Welcome to issue 4 of the:
Cannabis Law Journal
It has certainly been a busy time for lawyers in the US in the cannabis sector since we last published.
It’s almost impossible to know where to start.
Should we talk about Trump’s election and recent comments on cannabis legalization and regulation by White House spokesman, Sean Spicer. Or, just this past week, the first utterings of the new AG since his limited pronouncements on the subject in his confirmation hearing.
Then again, maybe we should be talking about the success of AUMA and the processes that are now taking place in the Californian legislature to ensure that the world’s largest regulated cannabis market runs fairly smoothly.
On the other hand we could mention that there’s now some form of regulated medical marijuana system operating in 20 U.S. states with at least another dozen wanting to be in the game by year’s end.
At the individual state level the legal profession is dealing with and looking endless submitted bills, proposing for and acting with the nascent cannabis sector to ensure some sort of sense in submitted and pending legislation.
Meanwhile the local regulators in many states are understaffed, somewhat muddled and costing investors and businesses a lot of money as well as headaches, across the board. While they work out what sort of regulated system will actually work.
More grist to the mill for lawyers.
Then again there’s the IRS, The Financial System, IP, Licensing, Occ Health & Safety, Compliance, Testing and the list goes on forever.
New markets by their very nature can be quite complicated, convoluted and confusing. This one emerging out of 150 years or prohibition is especially so.
We’d suggest that this is a great environment for lawyers and law firms and provides more opportunities than any other component part of the cannabis industry.
Not only are there a wealth of clients for the day to day of business, but the shaping of the industry is falling to the legal profession. Whilst the politicians either dither or get so excited they spend the majority of their time submitting gobbledegook to the floors of their respective legislatures.
Oh.. and did we forget to mention Ireland, Germany, Holland, Australia, Jamaica, The Cayman Islands and a host of other jurisdictions that have decided to enact some form of regulated medical cannabis market in the past 12 months.
In this issue amongst others we’ve got articles from Israel, Canada, Australia , Canada and the U.S
Sean Hocking
Editor
