Nigel O'Mally

Durbin Outlines 2nd Major Overhaul Of Marijuana Law

3/13/2020

Oklahoma's freedom-minded citizens are independent thinkers. It would follow that our best policies would show originality. Cannabis medicine is one example of that.

Attorney Ron Durbin has taken on a major role in negotiating legal reforms with the Oklahoma legislature and state agencies. Some say they are seeing a new 'kinder & gentler' form of Ron Durbin. Not the litigating, fire-breathing monster of the courtroom. Maybe his recent marriage can be credited for the make-over?
Thursday night, Durbin gave an extended review of a massive new piece of legislation (HB3228) coming out of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
There are massive new features and changes coming, if this language survives and the senate & governor approve the reforms. Here are a few of them:

Agency inspections will ramp up and be coming to all commercial facilities without the 24-hour notice that there used to be.
A state council of marijuana industry experts will have enhanced official advisory status with the state agency overseeing the policies.
All marijuana paraphernalia will be decriminalized, whether the person has a medical card or not.
Dispensary setback zones shrink from the current 1000 ft from schools, to 300 ft (same as liquor dealers). But it measures to school property perimeters, not entrances.

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Oklahoma Tax & Regulatory Policy Creates A Model Cannabis Boom

3/9/2020

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Today we have a huge growth in Oklahoma's economy partly due to the pristine rollout of our Medical Marijuana program. Are there problems with it? Oh, yeah. But several wise policies fell into place and a few heros took a stand against efforts to derail the Oklahoma model.
'Reaganomics' is a term that economists coined to describe the policies that President Reagan successfully implemented in the 1980s to spur on a massive economic growth in the US economy. But the old Roosevelt mindset fought hard to derail it, in reagan's day. There are some Oklahoma Republicans who have recently resorted to Roosevelt behaviors.
The Associated Press just published an article which hit to top of the Drudge Report over the weekend. The story by Sean Murphy details how massive the size of the economic investment is. Over 10,000 medical marijuana business licenses have been issued. That makes Oklahoma the 2nd largest in the nation, just behind Oregon. But when you consider that Oregon & all the west coast is in full repeal of the marijuana prohibition, Oklahoma is in uncharted waters of huge medical marijuana infrastructure.

The most well-run Cannabis operations are starting to emerge.

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SQ811: Highly-Taxed Marijuana Without A Patient Card

3/5/2020

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We have a 4th version of marijuana legalization filed at the Secretary of state's office in less than 3 months. This one is also a constitutional amendment. The legislature, agencies, and courts, would not be able to change the language. Only a federal mandate could supersede the enactment.

The recent Tennessee Winery case which went to the Federal Supreme Court is already contradicting multiple mandates in SQ811. Interstate Commerce rights in the US Constitution do not allow a state to ban people from commerce during a waiting period of years after establishing residency. While this flaw does not kill the whole amendment, it demonstrates that the effort lacked proper research and broad input.
Here's what else we saw:

This attempt would put a 25% tax on all cannabis products, unless a resident has a patient card or is a patient in a reciprocating other state.
Patient cards would drop from $100, to $20.
City ordinances would be largely nullified by the enactment of this state question.
Cities & counties would see their cut of the excise tax drop to about 1% of the gross sales of cannabis product.

We scanned all 40-some pages that the Secretary of State posted, but is was a poor quality image PDF. So we did our best to recreate a text file and make it available. It's posted below. Yes, it has several grammatical errors and misspells. In just a couple hours I saw enough flaws to be embarrassed by this representation of writing constitutional law.

Leading Oklahoma Cannabis Industry attorney, Ronald Durbin, posted a cursory video review of the filed document and gave both a scathing and complimentary reaction to the document.
His statements seem to say that this could be pulled and refiled into an excellent statutory initiative petition.
We embedded his video in the column to the right.

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Nigel O'Mally

Nigel heavily focuses on the medical research and drug policy topics at SoonerPolitics, from an international perspective & a background in homeopathic herbs and agrarian culture.

Durbin Outlines 2nd Major Overhaul Of Marijuana Law

Oklahoma Tax & Regulatory Policy Creates A Model Cannabis Boom

SQ811: Highly-Taxed Marijuana Without A Patient Card

Nigel O'Mally

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