Daily Recap
Politico Pro is reporting that Senate Republicans continue to work on the cannabis banking bill despite the new House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has been a harsher of the canna industry’s mellow for as long as he’s been a public servant.
“We’re still moving forward,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), the Republican lead on the bill in the Senate, told POLITICO on Wednesday. “We’re working with our House colleagues who have a companion bill to get alignment between both chambers.”
Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who’s been involved in deliberations over the bill in committee, said a floor vote is ultimately up to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer but for Senate Republicans, she said “I really don’t think that it’s going to make any difference that the new speaker opposes it.”
Sen. Schumer (D-NY), in a constituent letter to yours truly, wrote that he wants to fold a few criminal justice revisions from a separate federal legalization bill he sponsored into the banking bill, mentioning expungements and resentencing for current federal cannabis prisoners.
The Senate also approved a bill that includes a provision to allow doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to issue MMJ recommendations to veterans living in legal states. The House has separately advanced similar language in its own version of the appropriations legislation.
State Farms
House lawmakers in Pennsylvania looked into the legalization of adult-use cannabis in the Keystone State and what it could look like if passed into law. A spokesman said there will be additional hearings and anticipated the issue could potentially be put to a House floor vote in 2024.
Ohio voters will head to the ballot box on Tuesday to vote on adult-use cannabis and several other issues and the group that’s on the right side of history has outraised the outdated and sad opposition group by a 3-1 margin ahead of the general election.
Adults in Connecticut will be able to buy up to half an ounce of marijuana in a single retail transaction—double the state’s current purchase limit of a quarter ounce—next month while limits on MMJ purchases, currently five ounces per month, will remain unchanged.
U.N Tea Leaves
A small but arguably significant development occurred last week in Vienna, although it went almost completely unnoticed by industry observers. Shane Pennington, a self-professed law nerd, penned a promising Substack that detailed several comments that were made before the U.N.’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND).
In short, Mr. Pennington openly pondered whether the U.S. Representative has laid the groundwork for the U.S. approach to the Single Convention and if so, whether it’s designed to accommodate state-level cannabis legalization efforts.
Stems & Seeds
New York cannabis licenses that are on hold may get the green light Monday; sales of hemp-derived cannabinoids like CBD outpaced legal marijuana and are on par with craft beer; Missouri regulators have lifted their recall on nearly 15,000 MJ products; and the Federal Sentencing Commission’s new marijuana guidelines directing judges to treat past convictions more leniently has officially taken effect.
Markets N’ Things
It was another volatile session in Cannaland as the bull-bear battle continued. U.S. canna ETF MSOS fell 3% on Monday, rallied 10% on Tuesday, got hit for 4% yesterday and finished today’s session 6% higher on $63M total notional volume.
Below, we’ll dive into the ATB U.S. Cannabis Investor Survey, share some thoughts on next week’s Ohio ballot and Florida Supreme Court oral arguments, talk on technicals ahead of next week’s busy calendar, finger flows as we take the pulse of the tape, touch on some of the important stuff and peek inside the snazzy production facility behind the top-selling weed brand in New Jersey.
All that and more, just scroll down.
SPY 0.00%↑ QQQ 0.00%↑ IWM 0.00%↑ MSOS 0.00%↑ PT Notional: $63M
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