Just over 1,000 people were sentenced federally in 2020 for violating marijuana trafficking laws. That’s down 67 percent since 2016, and over 80 percent since 2012 – when Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize and regulate the adult-use marijuana market.
The DEA’s website did not provide a timeline as to when it anticipates finalizing the applicants’ grow authorizations or when it plans to take actions on the dozens of remaining applications that are still pending before the agency.
“In US markets, Mexican marijuana has largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana. … CBP marijuana seizures along the SWB have decreased more than 81 percent since 2013,”
For over five decades, federal regulators have only authorized a single licensee – the University of Mississippi – to cultivate cannabis plants for use in FDA-approved clinical studies.
“These common-sense regulatory changes are necessary and long overdue. The reality that most high-schoolers have easier access to cannabis than do our nation’s top scientists is the height of absurdity and an indictment of the current system.”
Of the several experts who were part of our regular “road show” at NORML during the 1970s, I wanted to focus today on two of them who were both unexpected and wonderfully effective — Dr. Dorthy Whipple and former DEA Deputy Director John Finlator.
“These totals affirm that targeting marijuana-related growing operations still remains a DEA priority, even at a time when most Americans have made it clear that they want cannabis policies to head in a very different direction.”
“We believe that the adoption of these rules may further stonewall efforts to advance our scientific understanding of cannabis by unduly expanding the DEA’s authority and control over decisions that ought to be left up to health experts and scientists.”