Author: Brandon Soderberg
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Congress Will Vote On The MORE Act This Week
On November 27, Congress announced that a vote on the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act (The MORE Act) is scheduled for this week. The House Bill, which is HR 3884 will have a vote on either Wednesday, December 2; Thursday, December 3; or Friday, December 4. The MORE Act will deschedule cannabis making it…
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Virginia Legalization Workgroup’s Report Released
On Monday, November 30, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam released “Report to the Virginia General Assembly and Governor of Virginia: Impact on the Commonwealth of Legalizing the Sale and Personal Use of Marijuana,” the Virginia Legalization Workgroup’s nearly 500-page report on how to go about legalizing cannabis in the state. The report had to be completed…
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Decriminalizing Psychedelics in D.C., Explained
As many have noted, the real winner of this year’s election—which mostly thanks to a spineless Republican party, remains dogged by completely baseless accusations of voter fraud by President Trump—was drug decriminalization. A number of states voted to legalize cannabis, the state of Oregon voted to decriminalize all drugs, and in Washington D.C., plant-based psychedelics…
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The MORE Act, Explained
It was about a year ago that The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act—The MORE Act—first passed the House Judiciary Committee with a vote of 24-10. Introduced on July 23, 2019, the MORE Act would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, effectively decriminalizing it nationwide and make it much easier for states to legalize…
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Episode 11: The 2020 Election—Drugs Won
In this episode of The Outlaw Report, Scott Cecil is joined by The Outlaw Report’s Brandon Soderberg to discuss the role of cannabis and drug reform in the recent election. They review the results of the 2020 election and how those results impacted drug policy in D.C. and across the United States. They also take…
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Regulations To Expand Hemp Growing in Maryland Adopted
At the end of October, the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) announced that it has adopted regulations to expand the state’s industrial hemp program. These regulations, first introduced over the summer, move Maryland’s Hemp Program into compliance with the 2018 Farm Bill and will allow farmers to begin to farm industrial hemp “as an agricultural…
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Quick Hit: Vetting Weed Smokers, Using Cannabis To Make Up For Budget Shortfalls
Two stories from the past week represent the strange dance politicians on either side of the aisle are doing when it comes to cannabis. First, as Marijuana Moment reported, the Trump administration, in an attempt to gather famous faces for a series of public service announcements surrounding its non-existent approach to reducing the devastation of…
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Virginia Ends Searches Based on Cannabis Smell Alone and Plans To Push Legalization
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Virginia’s House and Senate are all in agreement over House Bill 5058 and Senate Bill 5029, which will prevent law enforcement from searching people, people’s homes and/or vehicles solely due to cannabis smell. The bill recently passed the House and the Senate and was then amended slightly by Northam. That…
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Following Cannabis Legalization Wave, MORE Act Will Finally Get a Vote
Less than a week after an election that expanded cannabis legalization with voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota all approving ballot measures (not to mention Oregon voting to decriminalize all drugs), the Democrat-controlled Congress has announced they will vote on The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (MORE) next month. The MORE Act…
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Out Of State Cannabis Growers A Concern in West Virginia
Early last month, West Virginia’s Office of Medical Cannabis (OMC) within the Department of Health and Human Resources announced that it had approved the first 10 medicinal cannabis grower permits out of a total of 39 applicants. Medicinal cannabis was approved in 2017 after West Virginians voted in favor of it but the program is…
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Quick Hit: 68% of Americans Now Support Cannabis Legalization
In news to no one who reads The Outlaw Report but worth noting anyway: The majority of people support cannabis legalization. See, according to the most recent Gallup poll, a whopping 68% of Americans support the legalization of cannabis. That is up slightly from last year’s polling results where 66% of Americans supported legalization and…
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Psychedelics and Cannabis in Washington D.C.’s Election
In Washington D.C., the major drug reform news was the overwhelming vote in support of Initiative 81—the “Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020”—which would decriminalize a number of plant-based psychedelics (such as psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and iboga) within the District. Initiative 81 received 89,714 votes in favor and 27,429 in opposition. That is…