Category: Maryland
-
Dispensary Sales In Maryland Nearly Double Since April 2019
The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission recently released a graph detailing dispensary sales of medicinal cannabis in Maryland between April 2019 and March 2020 and what it shows says a great deal about the robust industry in Maryland and how patients have responded to COVID-19. The chart shows that total sales over the past year are…
-
The Outlaw Report Podcast Episode 02: Cannabis in the DMV During COVID-19
In the second episode of The Outlaw Report podcast, Prohibited podcast founder Scott Cecil talks to reporter Brandon Soderberg about how Maryland, Washington DC, and Virgina are dealing with cannabis during COVID-19. They discuss responses to cannabis laws by police during the pandemic and how the medicinal cannabis industry in Maryland and DC are dealing…
-
Maryland Governor Hogan Vetoes Bill Automatically Expunging Cannabis Convictions
Among a smattering of vetoes from Maryland governor Larry Hogan last week was the vetoing of House Bill 83, which would have prevented cannabis possession convictions from going into Maryland Case Search, the state’s court database, if it was “the only charge in the case and the charge was disposed of before October 1, 2014.”…
-
Physician Volunteering To Help With COVID-19 Rejected Because She Uses Medicinal Cannabis
Alexys Hillman, a Board Certified physician, Army veteran, and medicinal cannabis patient came all the way from Pensacola, Florida to Baltimore, Maryland to help those suffering from COVID-19 before she was told by Johns Hopkins Medicine that she would not be able to volunteer because she used cannabis. Back in early April, Hillman was looking…
-
Survey of Baltimoreans’ Experiences with Police Details Cannabis Injustice
A survey by Morgan State University’s Institute for Urban Research titled, “The Community’s Experiences and Perceptions of the Baltimore City Police Department Survey Report,” was released last week, coinciding with the five-year anniversary of Freddie Gray’s April 19, 2015 death in police custody and the subsequent uprising. The survey, submitted to the Baltimore City Police…
-
ACLU Report Reveals Racial Disparities For Cannabis Arrests Remain Amid Reform
For this year’s 4/20 celebration, the American Civil Liberties Union released a sobering report. Titled “A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” the in-depth report illustrates how black people are 3.6 times more likely than white people to be arrested for cannabis possession. This is similar, the ACLU…
-
15 Year-Old Federal Grant Revoked Because Maryland Town Rented Space to a Cannabis Grower
The town of Hancock, MD has agreed to pay back a $600,000 federal loan they received to rehab a building because they began renting that building out to a cannabis company in 2015, nearly a decade after the loan was given to them. In 2015, Harvest Health & Recreation Inc., an Arizona-based cannabis company with…
-
Charlotte Figi’s Death and The Importance of CBD and Medicinal Cannabis For Minors
Charlotte Figi, who had become a poster child for CBD, died at age 13 due to a seizure on April 7. Born in 2006, Figi began having seizures at the age of three months and by age five, she was often having hundreds of seizures each week. In 2011, when Figi was five years old,…
-
Dealing During COVID-19: Marylander With 100 Pounds of Cannabis Arrested
On April 3, Kayla Messinese, a 24 year-old resident of Edgewater, Maryland was arrested in King Of Prussia in Pennsylvania for, police say, attempting to deliver 100 pounds of cannabis worth $200,000 dollars. They cite “a joint investigation into large-scale drug trafficking,” but do not mention specifically how they were made aware of this attempted…
-
Baltimore Cannabis Arrests Rare Amid COVID-19
On Saturday, April 11, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), posted, as they often do, a photo to Facebook of what they seized after an arrest the night before. The photo showed, laid out on a table, a Walther PPQ .45 pistol, 12 bullets, 10 pills, two phones (a flip phone and an iPhone), a stack…
-
Medicinal Cannabis During COVID-19 When You Have a Disability
COVID-19 and the curve-flattening responses to it have altered the way most industries in the United States have operated including the cannabis industry, both aboveground and underground: Maryland’s Medical Cannabis Commission has adjusted its guidelines for the sale of cannabis to keep patients and processors safe; the owners of dispensaries have changed their approaches and…
-
D.C. Effort To Decriminalize Psilocybin Mushrooms Gets Creative; Baltimore Psychedelics Info Online
COVID-19 won’t stop Decriminalize Nature D.C.’s goal of getting an initiative to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms on the ballot in 2020. After unsuccessfully asking Washington D.C. City Council and Mayor Muriel Bowser to allow online signatures due to the pandemic (which makes it impossible to gather signatures “IRL”), Decriminalize Nature D.C is now floating the possibility…