Tribes are weighing the risks and opportunities of legalizing pot

This New Year’s Eve, Tony Reider wants to throw a party unlike any his South Dakota tribe has seen.

There will be live music, food, outdoor games—and, floating over the revelry, a haze of marijuana smoke, from a first-of-its-kind pot lounge that is set to open by the end of the year, said Reider, the tribal president of the Flandreau Santee Sioux in Flandreau, S.D.

That pot lounge—modeled on an Amsterdam coffee shop, where customers would be able to buy and smoke up to 2 grams of marijuana a day—would be illegal anywhere else in South Dakota, which, like most U.S. states, bans the sale, possession and public smoking of pot.

The Government is preparing to begin under strict security structure

The cultivation of cannabis plants in Puerto Rico for medical and research uses is scheduled to begin in early 2016, through a process regulated by the departments of Health and Agriculture, the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), and federal laws and local laws.

Planting plants "cannabis sativa" and "cannabis indica" both on land and in hydroponic systems, the initial wheel will move the new public policy on marijuana in Puerto Rico.

The crop would be the responsibility of self government of the island and / or duly authorized private farmers. In regard to government level, they have not yet selected the land where the crops would be developed, the USDA said.

There are a lot of lucrative opportunities in the marijuana industry. In a lot of areas cannabis entrepreneurs are doing very well in virtually all sectors of the industry. But there is a growing trend in some states where the opposite is happening, which is something that I have talked about a lot on this blog. As predicted, things are not going so well in ultra-strict medical marijuana states.

BOISE COUNTY – Two people have been arrested and face felony charges in connection to what authorities are calling a sophisticated marijuana grow operation.

Deputies with the Boise County Sheriff's Office served a search warrant at a home last Thursday after receiving a tip about some illegal activity.

In a nearby building officers found two large tents with elaborate watering, lighting and drying systems. A large gas generator was used in one of the shops where the indoor marijuana was located.

It is estimated that more than $172,000 worth of marijuana plants were removed from the property. Those plants will be destroyed.

I spoke to a reporter from Rolling Stone who is doing a story on the division within the drug reform community over Ohio’s 2015 marijuana legalization amendment. Indeed, the proposal to create both medical marijuana and a taxed-and-regulated adult marijuana market has alienated many supporters of legalization with its assignment of just ten commercial cannabis cultivation sites to the ten investor groups who have funded the initiative campaign.

I was at the International Cannabis Business Conference in San Francisco when Drug Policy Alliance’s director Ethan Nadelmann weighed in on the Ohio initiative:

In the early days of rock-and-roll, annoying AM radio disc jockeys would talk during the instrumental beginning and ending of songs. Sometimes it was just patter to promote the record, but it was usually opportunistic advertising to broadcast as many ads as possible.

The first time that I heard Oregon Representative Ann Lininger speak was at my first Women Grow Portland chapter event. She talked about her involvement with the Oregon Measure 91 campaign, her involvement at the Oregon Legislature regarding marijuana policy, and what she thought the future of Oregon’s marijuana industry and marijuana laws could look light. It was very refreshing to hear an elected Oregon official talk so candidly and accurately about Oregon’s marijuana scene.

Three staff recommendations for the proposed Medical Marijuana Innovation Zone will be discussed at Tuesday’s regularly scheduled Arcata Planning Commission meeting.

The zone is intended to create an area in the city where businesses can manufacture, cultivate and process medical marijuana. At the commission meeting on Aug. 22, the commission agreed to include the former Humboldt Flakeboard property and nine other parcels of land off West End Road in Arcata in the zone.

Eddie Miller is the founder and CEO of InvestInCannabis, a New York Ci

KAMLOOPS – Gateway Industrial Park could potentially be the home of Kamloops’s first medical marijuana grow operation. 

“This is a first within the City of Kamloops. While we have had other inquiries this is the only formal application,” development and engineering services director Marvin Kwiatkowski says.

The application is to rezone the property at 8170 Dallas Drive, which is currently zoned industrial. Medical marijuana grow operations are only permitted in heavy industrial areas. The matter is expected to come to council Sept. 29 with a public hearing as early as Oct. 20.