[caption id="attachment_9326" align="alignright" width="300"] Sen. Bernie Sanders[/caption]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) introduced a bill Wednesday that would repeal all federal penalties for possessing and growing marijuana, allowing states to establish their own marijuana laws. The bill is available online at https://www.mpp.org/sandersbill.

The “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015” strikes all references to marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act, but retains penalties for transporting marijuana from states or jurisdictions where it is legal to those where it is not. It is the fourth marijuana policy reform bill to ever be introduced in the Senate, and it is the first that proposes ending marijuana prohibition at the federal level.

Earlier this year, Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY), and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced medical marijuana legislation, known as the CARERS Act. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a bill to address the tax status of marijuana businesses, and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced a measure that would allow marijuana businesses to access banking services.

Last month, Sanders became the first-ever major-party presidential candidate to express support for legalizing and regulating marijuana for adult use.

[caption id="attachment_9333" align="alignright" width="215"] Matt Bevin[/caption]

On Tuesday, Kentucky voters took to the polls and elected Matt Bevin governor. Bevin, a Republican and Tea Party favorite, has acknowledged what the vast majority of voters know: “There is unequivocal medical evidence” that medical marijuana is beneficial for certain conditions. He defeated prohibitionist Jack Conway (D) 52.5% to 43.8%.

With House Speaker Greg Stumbo (D) sponsoring medical marijuana legislation, next year holds great promise for the state taking a serious, bipartisan look at a more compassionate approach.

Americans living in 23 states and the nation’s capital can legally use and access medical cannabis, and upwards of 80% of Americans support allowing the seriously ill to use this beneficial medicine. Yet, some politicians — including defeated gubernatorial candidate Jack Conway — still haven’t gotten the message.

If you are a Kentucky resident, please make sure your lawmakers hear: Voters expect them to end the cruel status quo and to stop forcing patients to risk their freedom to improve their health.

We’re excited to announce the Pledge 4 Growth campaign to benefit the work of the Marijuana Policy Project. The concept is simple: industry business owners can donate 0.420% of their gross revenue to MPP on a quarterly basis to help end marijuana prohibition in the U.S. We want to make it easy for you to change laws and change history!

MedMen, a marijuana consulting and management firm, is a founding partner and donor to Pledge 4 Growth.

The legal marijuana industry exists today because of the hard work of advocates over the past few decades. And the industry’s outlook is better than ever. In order to keep that outlook positive, industry leaders must support advocates’ ongoing efforts. By pledging to donate just .420% of your gross revenue to MPP, you can help support the organization’s lobbying and coalition-building work, its tax-deductible public education projects (via MPP Foundation), and its political action committee (MPP PAC).*

MPP is dedicated to ending marijuana prohibition and replacing it with a regulated marijuana market for adults and medical patients. You can help us continue to build an environment in which marijuana businesses can operate legally and be treated fairly.

Will you join Pledge 4 Growth and support our work alongside industry leaders like MedMen? Let your customers know that you are committed to improving and advancing marijuana policy reform by displaying the Pledge 4 Growth seal on your website, social media, company collateral, or storefront.

To learn more about the campaign, please visit www.pledge4growth.com or email Chris Rempert at membership@mpp.org.

* The Marijuana Policy Project supports ballot initiatives via separate campaign committees in each of the states in which it works.

California voters are ready to end marijuana prohibition in 2016 and replace it with a more sensible system. That is exactly what the Adult Use of Marijuana Act will do, and that is why MPP is proud to support it. We look forward to working with the initiative proponents and doing whatever we can to help pass this measure and make history in California next year.

Under the proposed initiative, marijuana will be regulated, taxed, and treated similarly to alcohol. Adults will no longer be punished simply for possessing it, and law enforcement officials will be able to spend more time addressing serious crimes. It will take marijuana sales out of the underground market and marijuana cultivation out of our national forests. The fact that it will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue each year is a huge bonus that will benefit all Californians.

Last night, a controversial Ohio ballot initiative that would have regulated marijuana for adults was voted down by a relatively wide margin, marking the first time that a major state referendum to make marijuana legal for adults has failed since 2010. However, the defeat of a marijuana-related ballot initiative in the Buckeye State will have no bearing on the outcomes of several marijuana-related initiatives expected to appear on state ballots next year.

A proposal to make marijuana legal for adults and regulate it like alcohol has already qualified for the November 2016 ballot in Nevada, and similar measures are expected to qualify for the ballots in Arizona, California, Maine, and Massachusetts. The measures do not include the widely unpopular “monopoly” language included in the 2015 Ohio initiative that limited the commercial cultivation of marijuana to only 10 predetermined producers. The 2016 initiatives are also expected to benefit significantly from heightened voter turnout during a presidential election.

MPP is supporting several of the 2016 initiative efforts. We neither supported nor opposed the Ohio initiative this year.

“It’s pretty obvious that the outcome in Ohio does not reflect where the nation stands or the direction in which it is heading when it comes to marijuana policy," said MPP's Mason Tvert. "It only reflects where Ohio voters stand on a specific and rather unique proposal in an off-year election. It will not have any bearing on the outcomes of the initiatives that we expect to appear on other states’ ballots in 2016.

“When voters in Nevada or Massachusetts get to the ballot box one year from now, they are not going to be thinking about what happened in Ohio a year earlier. They are going to be thinking about the problems marijuana prohibition has caused their states for so many years and the benefits of replacing it with a more sensible system. These initiatives will also benefit from heightened voter turnout during a presidential election year. The more voters that turn out, the more support we tend to see for marijuana policy reform.

“Polls show a strong and growing majority of Americans think marijuana should be legal for adults. There is a lot of momentum building behind the movement to end marijuana prohibition heading into 2016. Election Day was relatively uneventful this year, but next year it will be truly historic.”

New Approach South Dakota (NASD) is collecting signatures for a proposal to make medical marijuana legal! This ballot initiative will appear on the 2016 ballot if supporters can collect enough signatures by November 9. That’s only a week away!

To help get the measure past the finish line, contact NASD’s Melissa Mentele at melmentele@yahoo.com.

If the proposal appears on the 2016 ballot and is approved by the voters, it would:

-- Legalize the medical use of marijuana for patients with a medical practitioner’s certification and one of several listed conditions, including cancer, AIDS/HIV, seizure disorders, PTSD, and severe pain;
-- Allow patients and their caregivers to possess up to three ounces of cannabis and grow six plants;
-- Create a licensing system to provide patients with safe access to medical cannabis, allow businesses to process, dispense, and test medical cannabis products; and
-- Prohibit public smoking and driving under the influence of marijuana.

The full measure can be viewed here. Support for compassionate medical marijuana policy is an urgent matter for some South Dakotans. We encourage residents to contact NASD to ask how you can help support the initiative.

Today, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services announced the opening of a pre-registration process for the therapeutic use of cannabis program. The announcement, which appears on the department’s website, explains that patients and their designated caregivers may now submit their applications and that dispensaries are expected to open in the first quarter of 2016. The application forms are now available online.

Unfortunately, the department still says it will not begin issuing ID cards until the first dispensary is ready to open. This means patients could continue to be without legal protections for several more months. However, at least it is now possible for patients to submit applications rather than simply waiting for the program to become operational.

We encourage patients to pre-register, as this will reduce the chances the department will experience a backlog when it begins issuing ID cards.

Please share this news with your friends and family, and especially with any patients you know who have been waiting to benefit from this program.

Over the weekend, the November 2015 issue of the Delaware Register of Regulations was published, expanding the legal protections of the state’s medical marijuana act to reach more individuals. The published regulations officially added "autism with self-injurious or aggressive behavior" to the list of conditions, giving doctors one more treatment option should they think it would benefit their patients.

The condition was added after a petition to do so was submitted to the Department of Health and Social Services. The department took testimony and conducted its own research on the matter, and it ultimately concluded that the petition had merit and the condition should be added. This is the first condition to be added by the petition process in Delaware.

Thank you to everyone who spoke in support of the petition, as well as those who attended the Medical Marijuana Act Oversight Committee meeting last week to share your experience with the program to date.

Medical marijuana unexpectedly dominated much of the news coverage following a recent debate between the major party candidates for Kentucky governor, Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway.

Conway, Kentucky's former Attorney General, tried to dismiss the issue from serious consideration. “I don’t want to hear from some hipsters out in Hawaii saying Kentucky needs medical marijuana,” he reportedly said. Bevin, on the other hand, acknowledged “there is unequivocal medical evidence” that medical marijuana is beneficial for certain conditions.

[caption id="attachment_9298" align="alignright" width="200"] Matt Bevin[/caption]

Bevin made it clear that he does not support legalization for adult use, but he also acknowledged that prohibition has been unsuccessful:

“We’re on the campus of a university,” the Republican said. Addressing the students in the audience of one thousand, he asked: “Is it not already easy for you to find this on the streets? Come on! Who are we kidding? The only people who can’t get it are the people who abide by the law!”

For information on how and where to vote in the election on November 3, visit the Kentucky State Board of Elections’ Voter Information Center.