At Least We Have Weed
Checking in & pouring one out for Broccoli Mag.
Thursday, November 7, 2024
Time to read: About 5 minutes. Contains 1,031 words.
Good morning, dear readers (missed you!),
Well, here we are. 2016 again. And yet, it isn’t. The world is in a very different place than it was in 2016. We’re different. We’ve gotten more creative by necessity. Sharper. Our weed stronger. We learned how to connect and activate and pool resources and build anew amidst unimaginable challenges. Personally, right this second, my values and priorities are clearer than ever. I know exactly where I want and need to focus my energy, which is why I’m here, tending to this honest, radical, and open-minded community of cultivators (literal and figurative).
I let the newsletter schedule slip to put my head down on client work (and distract from global horrors) the past month, and I’ve felt noticeably unbalanced. This work I do for myself and for those who believe in this plant and in challenging outdated and unethical ways of doing business, and I feel called to double the fuck down.
Here’s to knowledge, to progress, and to linking arms to build a better future. Sending all of you positive vibes and suggesting a cup of licorice root tea if you smoked as much as I did yesterday.
One-Hitters: Cannabis News at a Glance
Even though it was a 55.7% Yes vote, Florida did not legalize adult use. Insane they have state legislation requiring 60% majority to pass??? In other legalization votes: North Dakota: No, South Dakota: No, and Nebraska: Yes to medical marijuana.
Oregon voted on a measure protecting employees of cannabis businesss right to organize. Measure 119 passed, meaning employers at cannabis retail and processing businesses are now required to sign a “labor peace agreement” with a labor union to receive a license from the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission. This effort was spearheaded by The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. I’ve written about how UFCW has taken on cannabis as a massive focus—they will likely take this effort to other states.
The very red state of Texas is warming to weed. The city of Dallas approved a measure decriminalizing cannabis. Proposition R prevents police from arresting or citing individuals for possessing up to four ounces of cannabis and from using the smell of cannabis as probable cause for searches and seizures.
A coalition of Texas hemp businesses sued the DEA for heavy-handed raids of Farm Bill-compliant operations. Following the arrest of a law-abiding vape shop owner—70-year-old Sabhie Khan, who “sat in shackles in a jail cell without bond for two days”—and eight other hemp business owners in the Allen, TX area, the Hemp Industry Leaders of Texas (HILT) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and local law enforcement officials. Khan reportedly takes great care to vet quality products, requiring a certificate of analysis for everything on his shelves. On their end, the Allen Police Department claims products sold by the shops in Allen had tested from 7% to 78% THC. Whoever is wrong/right here—we seem to be reaching a point where certificates of analysis mean almost nothing.
Kamala Harris probably wouldn’t have legalized cannabis. Even if she’d won and attempted to make good on her last-minute promise, Congress has more authority to fundamentally change cannabis laws than the executive branch. Now that there is a Republican majority in the House and Senate, I’m not holding my breath for banking reform, criminal justice reform, or the likelihood of alignment of federal cannabis policy with state policy any time soon.
The rescheduling process will continue progressing, in theory. Currently, there is an initial hearing scheduled for December 2 bringing all together the “designated participants” who will serve as witnesses for the potential impacts of rescheduling cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. That main hearing when this group actually testifies has been pushed out to early 2025.
Teens are smoking less, and girls are smoking more. Vaping is also down. Plenty of them are Zyn-ing more than ever, though.
California’s hemp ban passes its first hurdle. A judge denied the U.S. Hemp Roundtable’s petition to temporarily halt the emergency regulations banning hemp-THC sales within the state. Kush Queen founder Olivia Alexander took to IG Stories to vent about needing to likely move her hemp-derived THC operations out of state. It’s still unclear how the ban effects brands based elsewhere that ship within CA per 2018 Farm Bill allowances.
A cool collab between music and meme curator Jazz Dispensary and California cannabis brand Pure Beauty. The Golden Hour Experience includes a new strain from their innovative indoor farm, a curation of “sunbaked tunes from the vaults of Jazz Dispensary”, accessible via their redesigned, high vibration website or vinyl. I will be listening to it for the rest of the week.
Broccoli Magazine bids adieu. To be clear, Broccoli, as a publisher, isn’t going anywhere. The second edition of Mushroom People and a sick collab with the Instagram account @femalepentimento just dropped, and the celestially-centric Sun + Moon is in the works, plus a lot more. But the recently released issue 20 of the OG, cannabis-themed Broccoli Magazine will indeed be the last, and it’s a heady, bittersweet farewell. Broccoli not only gave me a platform as a cannabis-interested writer—it played a huge role in legitimizing the art of writing thoughtfully about weed.
I was featured as a subject and a writer in Issue 1, where I was referred to as a cannabis journalist for the first time ever. Over the years, my stories spanned expungement, stoner folklore, and the sustainable wind turbines atop Pure Beauty’s indoor grow. I interviewed musicians, perfumiers, advocates, and farmers. I read stories by other writers that made me laugh, cry, cut out and frame, and feel less alone as a woman who loves weed, weird art, cheeky humor, ancient rituals, and modern science. It was the publication so many of us had been waiting for, and then it delivered much more. I’m grateful for the Broccoliverse making space for Broccoli Talk and Sticky Bits to exist.
I want to say Thank You to Anja Charbonneau and the talented team she brought together and urge all of you to grab any issues you can to preserve your piece of cannabis culture legacy.
To creating the things we want to see in the world,
Lauren Yoshiko