All posts in Connecticut News

An influential U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday voted to advance funding legislation and attached report language that encourages the federal government to reconsider “arbitrary” THC restrictions on hemp and continue efforts to develop a regulatory pathway for CBD products. Those provisions, among others, were approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee as part of legislation to fund the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other federal agencies for Fiscal Year 2022. The legislation would also continue a rider that protects state hemp programs from federal interference and extend the terms of an earlier pilot program under which…

Four New England states now allow medical and recreational use of marijuana, which means local companies must review their current drug testing and substance use policies to ensure they are compliant with state and federal laws. With Connecticut legalizing recreational marijuana in June — and Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont laws already in place — only New Hampshire and Rhode Island remain as holdouts for legalization. The provisions of the Connecticut law that affect employers will go into effect on July 1, 2022. Overall, employers walk a fine line when deciding on their internal policies. They need to comply with state…

The civil judgment, the second-highest ever awarded in Montana, highlights volatility and growing pains in the CBD market. By Amanda Eggert, Montana Free Press Hemp, a crop that largely flew under the radar in Montana when it was planted under a pilot program three years ago, is now central to one of the largest civil awards in the state’s history. A jury in Wolf Point last month awarded 25 eastern Montana farmers $65 million in compensatory and punitive damages, finding that a handful of Canadian and American businessmen had committed negligence, fraud and deceit in failing to fulfill contracts, leaving…

An appeals panel in Texas issued a mixed judgment Thursday in a lawsuit challenging the state’s ban on smokable hemp. Regulators may enforce a ban on the processing and manufacture of products intended for smoking or vaping, the court ruled, but they cannot prevent such products made elsewhere from being sold in the state. The decision creates a situation in which consumers may be able to freely purchase smokable hemp flower and hemp-derived CBD oils for vaping, but only if the products are processed outside Texas and imported into the state. Four Texas companies challenged the ban in a lawsuit…

Four years ago, Luis Vega was arrested with marijuana. “They pulled 28 full plants out of my little makeshift grow in my basement,” he said. Vega said those marijuana plants were for his own personal, medical use. Vega, originally from the Bronx, N.Y., but is now a New Haven resident, suffers from Crohn’s disease, he said. “I was operated on, I had lost my large intestine when I was 13 years old, I had an ostomy bag,” he said, though he also admits that growing marijuana, even for personal, medical use was illegal. Vega is one of many Connecticut residents…

Kebra Smith-Bolden *NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Focusing on social equity, a black woman whose business certifies residents for Connecticut’s medical marijuana card is taking advantage of measures in a new state law that target the issue most important to her. Kebra Smith-Bolden, a former nurse and founder of CannaHealth, aims to provide security for people in her community who consume or medicate with cannabis. A groundbreaking part of the new law, which went into effect July 1, is social equity. It requires half of all licenses for entry into the state’s marijuana business be reserved for social-equity applicants, those from…

With the recent legalization of cannabis in Connecticut, state and local police are learning how to adapt to the new law and procedures surrounding the once illegal substance. The Police Officer Standards and Training Council, or POST, which oversees training of officers in the state, issued a bulletin to all departments that summarized what’s new now that Gov. Ned Lamont has signed into law the bill that legalizes marijuana. One significant change is that police officers are no longer permitted to pull over a vehicle based solely on the odor of cannabis. Though it’s still illegal for people to be…