Last month,
Maryland’s House Judiciary Committee held the first hearing of the session on adult use cannabis legalization. In focus was HB 32, introduced by
Delegate Jazz Lewis, which, as
Cannabis Wirereported, has broad support among advocates.
Also last month, the vice chair of Maryland’s
Senate Finance Committee,
Brian Feldman, introduced SB 0708, another adult use cannabis legalization bill. This bill has strong legislative support, including from
Senate President Bill Ferguson and
Senate Majority Leader Nancy J. King.
That bill got its first hearing on Thursday, in the
Senate Finance Committee, which lasted about an hour and a half. In his opening remarks, Feldman pointed to changing cannabis laws across the country, including the “
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The
California Bureau of Cannabis Control’s Cannabis Advisory Committee, which advises the Bureau, held its first meeting of 2021 on Wednesday. (Read
Cannabis Wire’scoverage of the culmination of the group’s 2020 work.)
The agenda included everything from a presentation on the “state of cannabis equity,” from the
United CORE Alliance, to a discussion of topics for subcommittees to consider this year. Members of the public suggested topics from “mental health risks of marijuana use” to a look at the unique considerations of rural communities to a reconsideration of the track-and-trace system, which one speaker called “an expensive failure.” Track-and-trace also came up earlier in the meeting during public comment, along with complaints about the smell of cannabis and confusion over permitting and licensing.
Assembly members Benjie Wimberly and Annette Quijano introduced
A 5211, which “updates and clarifies recent legislation passed by both Houses of the Legislature addressing cannabis legalization, and marijuana and hashish decriminalization.”
On Thursday, the
Senate Judiciary Committee released an identical bill,
S3320, passing it 7-3.
The discussion in the Assembly lasted less than 15 minutes. The first comments came from
Joe Johnson of ACLU-NJ, who began by saying, “I had prepared remarks this morning to express our opposition to the scheme on how to deal with minors caught with possession of cannabis. Fortunately, it seems that the amendments that we were just given access to kind of clear up a lot of our concerns.”