Calling it a “nation-leading effort,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura T. Healey on Wednesday announced her intention to take executive action to pardon misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions in the commonwealth. 

If it is approved by the “Governor’s Council,” Healey’s office said it “would be the most comprehensive action by a governor since President Joe Biden pardoned federal marijuana possession convictions and called on governors to take similar actions in their states,” and “could impact hundreds of thousands of people.”

Per the official state website, the Massachhuestts Governor’s Council is “composed of eight individuals elected from districts, and the Lieutenant Governor who serves ex officio,” and it “provides advice and consent on gubernatorial appointments, pardons and commutations, and warrants for the state treasury.”

The governor’s office said that, if approved, the pardon “will apply to all eligible convictions, and most people will not need to take any action to have their criminal records updated,” as well as “to all adult Massachusetts state court misdemeanor convictions before March 13, 2024 for possession of marijuana (sometimes referred to as possession of a “Class D substance”).”

“Nobody should face barriers to getting a job, housing or an education because of an old misdemeanor marijuana conviction that they would not be charged for today,” Healey, a Democrat who is serving her first term after being elected in 2022, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We’re taking this nation-leading action as part of our commitment to using the clemency process to advance fairness and equity in our criminal justice system. We’re grateful for President Biden’s leadership on this at the federal level and proud to answer his call to take action in the states.” 

Other top state officials in Massachusetts, including Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, hailed the announcement of the pardon.

“Marijuana laws have significantly changed over the past decade, and it’s essential that our criminal justice system adjusts with them. Governor Healey’s proposed pardon represents an important step toward righting historic wrongs, particularly around our country’s misguided War on Drugs,” said Driscoll. “We thank the Governor’s Council for their careful consideration of this recommendation and look forward to continuing our progress to make Massachusetts a more fair and equitable home for all.” 

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell applauded the “Healey-Driscoll administration’s efforts to rectify historic racial disparities, including with this proposed pardon, and President Biden’s leadership at the federal level on the same issue.”

“Convictions for simple marijuana possession – which someone could not be charged with today – have led to the disproportionate incarceration of Black and brown people and made it nearly impossible for them to obtain a job, housing, educational opportunities and more. As the AG’s Office also works to address injustice and close the racial wealth gap, this proposed pardon meaningfully moves the Commonwealth in the right direction,” the attorney general said.

Democratic House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano, meanwhile, said the “decision from Governor Healey to pardon certain marijuana convictions is the right one, as it is another step towards rectifying decades of injustices stemming from the criminalization of cannabis.”

“This announcement is consistent with the Legislature’s intent during the passage of the 2018 criminal justice reform law, which was updated in 2022 when the Legislature passed further cannabis reforms, that allowed residents to seek expungements for convictions that are no longer crimes following voter-approved reforms,” Mariano said. 

As the statements from Healey and other officials referenced, the pardon takes a cue from President Biden, who in the fall of 2022 issued a pardon to thousands of Americans who were convicted of violating federal cannabis laws.

“Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit,” Biden said in a statement then. “Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. And while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”

At the time, the president also urged governors to take their own action to clear the records of such individuals at the state level.

“In October 2022, President Biden issued a presidential proclamation that pardoned many federal and D.C. offenses for simple marijuana possession offenses. In December 2023, the President expanded that pardon to include more offenses He also issued a call to Governors to take action to pardon marijuana convictions in their states and, in the State of the Union last week, the President directed his Cabinet to review the federal classification of marijuana,” Healey’s office explained. “Governor Healey has already taken historic action on pardons. She became the first Massachusetts Governor in decades to recommend pardons in her first year in office. She has pardoned a total of 13 people to date. She also issued new clemency guidelines to center fairness and equity in the criminal justice system.”

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Kentucky will devote tens of millions of dollars in support of psychedelic research as part of its fight against opioid addiction, the state announced on Wednesday. 

At a news conference held by the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron detailed the commission’s plans to explore new treatments for individuals suffering from those affected by opioid use disorder, a commitment that will include the allocation of more than $40 million for psychedelic research. 

“We cannot continue to lose over two-thousand Kentuckians [to addictions] each year,” Cameron said, as quoted by Psychedelic Alpha. 

In the announcement, the commission said that its proposal includes “investigating new treatments to reverse the chemical effects of opioid addiction, including opioid withdrawal.”

“Kentucky must overcome the opioid epidemic by any and all means necessary,” said Bryan Hubbard, Chairman and Executive Director of the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission (KYOAAC).  “As we begin the next phase in our fight against this crisis, we must explore any treatment option that demonstrates breakthrough therapeutic potential. Our goal is to investigate the creation of a new standard for treating opioid dependence, so we can finally end this cycle of pain in the Commonwealth.”

At Wednesday’s news conference, Hubbard said that “over the coming months, the commission will explore the possibility of devoting no less than $42 million over the next six years to the creation of public-private partnerships which can incubate, support and drive the development of ibogaine all the way through the FDA approval process,” according to Psychedelic Alpha. 

The money will come from a $26 billion settlement reached last year between multiple state and local governments and some of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies over their role in creating the opioid epidemic.

The Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission was created last year and charged with the task of distributing the more than $842 million that was awarded to the Commonwealth in last year’s settlements.

“The Commission is comprised of nine voting and two non-voting members and includes stakeholders from, among others, the prevention and treatment community, law enforcement, and victims of the opioid crisis,” the commission’s website explains.

The settlement resolved “more than 4,000 claims of state and local governments across the country,” according to Cameron’s website, and it was “the second-largest multistate agreement in U.S. history, second only to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.”

“Tentative settlement details were initially announced on July 21, 2021, and, after careful review, Attorney General Cameron signed the settlement on behalf of the Commonwealth. He was joined by a broad coalition of states and subdivisions in joining both settlement agreements, one with opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and another with the three pharmaceutical distributors: AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson,” the website explains. 

“The two settlement agreements require the distributors and J&J to pay billions of dollars to abate the opioid epidemic, totaling $26 billion over 18 years, with approximately $22.7 billion available for opioid abatement.”

Cameron appointed Hubbard to oversee the commission last year.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Hubbard expressed urgency to stem the tide of the epidemic.

“We must overcome the opioid epidemic by any and all humanitarian means necessary,” Hubbard said, as quoted by Psychedelic Alpha. “Our history demands it.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the “number of drug overdose deaths increased by nearly 30% from 2019 to 2020 and has quintupled since 1999.” 

“Nearly 75% of the 91,799 drug overdose deaths in 2020 involved an opioid. From 2019 to 2020, there were significant changes in opioid-involved death rates,” according to the CDC.

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Although Virginia adult-use cannabis sales were projected to begin no later than Jan. 1, 2024, the state’s adult-use cannabis sales plans have been stalled for the foreseeable future. 

Initially, adult-use cannabis was sent by a Democratic-controlled General Assembly to the desk of former Gov. Ralph Northam, who signed the legislation in April 2021. The law included a clause that required the General Assembly to reenact certain provisions, such as regulatory and licensing market structure. However in November 2021, the General Assembly shifted to Republican control, as did the House of Delegates, which ultimately led to the failure of provisional bills.

In January, a House of Delegates subcommittee rejected a Republican-sponsored cannabis bill proposed that would have allowed sales to begin prior to Jan. 1, 2024. Republican Delegate Keith Hodges, who sponsored the failed cannabis bill that would have created adult-use cannabis regulations, called the situation a “public health crisis” just before the bill was rejected on Jan. 25. “You can legally possess marijuana in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but you can’t legally purchase it,” Hodges said. “If we do nothing, we have a problem on our hands. We need to protect the citizens of Virginia from the illicit market.”

According to NORML Development Director and Virginia NORML Executive Director JM Pedini explained that the result of the vote “was entirely expected, but is still disappointing, and it spotlights House Republicans’ continued failure of leadership on cannabis policy,” Pedini said. “Without access to a regulated marketplace, consumers won’t know whether they’re getting a safe, tested product or one contaminated with potentially dangerous adulterants.”

“This vote is another huge disappointment for Virginians, the majority of whom favor swift access to retail sales,” Pedini continued. “Legislation providing regulatory oversight is the best way for the Commonwealth to protect cannabis consumers. By failing to take legislative action, lawmakers are electing to continue driving consumers to the unregulated, underground market.”

MJBizDaily suggests that the failure to pass these cannabis legislative efforts were in part because current Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin was pressuring legislators to defeat all cannabis bills.

On Feb. 14, Senate Bill 1133, which was sponsored by Sen. Adam Ebbin, was recommended to be passed on indefinitely. “It is legal to possess small amounts of cannabis, it is legal to grow your own cannabis,” Ebbin told the subcommittee before the bill was rejected. “Yet we are kind of dragging our feet on establishing a retail market that could provide hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, could provide a tested product for adults and could be kept out of the hands of children.”

During odd-numbered years, the Virginia General Assembly only meets for 30 days, and adjourned on Feb. 25, leaving legislators with no extra time to present an alternative.

Meanwhile in hemp, the Virginia House of Delegates (85 to 9 vote) and Senate of Virginia (23-17 vote) both passed a bill on Feb. 24 to create stricter regulations for Delta-8 hemp products. If passed, it would create new rules on labels, such as percentage and milligram amounts of THC in each Delate-8 product, as well as using any language that markets the products as a medical treatment of any kind. “I think this will go a long way in making sure that our communities are safe and that folks are buying what they purport to buy,” said House of Delegates Majority Leader Terry Kilgore.
The bill proposes that responsibility and management between the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority. Legislators such as Sen. Scott Surovell don’t believe that split control is the best course of action. “This is a first step toward a complete mess,” Surovell said. “And the reason we’re doing this is because somebody upstairs doesn’t want to talk about it.” The bill was recently sent to Gov. Youngkin, and is expected to be signed.

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Individuals enrolled in Massachusetts’ driver’s education program will receive a new lesson starting next year.

According to State House News Service, the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the program in the Bay State, “indicated Monday that is adopting the AAA curriculum, which is called ‘Shifting Gears: The Blunt Truth About Marijuana and Driving,’ in partnership with members of the Cannabis Control Commission.”

The outlet reports that the Registry of Motor Vehicles “plans a formal announcement on Friday at the Worcester Registry of Motor Vehicles,” and that it “indicated the curriculum will be adopted in January, and will update the driver education module to include research-based information on cannabis and an explanation of how tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, affects cognition, vision, reaction time, and perception of time and distance.”

Per local news station WCVB, the program will make Massachusetts “the first state in the nation with legal recreational marijuana to add lessons about cannabis impairment to driver’s education programs.”

“The current driver education module addressing impaired driving will be updated to include research-based information on cannabis, explaining how tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, affects cognition, vision, reaction time, and perception of time and distance,” officials with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation said, as quoted by WCVB.

In a statement quoted by State House News Service, the Registry of Motor Vehicles said that next year’s driver’s education enrollees will represent “the first generation of driver education students to be licensed since cannabis became legal in Massachusetts, and AAA research shows that impaired driving crashes may increase and continue to injure and kill motorists and their passengers.”

Such curricula will likely become even more prevalent as more states enter the era of legalization and end prohibition on recreational pot use. 

Last year, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, signaled that he wanted to address the problem of stoned driving in the state, which legalized weed in 2016.

Baker threw his support behind legislation called the “Trooper Thomas Clardy Law,” which bears the name of the late Massachusetts State Trooper Thomas L. Clardy, who died while making a traffic stop in 2016 after his vehicle was hit by a motorist who had THC in his blood.

“This legislation aims to make the Commonwealth’s roads safer and save lives, and we are grateful to the Clardy family for offering their family’s name and support for this legislation, which will help us avoid impaired driving incidents in the future,” Baker said in a statement at the time. “This bill will provide law enforcement officers with more rigorous drug detection training and will strengthen the legal process by authorizing the courts to acknowledge that the active ingredient in marijuana can and does impair motorists. The bill draws on thoughtful recommendations from a broad cross-section of stakeholders, and we look forward to working with our legislative colleagues to pass this bill and make our roads safer.”

But the legislation went up in smoke in the Massachusetts legislature earlier this year after some Democratic lawmakers expressed concern over the reliability of the testing devices.

Officials in Virginia are currently considering their own potential mechanisms to rein in the problem of marijuana-impaired driving, after the Commonwealth legalized recreational cannabis use last year, becoming the first state in the U.S. south to do so.

And in New York, which legalized marijuana last year and is currently preparing to open its regulated weed retailers, officials are said to be “scrambling” to find a reliable marijuana DUI test. 

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Officials in Virginia are exploring ways to deter drivers from getting behind the wheel after getting stoned, the latest effort by the commonwealth to smooth out its new adult-use cannabis law.

The Virginian-Pilot reports that the “the Virginia Crime Commission — an arm of the General Assembly tasked with studying issues of criminal law and making recommendations — [has] discussed some potential steps police and sheriff’s offices can use to crack down on driving while high,” and that the “commission is expected to meet Dec. 5 to draft their proposals for the legislative session that begins in January.”

“One thing under consideration at the commission’s Nov. 16 meeting: changing state law to allow roadside screening devices in which officers and deputies can have a driver swab his or her cheek in order to gather saliva to test for marijuana and other drugs,” the outlet reported this week. 

“Virginia officials said the ‘oral fluid tests’ under consideration to detect marijuana intoxication are similar to a ‘preliminary breath test’ — a roadside test for alcohol. The test results, while not admissible in court, can help determine when the cannabis was consumed, and can be combined with other factors to get probable cause for extensive blood testing,” the publication continued. 

Kristen Howard, the executive director of the Virginia Crime Commission, told the Virginian-Pilot that officers can “swab the inside of someone’s mouth, and you get a positive or negative and it just gives you some indicators.”

“It’s designed to hone in on the recentness of use — how many hours ago you used this drug,” Howard explained.

The moves come within a month of a survey from the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority (CCA), which showed that a high number of Virginians are comfortable toking and driving. 

According to the survey, roughly 23% reported consuming pot in the past three months and about 14% of drivers in the state said that they have driven high several times in the past year. 

The survey also showed that a third believe marijuana improves their ability to drive safely. 

Virginia officials sounded the alarm on the survey results.

“These results are worrying and underscore the General Assembly was right to direct the CCA to undertake a safe driving campaign,” said John Keohane, a board chair of the Cannabis Control Authority.

Jeremy Preiss, the CCA’s Acting Head and Chief Officer for Regulatory, Policy, and External Affairs, said that the agency must make the issue a priority.

“As a public safety and public health agency, the CCA currently has no greater priority than creating a well-funded, aggressive, and sustained campaign aimed at reducing the incidence of marijuana-impaired driving,” Preiss said. 

Virginia legalized recreational cannabis last year, becoming the first state in the south to do so. 

But that came under a Democratic governor, Ralph Northam. Republicans took back the governor’s mansion last year when Glenn Youngkin was elected. 

Youngkin said from the start that he has no interest in rolling back the marijuana law, but his election––as well as Republicans winning back control of the state House of Delegates––has stymied its implementation.

The Democratic-controlled state Senate passed a bill earlier this year to fast-track the launch of recreational pot sales, but the legislation was rejected in the House.  

Prior to taking office earlier this year, Youngkin spoke about his vision for the new cannabis program.

“When it comes to commercialization, I think there is a lot of work to be done. I’m not against it, but there’s a lot of work to be done,” Youngkin said. “There are some nonstarters, including the forced unionization that’s in the current bill. There have been concerns expressed by law enforcement in how the gap in the laws can actually be enforced. Finally, there’s a real need to make sure that we aren’t promoting an anti-competitive industry. I do understand that there are preferences to make sure that all participants in the industry are qualified to do the industry well.”

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A week from today, medical cannabis patients in Virginia will no longer need to present a card at a dispensary in order to obtain their prescribed products.

That is thanks to a bill that was signed into law in April that lifted the requirement “for patients to register with the state’s Board of Pharmacy for a license,” according to local news outlet WRIC.

But, per the text of the legislation, the new law still maintains “the requirement that patients obtain written certification from a health care provider for medical cannabis,” while also directing the Board of Pharmacy to “promulgate numerous regulations related to pharmaceutical processors.”

The new law, which officially takes effect on July 1, is aimed at improving the efficiency of the process for patients to obtain medical cannabis in Virginia.

Once it takes effect next week, those patients will be able to obtain their cannabis products from stores as soon as they get a written certificate from a health care provider.

Along with “letting them avoid waiting for a license from the board, a process that can take months, the law will also allow patients to not have to pay a $50 application fee,” WRIC reported.

The measure was signed into law more than two months ago by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican serving in his first term.

In addition to removing the registration requirement, the law also “amends the definition of ‘cannabis oil’ by removing the requirement that only oil from industrial hemp be used in the formulation of cannabis oil.”

Cannabis advocates celebrate the bill becoming law in April, saying it will provide a needed remedy for thousands of Virginia medical weed patients. According to WRIC, data from “Virginia’s Board of Pharmacy shows nearly 47,000 total registered patients and thousands of pending applications, a backlog that has forced the board to hire new workers.”

“These legislative improvements will bring great relief to the thousands of Virginians waiting to access the medical cannabis program,” said JM Pedini, NORML’s Development Director and the Executive Director of Virginia NORML. “We hear from dozens of Virginians each week who are struggling with the registration process and frustrated by the 60-day wait to receive their approval from the Board of Pharmacy.”

Virginia’s medical cannabis law began in 2017, although it initially only permitted “patients suffering from intractable epilepsy to use some types of cannabis oil with a doctor’s certification,” according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

The program has since expanded to include other cannabis products such as edibles and bud.

Last year, Virginia went a step further when it legalized recreational cannabis use for adults, becoming the first state in the southern U.S. to do so.

But that law took effect under a Democratic governor and a Democratic-controlled legislature, and it also launched without a regulated market for cannabis sales in place.

As WRIC put it, that meant that “the commonwealth’s medical cannabis program became the only legal market for people.”

Youngkin took office earlier this year, saying that he had no intention of overturning the law that allowed personal possession, but the outlook for retail sales still appears uncertain.

“When it comes to commercialization, I think there is a lot of work to be done. I’m not against it, but there’s a lot of work to be done,” Youngkin said in an interview not long before he took office. “There are some nonstarters, including the forced unionization that’s in the current bill. There have been concerns expressed by law enforcement in how the gap in the laws can actually be enforced. Finally, there’s a real need to make sure that we aren’t promoting an anti-competitive industry. I do understand that there are preferences to make sure that all participants in the industry are qualified to do the industry well.”

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