Rocky Mountain High: Colorado experiments with marijuana | The National Review

By Betsy Woodruff for The National Review

Denver, CO – There’s a stretch of Broadway that’s called Broadsterdam because of its medical-marijuana dispensaries. Just a block over, flanking Acoma and Bannock Streets, is a warehouse district. It’s not hard to guess which of the squat drab buildings are grow-ops (marijuana-growing operations) — they’re the ones wound in razor or barbed wire, with protruding cameras, barred windows, and extra air-conditioner units (the lights needed to grow plants make it hot in the warehouses, but the plants need cooler temperatures). Sometimes when you drive by, you can smell weed wafting in the breeze. And deep inside at least a few of those warehouses are vaults brimming with cash. Welcome to Colorado’s marijuana industry.

Read the complete article at NationalReview.com

Trade Organization Pushes Federal Tax Reforms For Marijuana Businesses | MintPress News

By Katie Rucke for MintPress News

A bill that would allow the same tax deductions for marijuana-related business as other businesses is gaining traction in Washington.

On Thursday, the National Cannabis Industry Association, the sole national trade association in the U.S. working to advance the interests of cannabis-related businesses, announced a new piece of legislation that would essentially force the federal government to tax marijuana-industry related businesses at the same rate as all other small businesses.

HR 2240, also known as the “Small Business Tax Equity Act,” would add an exception for legal marijuana businesses in states that have legalized the substance to Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code, which currently creates a gross receipts tax situation for legal cannabis dispensaries and other marijuana-related businesses. Other supporters include Grover Norquist’s group Americans for Tax Reform — which NCIA is a member of — and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.).

Read the complete article at MintPressNews.com.

Pot stores’ banking dilemma to be addressed by feds | The Seattle Times

By Bob Young for the Seattle Times

The U.S. Department of Justice is working with federal regulators to allow banking services for legal pot merchants in Colorado and Washington, the chief news to come out of what some considered a historic Congressional hearing.

The U.S. Department of Justice is working with federal regulators to allow banking services for pot merchants in Washington and Colorado, the two states that have legalized adult possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole acknowledged the current dilemma, that without changes at the federal level, legal pot stores will operate on a cash-only basis because banks fear they’ll violate federal law by accepting pot money.

“We are currently talking with bank regulators on ways we can deal with this,” Cole told a U.S. Senate hearing on the conflicts between states and the federal law, which prohibits all pot.

Read the complete article.

Entrepreneurs Getting Jump on Medical Marijuana Laws, Entering New Markets Quickly | MMJ Business Daily

By Chris Walsh for MMJ Business Daily

Just days after the governor of Illinois signed off on the state’s medical cannabis law, a clinic focused on helping patients get MMJ cards when the program is up and running announced it was open for business.

Talk about hitting the ground running.

The opening of Good Intentions LLC and several other cannabis-related businesses in Illinois – including business consultancies and law firms – so soon represents a new trend in the MMJ industry.

…

“As time goes by and the market matures, the businesses in the industry mature along with it, which means they can anticipate opportunities more quickly and are building advocacy right into their initial budgets and business plans,” said Aaron Smith, executive director of NCIA.

Read the complete article at MMJ Business Daily.

Marijuana entrepreneurs are lining up to cash in | Seattle Business Magazine

By Michelle Goodman for Seattle Business Magazine

Here’s how they hope to profit—and what they stand to lose.

Jim Willett has never smoked pot. His teenage sons think he’s a square. A former Navy pilot, Willett spent a year flying drug interdiction patrols along the Washington coast, checking for ships carrying bales of marijuana. For the graying retiree, voting against the state’s legalization of recreational weed last fall was pretty much a given.

In January, Willett did an about-face. After learning about The ArcView Group, a San Francisco-based angel investment network for the marijuana industry, he signed on. “I was puttering around looking for things to do and this hit me like a lightning bolt,” says the 62-year-old Woodinville resident, who ran a waste recycling business for two decades. He has since invested more than $1 million in the legal weed market in Washington and Colorado. Think real estate, grow equipment, security systems, inventory tracking software and cannabis oil extraction devices—“basically, everything except the plant.”

Read the complete article at SeattleBusinessMag.com.

White House Won’t Say If Obama’s Medical Marijuana Stance May Be Swayed By Sanjay Gupta | The Huffington Post

By Sabrina Siddiqui for Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — The White House declined to weigh in Tuesday on whether President Barack Obama has changed his position on medical marijuana use after the president’s onetime choice for surgeon general, Sanjay Gupta, reversed his stance and apologized for misleading the public on the drug’s effects.

During the daily press briefing, CQ-Roll Call reporter Steve Dennis asked White House spokesman Josh Earnest if the administration had any reaction to Gupta’s Aug. 9 column, “Why I changed my mind on weed,” in which Gupta explores the discrepancy between the Drug Enforcement Administration’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug and scientific research demonstrating its benefits. Gupta, who serves as CNN’s chief medical expert, not only apologized for dismissing the evidence from medical marijuana patients, but said he had concluded that marijuana has a low potential for abuse and “very legitimate medical applications.”

Dennis also asked if Obama had personally been looking at the issue, given that national polls show rising support for marijuana legalization since he took office…

via White House Won’t Say If Obama’s Medical Marijuana Stance May Be Swayed By Sanjay Gupta (VIDEO).

California pot shop billed as world’s largest may stay open for now -judge | Reuters

By Ronnie Cohen for Reuters

(Reuters) – A medical marijuana dispensary billed as the world’s largest cannabis store may stay open while the city of Oakland fights a U.S. government effort to shut it down or seize the property, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

There has been a tug-of-war in California between federal and local authorities over cannabis sold for purported health reasons.

In February, Magistrate Maria-Elena James, the same judge who ruled on Wednesday, said the city had no right to intervene in a federal prosecutor’s civil-forfeiture action against the Harborside Health Center, which was featured on the Discovery Channel reality TV show “Weed Wars.”

New Poll Demonstrates Record Support for Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, Regulating Marijuana Like Alcohol

Phoenix, AZ – In a poll conducted January 9 and 10, Public Policy Polling found that 59% of Arizonans support the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, and 59% would vote “yes” on a future initiative to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. The poll of 600 Arizona voters was commissioned by the National Cannabis Industry Association. View the results at http://thecannabisindustry.org/AZ-survey-011113.pdf.

Despite multiple delays caused by governmental inaction and meritless lawsuits, the strictly controlled non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries mandated by 2010’s Proposition 203 are beginning to operate. Aaron Smith, Executive Director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, stated “Allowing seriously ill patients access to medical marijuana demonstrates compassion, but supporting a well-regulated medical marijuana system also benefits the broader community by allowing patients to obtain their medicine through safe and legal dispensaries rather than the criminal market. State officials should see this survey as a mandate to fully implement the law rather than continuing to waste taxpayer money on futile obstructionism.”

Smith highlighted the benefits of regulated marijuana sales, which include redirecting law enforcement efforts toward violent and serious crimes, creating sustainable jobs, generating tax revenues, and better restricting youth access to marijuana, noting that “It’s no surprise that nearly six out of ten voters support regulating the state’s entire marijuana market in order to keep marijuana behind the counter at licensed, tax-paying facilities rather than on the streets and under the control of violent drug cartels.”