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.

  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 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:

1. 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.
2. Patient cards would drop from $100, to $20.
3. City ordinances would be largely nullified by the enactment of this state question.
4. 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.

The chairman of the House Rules Committee informally declared today's committee meeting' the Fetgatter Show'; as Rep. Scott Fetgatter achieved overwhelming bipartisan support for his series of major reforms to medical marijuana policies.

• HB 3954 - Fetgatter - Medical marijuana; specifying manner by which distance between properties shall be measured; emergency. 
   This bill clarifies the 1000ft. distance from school properties in greater detail.
    It also strikes the old "certificate of compliance" rules from last year, and creates a much simpler one, just for first year of licensing under current operations.
    It also  allows reciprocities, so that visiting patients can attain their medicines while in Oklahoma. It may open Oklahomans to opportunities to attain medicines in other states that reciprocate.
• HB 3956 - Fetgatter - Medical marijuana; exempting transporter agents from residency requirement; emergency. 
   This complies with a recent federal court ruling and is advised by the Oklahoma Attorney General, regarding interstate commerce.
• HB 3957 - Fetgatter - Medical marijuana; authorizing dispensaries to sell certain products;
   This allows dispensaries who sell dried cannabis flower, to create 'prerolls' in smoking papers, without a separate processor license.
• HB 3959 - Fetgatter - Medical marijuana; creating Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority as a separate and distinct state agency; removing references to the State Department of Health and updating language; 
   This moves the current OMMA to a stand-alone agency, apart from the Oklahoma Dept. of Health, to avoid the bureaucratic problems of implementing innovations and allows more direct collaboration with the legislature.

  Oklahoma's nearly 10,000 Medical Marijuana Businesses (MMBs) have faced inconvenience, frustration, & deadly risks from the federal ban on banking services. Even paying taxes is a terrible problem for not only the shop owners, but also for the state employees at the Oklahoma Tax Commission.
  Finally, one Oklahoma bank has stepped up to provide a public safety and business convenience for this industry. BancFirst has started accepting deposits for tax payments to the State of Oklahoma. 
The long lines of proprietors at the State Tax Commission Office in Oklahoma City is now thinning out. 
  No, this isn't full service banking for dispensaries. Bancfirst isn't taking daily sales deposits or processing credit card sales, but it's the first statewide banking brand to form broad relationships with thousands of shops, growers, and processors.
  This gives BancFirst access to millions of dollars each month, as it passes through their branches. It relieves MMBs of the wasted time of traveling to OKC with thousands of dollars in cash. It makes the Oklahoma Tax Commission run so much more efficiently and calms the fears of the state workers who were handling millions in cash deposits at the OTC.

  Below you'll find the press statements from the OMMA and BancFirst, detailing this venture into MMB accommodations.
​  The soft rollout actually occurred last summer, but now it's getting even more efficient.

  Last night, OMMA Director, Travis Kirkpatrick, told a town hall meeting in Tulsa that about 1600 of the more than 2000 dispensary licenses issued, are actually showing signs of commerce in their monthly filings with the state.
  This leads a market analyst to compare how Oklahoma compares to several of the other 32 'sanctuary states' allowing medical cannabis distribution. 
  Much of the Oklahoma model is unprecedented and has garnered us as the "Wild West of Cannabis'.  Oklahoma has no quotas or caps on state licensing.  While some of the members of the State Board of Health signaled ambitions to use a bidding system, caps on license awarding, and county set-asides, The states' Attorney General slapped them a strong advisement that they lack any constitutional authority to any such actions.
  Much of the reason for Oklahoma's more libertarian model is because of our state's founders regard for citizen empowerment to go around the legislature & governor, to create laws via direct democracy. The Initiative petition has been the bane of many lawmakers who would rather concentrate power to their own committees. Some believe campaign contributions are another motivation. Lobby groups fund much of our state's legislative race funding.

  In a separate but similar application of commerce law, the Oklahoma Attorney General, Mike Hunter; told the State Liquor Agency, ABLE Commission; that the statutes requiring Liquor businesses to be owned by people with a 5 year residency requirement; is likely afoul of  federal interstate commerce dictates.
  Could  Oklahoma Marijuana laws be struck down, as well?
  ABLE had sought the AG's opinion in light of a recent federal ruling on a Tennessee law to restrict out-of-state wineries. He concluded;
​  "Your question is what effect, if any, the Tennessee Wine decision has on the validity of the residency requirements found in Section 4 of Article 28A of our State Constitution. We believe the U.S. Supreme Court would now hold those requirements to be unconstitutional."
  Another potential matter is the ban on out-of-state products being banned, while in-state versions are legal. This  would possibly open Oklahoma to cannabis products from Colorado. It certainly opens Oklahoma to trace hemp products.
  Protectionism is the term that Hunter finally alleges. He says the courts would ultimately accuse the legislature of being motivated in a way that the US Constitution does not allow.  At the ratification of the 1789 US Constitution, the states entered into an open trade agreement. Our constitution cannot tolerate this. It's one thing to ban a product from another state if you're also banning the local versions of the product or service. But a ban on Texas beef, for instance; would clearly be a violation designed to bolster Oklahoma Beef.

  The advocates and patients impacted by medical marijuana reforms are now scheduled to hold an event at the state capitol, next Thursday.  Leading attorney and industry consultant, Ronald Durbin  is very involved in this initiative.
  Durbin was successful in the summer of 2018, to push back against unconstitutional emergency Health Dept rules. The Attorney General ultimately advised the state to rescind those rules and issue a set which is within their constitutional authority.
  Last August, Durbin organized a march on the Health Dept. after the commissioner & Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) refused to meet with industry consultants to find a workable implementation of the new rules which became effective on Sept. 1st.  That day, the Commissioner of Health resigned. within days the OMMA director also resigned.
 Durbin issued this message;
"..​we are marching to protect 788 against unnecessary over regulation and limitation. We will be voicing our opinion about the problems created by the Legislature last year, and what bills that have been filed this session that will hurt medical marijuana patients and local businesses."

UPDATE: The author has pointed  out that the repeal is only of duplicative language. If that's so, then her bill is based only on a perceived fear that toddlers will run away from the daycares and go into licensed dispensaries and buy medicine which cost over $200 per ounce and only does cash sales.  No such restriction is put on other pharmaceutical shops.

  Deep within Rep. Jadine Nollan's bill to 'protect our babies from the shop down the street'; we see a little paragraph that contains no explanation. You're not supposed to notice it.  In fact, you're supposed to applaud any effort to repeal arcane and unenforceable statutes which no longer reflect the values of Oklahomans.
  But one university professor happened to read the language and do some checking. It's good that there are people willing to dig into the details and report on them. Clearly, none of the major media outlets have discovered the  disturbing attempts to target suffering patients, based on the treatment their physicians recommended.

  Leading MMB Attorney, Ron Durbin is urging formation of cooperative associations for growers, processors, & dispensaries. He expressed those sentiments last night at the Oklahoma Legislative Town Hall on Marijuana Policy.
  Durbin says that these business entities are not represented at the capitol and the result is bad laws & rules, which end up costing businesses more than what an effective lobbyist would cost.
 Perhaps a statewide association is more than what could be built in a cooperative format, but county associations are certainly doable in a workable format. Dispensaries may want to also form in a similar manner, especially in the bigger cities.  A series of local developments like this would easily foster better cooperative relationships with county and city officials. Agencies tasked with implementing state policy can then call together the members of the voluntary business associations and discuss what's coming, or inquire what adjustments the industry members want the county commissioners to consider.