healthy talk about being patients, having caregivers and taking medicine, and I’m sure its equally hard for the tiny group of seriously ill people for whom this law was supposedly intended to endure our skepticism.

That's a subject on which reasonable people can differ.  But it appears that Ms. Bahrman went a little over the top in making her views known to a jury:

    During her closing argument, Alger County prosecutor Karen Bahrman criticized the medical marijuana law and attacked the credibility of a local group, the Alger Hemp Coalition, which she said has a "vision for the country where everybody can walk around stoned."

    "They do nothing to support the government services they want, and have nothing but criticism for the government services they don't want," Bahrman told the jury. "We're trespassers and tramplers of their rights right up until they need us to protect them from the violence that they attract to the community."

    Heminger had a medical marijuana card, but there was evidence that he was growing an excessive amount, possibly to sell or use, the appeals court said.

    Nonetheless, his right to a fair trial last year was violated by the prosecutor's "unfounded, irrelevant and inflammatory statements," the court said in an opinion released Friday.

    "The prosecutor's closing argument was clearly and thoroughly improper," the court said. "The prosecutor embarks on a political commentary, and a personal diatribe discrediting the (law) as a whole. … She calls the act 'meaningless,' and suggests that those suffering from chronic pain are simply cheating the system."

I started life as a litigator and I sympathize with how easy it is to get carried away.  Sounds like the court of appeals got it right.  Whether jurors are entitled to disregard the law is an interesting question (which we call "jury nullification") but there's no doubt prosecutors aren't supposed to tell jurors to ignore the law.  [State v Heminger opinion PDF here.]

H/T Chris Lindsey

 

Who's Going to Make the First Move on Federal Pot Legalization? Pretty Much Anybody Except Eric Holder

There's apparently one area of law where Attorney General Eric Holder thinks his authority is really limited.  Weirdly, perhaps, it may be the one area where his office has actual statutory authority, actually granted to him by Congress: rescheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act.

    The Controlled Substances Act, which set up the drug schedules in the early 1970s, explicitly places drug scheduling authority in the hands of the attorney general, and even instructs him or her to "remove any drug or other substance from the schedules if he finds that the drug or other substance does not meet the requirements for inclusion in any schedule." Much to the chagrin and outright befuddlement of drug law reformers, however, outgoing attorney general Eric Holder has repeatedly stated that any changes to the scheduling status of marijuana should be made by Congress.

    In an interview with the just-launched Marshall Project, a nonprofit news outfit covering criminal justice issues, he said, "I think the question of how these drugs get scheduled and how they are ultimately treated is something for Congress to work on." This echoes remarks he made in a September interview with Katie Couric, when he said that federal marijuana decriminalization was something for Congress to decide.

    As Firedoglake's Jon Walker noted this week, it's strange that Holder is trying to punt this issue to Congress while the Obama administration is testing the limits of executive authority elsewhere: "It is just mind boggling that while the Obama administration is looking at ways to stretch their legal authority to use executive actions to get around Congress on issues, like the environment and immigration, they would still refuse to move forward on the one issue where they are so explicitly given the power to act under current law," Walker writes.

Holder reminds me a little of me, talking to my kids.  Sometimes I say "I can't do it" when what I really mean is, "I don't want to do it, but if I tell you it's just a choice I'm making you'll keep bugging me and I don't want to deal with it."

Many People FInd the Holidays Stressful: Marijuana Businesses Want to Help . . .

The three Wise Men brought gold, myrrh, and frankincense to the first Christmas.  Fast forward 2,000 years and you can bring marijuana to the celebration -- and save money with Black Friday specials.  In Merry marijuana: Pot sellers woo holiday shoppers, AP's Kristen Wyatt finds that the traditional holiday marketing blitz has made its way into the  counterculture:

    From new marijuana strains for the holidays to gift sets and pot-and-pumpkin pies, the burgeoning marijuana industry in Colorado is scrambling to get a piece of the holiday shopping dollar. Dispensaries in many states have been offering holiday specials for medical customers for years — but this first season of open-to-all-adults marijuana sales in some states means pot shops are using more of the tricks used by traditional retailers to attract holiday shoppers.

    Here's a look at how the new recreational marijuana industry is trying to attract holiday shoppers:

OLD-FASHIONED DOORBUSTERS

    Traditional retailers sell some items below cost to drive traffic and attract sales. Recreational marijuana retailers are doing the same.

    The Grass Station in Denver is selling an ounce of marijuana for $50 — about a fifth of the cost of the next-cheapest strain at the Colorado dispensary — to the first 16 customers in line Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That works out to less than $1 a joint for the ambitious early-rising pot shopper. Owner Ryan Fox says his Black Friday pot is decent quality, and says he's selling below cost to attract attention and pick up some new customers. As Colorado dispensaries approach a year of being able to sell weed to all adults over 21, not just card-carrying medical patients, Fox says retailers have to do more than just sell pot to get public attention.

    Pot shops are using old and new media to tout the sales. One dispensary is taking out a full-page "Happy Danksgiving" ad in The Denver Post and is inviting shoppers to text a code for extra savings.

VISIONS OF SUGAR PLUMS

    Sweets and marijuana seem to go together like hot chocolate and marshmallows. Many dispensaries this time of year resemble a Starbucks at the mall, with holiday spices and festive music in the air. One of the state's largest edible-pot makers, Sweet Grass Kitchen, debuted a new miniature pumpkin pie that delivers about as much punch as a medium-sized joint. The pie joins holiday-spiced teas, minty pot confections and cannabis-infused honey oil for those who want to bake their own pot goodies at home. Even some edibles makers that specialize in savory foods, not sweets, are putting out some sugary items for the holidays. "It just tastes too good, we had to do it," Better Baked owner Deloise Vaden said of her company's holiday line of cannabis-infused sweet-potato and pumpkin pies.

HOLIDAY STRAINS

    Some shops are angling for high-end holiday shoppers, not an increase in foot traffic. Colorado Harvest and Evergreen Apothecary timed the release of some top-shelf strains of potent pot for the holiday season. Spokeswoman Ann Dickerson says they're "sort of like the best bourbon or Scotch that will be competing on quality, rather than price."

GIFT WRAPPING

    What holiday shopper doesn't appreciate free gift wrapping? Or a gift set ready to pop under the tree? The Growing Kitchen is making $49.99 gift sets for both the medical and recreational pot user. The sets include the edible-pot maker's new Mighty Mint cookie, a pot-infused confection new for the holiday shopping season, along with marijuana-infused salves for muscles sore from the ski slopes. Other dispensaries are offering free gift totes and stockings with purchases.

GIFT CARDS

    For the shopper who wants to give pot but doesn't know how the recipient likes to get high, Colorado's 300 or so recreational dispensaries so far have been able to issue only handwritten gift certificates. That's because banking regulations prohibit major credit cards companies from being able to back marijuana-related gift cards the way they do for other retailers.

    Just this month, a Colorado company started offering pot shops a branded gift card they can sell just like other retailers. The cards are in eight Denver dispensaries so far, and coming soon will be loyalty cards similar to grocery-store loyalty cards that track purchases and can be used to suggest sales or new products to frequent shoppers.

CANNAGIFTS FOR THE MAIL

    Just because marijuana can't legally leave Colorado doesn't mean dispensaries don't have items for out-of-state friends and family. Some dispensaries are highlighting some non-cannabis gift items — things like T-shirts, rolling papers and lotions made with legal herbs. The sets are for shoppers who want to give a taste of Colorado's new marijuana industry without breaking federal law by mailing it or taking it out of state.

More on Commercialization of Recreational Marijuana

An interesting piece today from the Huffington Post:

    Marijuana is growing up. As Colorado and Washington’s recreational marijuana industries blossom and new markets in Oregon and Alaska begin to take shape, so-called ganjapreneurs are looking for ways to take cannabis mainstream. Before long, they hope, marijuana products will be as widely available as alcohol -- and just as socially acceptable.

    “Ideally, I would like to see the 21-to-35 year-old taking a four-pack of these to a barbecue,” Joe Hodas, chief marketing director for the marijuana product manufacturer Dixie, said earlier this year of the company's new watermelon cream-flavored "elixir," Dixie One. The drink contains five milligrams of THC -- just enough to produce a subtle buzz.

    “This is a full experience in a bottle, much like beer," Hodas said. "Sometimes they’ll want a beer, sometimes they’ll want two or three beers. This sort of affords you that calibration.

    Since starting in 2010, Colorado-based Dixie has developed a wide array of marijuana products, from THC-infused chocolates to concentrated cannabis for e-cigarettes. Many of its offerings are aimed at experienced marijuana users with high tolerances -- the company's top seller is a line of elixirs containing 75 milligrams of THC. Lower-dose products are proving increasingly popular, however.

    “It’s been selling really surprisingly well,” Hodas told The Huffington Post recently of Dixie One. “In some of our stores, it had been outselling our 75 mg elixir. We were going to be happy if it sold decently well, but it was outselling in some cases. That said to us, we were correct, there is a market for that consumer.”

    Encouraged by the success of Dixie One, the company is focusing on casual cannabis consumers. This week, Dixie released another low-dose product, a mint that releases THC directly into the bloodstream as it dissolves in the mouth.

    “I think the low-dose consumer is an expansion demographic for us,” Hodas said. “It’s my belief that the core marijuana user is a small circle, and in a much larger surrounding circle is the casual user and a much larger market.”

The whole piece is here.

More on Privateer's New "Marley Natural"TM Ganja Brand

The other day we mentioned the new Bob Marley marijuana brand from Privateer.  I noted that it wasn't clear whether the company, which has shied away from actually selling pot, intended to start.  If so, that would be a strong vote of confidence, given that it's a company that actually has assets to lose.

But it sounds like they're not taking that step yet.  A piece from the Financial Times suggests that the initial focus will be on paraphernalia, while the company will let others take the risks of actually doing the illegal parts.  Here's an excerpt:

    Investment is about good timing. Privateer has exhibited this by striking a  30-year licensing deal with the Marley estate to create a wholly owned  subsidiary called Marley Natural. This will sell beauty products and dope pipes  as well as pot. Resistance to weed consumption is eroding but big tobacco  companies remain tentative in their plans for marketing it. That creates an  opportunity for small, disruptive businesses to stake a claim.

. . .

    Full-scale commercial production and marketing of dope will remain a tricky  enterprise even in places where consumption is legal, or becomes so. The rules  tend towards complexity. Seattle-based Privateer says it may steer clear of  selling dope in states where it is legal, endorsing the products of local  growers instead. That sounds more like a sub-licensing strategy than sticking it  to the man.

    The easier bit will be shifting Marley-branded pipes and bongs through shops  that sell drugs paraphernalia alongside patchouli oil, healing crystals and, in  some European countries, execrable resin statuettes of stoned Rastafarians.

    It is meanwhile incumbent on the Financial Times as a responsible publication  to point out that smoking cannabis can be a gateway to more harmful behaviours.  These include eating too much and laughing at your own jokes. The typical  potency of weed has also increased since Marley’s day – and, with it, the risk  of psychosis.

. . .

    Privateer says it wants to professionalise a business  “stigmatised by negative perceptions”. Its chief  executive and finance director both have MBAs from Yale. Neither has  dreadlocks.

 

Old Professors Never Die, They Just Never Seem to Go Away

A piece last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education calls out old tenured faculty for clinging to their cushy, lucrative jobs far past their original product expieration date.  The author argues that "Academics who don’t retire are greedy, selfish, and bad for students."

Well, yes, of course they (we?) are!  Every unproductive worker whose job is "protected" by some form of employment security is greedy and selfish and bad for his or her employer and customers if he or she keeps clinging to the job.  What's remarkable is the idea that anyone would expect academics to be more noble and self-sacrificing than, say, automobile assembly line workers, who use seniority to keep younger, cheaper, and more productive workers unemployed. 

Last year, for example, the American Bar Association floated a proposal to eliminate the requirement that all accredited law schools must provide tenure for their professors.  (Not to eliminate tenure, mind you, but simply to say that schools are not required to provide tenure if they don't want to.)  I wrote a comment, signed by five professors, supporting getting rid of the requirement.   By my count more than 700 law professors opposed the change, demanding that their death-grip on their employment was  critical to our entire legal system and the provision of justice to all Americans.  Here's a typical example.

When you give people entitlements, they tend to keep taking them whether they really need them or not.  Academics aren't any different.

Nevada Eyeing Medical Marijuana Tourism

Las Vegas is famous for never meeting a tourist it didn't like.   Presumably there are lots of folks who would like to visit Las Vegas, but who use medical marijuana.  But Nevada is a long way from most everywhere else.  To get your medical marijuana there, you'd have to carry it on a plane (the TSA frowns on this) or commit a felony by driving it across state lines.

Fear not.  The Silver State has come up with a solution to allow you to combine the fun of gambling with the convenience of getting your MM prescription filled right on site. 

    Starting early next year, tourists with a Medical Marijuana card from their home state can buy the drug while visiting Las Vegas and other Nevada cities.

    A a few other states offer reciprocity, including Rhode Island and Maine, but Nevada is the 1st major tourist-destination state to honor other states’ systems, industry experts say.

    The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimates that nearly 40-M people visit the city annually. It is the adult playground in the United States. That is Las Vegas’ model.

    The decision by state lawmakers to let tourists buy Marijuana legally while visiting Nevada opens the doors to Marijuana tourism across the country. Colorado and Washington State already allow anyone to buy small amounts of the drug and 1 study has shown tourism interest in Colorado has skyrocketed since recreational sales began 1 January. Alaska and Oregon in the midterm election legalized Recreational Marijuana sales and use, and Washington, DC, legalized possession.

    “I think it’s going to be fantastic for the industry and the visitors,” said Leslie Bocskor, a Marijuana investor and founding chairman of the Nevada Cannabis Industry Association. “It is a step to treat this just a little more reasonably, to deal with it in a way that makes common sense.”

    . . .

    Nevada’s law specifies that anyone who presents a Medical Marijuana card or recommendation will be allowed to buy it, but lacks any sort of centralized tracking system to check the card’s validity. Nevada this Fall began issuing licenses to its first Medical Marijuana stores, which are expected to open sometime in the Spring.

    Industry workers say adults should be trusted to make their own decisions, after all, no one on the Vegas Strip checks a central federal database before selling alcohol to people from other states.

Casinos have never been slow to get alcohol into the hands of gambles.  Expect the first medical-marijuana-friendly casino areas to open pretty soon.  If that's not legal yet, it will be.

It occurs to me that many Indian casinos might want to think about something similar on their tribal lands.