White House staff are being fired for admitting to past marijuana use. The Biden administration has admitted to firing at least five staff members, suspending several others, and placing even more staffers into a remote work program as punishment for previous consumption.

Vice President Kamala Harris has openly joked about her former cannabis use, yet faces no backlash from the administration. 

Despite being known for its liberal policies, Washington, D.C. still doesn’t have a recreational market. But that could be about to change. 

One way to reduce opioid overdose death rates in American communities may be to expand legal access to another, less lethal drug. A study published in January 2021 in the BMJ suggests that U.S. counties that have more cannabis dispensaries also have lower opioid-related deaths. 

District of Columbia home-growers are celebrating the arrival of COVID-19 vaccinations by giving away free weed, cannabis reform group D.C. Marijuana Justice (DCMJ) has announced.

The campaign, dubbed ‘Joints for Jabs,’ will see the group distribute free bags of cannabis outside of vaccination centres.

“We are looking for ways to safely celebrate the end of the pandemic and we know nothing brings people together like cannabis,” says DCMJ co-founder Nikolas Schiller.

As the country’s working class awaits word on the next stimulus package, Congress is making sure none of the money will be going to advance any cannabis causes. 

In the past five months, a significant number of DC voters have changed their tune about drug policy. Poll results released on September 2 by the Campaign to Decriminalize Nature DC show that three in five, or 60%, of DC voters support Initiative 81, the “Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020,” which aims to decriminalize plant and fungi medicines, making them the lowest priority for law enforcement. 

The results mark a 9% increase in support from April 2020. The poll, sponsored by the New Approach PAC and conducted by the polling firm FM3 Research, surveyed likely November 2020 voters via 620 live telephone interviews from August 16 to August 24, 2020. 

The most lenient states permit consumers to purchase almost every CBD type irrespective of its source or intended use.

As of 2018, all 50 states have officially legalized the use of hemp-based CBD products. In the United States, governing officials initially classified CBD, hemp, and marijuana as harmful substances. However, recent medical insight encouraged federal authorities to legalize industrial hemp and CBD on a national level.

For routine CBD consumers, legalization may be good news. Though CBD-based products are manufactured and distributed throughout the United States, you’ll need to remember that each state has set its own rules regarding CBD use.

Five years after the legalization of cannabis in Washington, D.C., racial bias is still prevalent in arrests for marijuana-related offenses in the nation’s capital, according to an analysis of police records by the Washington Post. Between 2015 and 2019, nearly 90% of those arrested for cannabis-related crimes in Washington, D.C.

The history of cannabis laws and regulations in the United States is a complicated, convoluted affair that has arguably only gotten more confusing as more and more states launch legal medical and recreational marijuana programs. The result can sometimes be, well, a bit odd.

The following is a short list of some of the stranger cannabis regulations currently on the books in the US. 

1. Don’t transport marijuana by boat in California 

Make sure not to run fowl of the law in California. (wiroklyngz/123rf)