A key Wyoming legislative committee last week voted to advance a bill that would ban hemp products with substances that have psychoactive properties such as delta-8 THC, despite reservations from some members of the panel that the bill has shortcomings. The bill, which seeks to ban psychoactive hemp products, was approved by the legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee on November 6 by a vote of 8-6.

The advancement of the bill comes despite reservations expressed by some members of the committee, including Republican committee co-chair Representative Art Washut, who said the bill was “not ready for prime time,” according to an article from the Wyoming Business Report.

“I made it a point in the past to support legislation coming out of committee that is ready for prime time,” Washut said. “We need a bill that we’re really comfortable with, and, unfortunately, I don’t think we’re there.”

The other co-chair of the Joint Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Bill Landen, agreed that the bill will likely be amended before it comes to a vote by the full legislature.

“I don’t have any doubt that this is a work in progress,” said Landen. “But I like the fact that this would at least be a step in what I think is a necessary direction.”

If passed as currently written, the legislation would prohibit the addition of synthetic substances or other additives to hemp products. The bill would also prohibit the production and sale of hemp products with more than 0.3% THC, while expanding the definition of THC to include similar “psychoactive” substances including delta-8. 

In testimony to the committee, Shane England of the Hemp Industries Association told lawmakers that they should not change the definition of hemp from the one contained in the 2018 Farm Bill, which defines hemp as cannabis plants with no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight. He warned against attempts to enact a total ban on THC, which he said “is a definition that hasn’t stood up in a single court case.”

The intent of the bill is to ban products with added or synthesized delta-8 THC. But delta-8 THC can also occur in trace amounts in hemp, making a total ban on the substance problematic. At the last meeting of the committee, officials from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation told lawmakers that there was no way for the DCI lab to test the difference between what was natural and what was synthetic.

Representative Ember Oakley, also a Republican, noted that the committee has been working on the bill since April, hearing testimony from the state crime lab, representatives of the hemp industry and law enforcement. She told her colleagues that enacting a ban on delta-8 THC is an important step for the legislature to accomplish. 

“In the end, the concept isn’t that difficult,” Oakley said. “This closes a hole that we’re hearing about delta-8 being abused, and, specifically, from younger people.”

Lawmakers Express Reservations

Democratic Representative Ken Chestek noted that the word “psychoactive” was not defined by the bill and suggested the lack of a clear definition could cause problems down the road.

“I’m thinking about somebody who says ‘I use CBD because it helps me relax.’ Is being relaxed psychoactive?” Chestek asked.

Brian Fuller of the state’s Legislative Service Office said that Chestek had raised a valid question, noting that there is currently no definition of the term “psychoactive” in hemp statutes that are already on the books. Senior Assistant Attorney General Kellsie Singleton agreed that a definition of “psychoactive” would help clarify which substances are included under the expanded definition of THC. 

“We did look at some case law to see if there was something out there,” Singleton said. “The closest thing we could find was ‘impairing a person’s physical or mental functioning.’”

Some committee members thought the ambiguity of the legislation could lead to unintended consequences, including a potential ruling that the ban would apply to CBD products.

“If for one instance I feel this bill is going to prohibit CBD … I’m not voting for it, and I’m guessing most everybody on the committee is not going to vote for it,” said Republican Representative Barry Crago.

Before voting the advance the bill, the committee heard testimony from interested parties, including stakeholders in Wyoming’s hemp industry. Paul Yohe of The Green Room in Casper, Wyoming said that the bill was “too broad.” He suggested that lawmakers focus on regulating THC in products instead of prohibiting THC completely.

“With more regulation comes more accountability – then we’ll be able to actually see what people are using in their products,” Yohe said.

Marcus Jones, the operations manager for Plant Hemp Co., said that delta-8  hemp products have helped his customers deal with anxiety, depression and sleep issues.

“We’re going about this all the wrong way,” Jones told the committee. “We should be regulating packages, how much of the psychoactive components can actually be in a product, instead of banning a product completely that has proven now over two years to help quite a few of Wyoming citizens with their ailments.”

The committee’s vote sends the bill to the full legislature, where further amendments to the measure are expected.

The post Wyoming Legislative Panel Advances Delta-8 THC Ban appeared first on High Times.

The post Wyoming Legislative Panel Advances Delta-8 THC Ban appeared first on Paradise Found.

Wyoming advocates are more motivated than ever to get a medical cannabis bill on the 2024 ballot, especially because of miscommunication in required signature counts from the Secretary of State’s office.

Advocates reported that inaccurate information was provided by the Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s office regarding how many signatures were actually needed for their initiatives to qualify for the 2024 ballot. According to the Casper Star Tribune, advocates believed they did not collect enough signatures that were necessary to submit the initiatives for ballot consideration based on the information they received from the office. They didn’t submit the signatures they already had based on that advice, but they actually had enough signatures to qualify.

The combined efforts of Compassionate Options Wyoming, Wyoming NORML, and the Wyoming Libertarian Party, all considered pursuing “political and legal options” due to the inaccurate guidance.

Two initiatives were initially going to be presented for qualification, including one which decriminalized possession for small amounts of cannabis, and another that legalized medical cannabis. Advocates initially announced they were unable to collect enough signatures earlier this year in March.

In late September, the office admitted its fault in recommending that the advocates needed 41,776 signatures, when they only needed 29,730 signatures. “…We are a whole new election team, and we have undertaken a comprehensive review of the initiative process in recent months, primarily due to an initiative currently filed with our office,” the office stated in an email, according to the Pinedale Roundup.

Wyoming NORML executive director Bennett Sondeno responded quickly to the statement, challenging the office’s process. “The people of Wyoming have the constitutional right to petition their government. The cannabis petitions should have been treated the same as the party affiliation initiative,” Sondeno said. “Secretary Gray and his ‘new’ team should have provided the same deference and professionalism to the cannabis petition. Why did they not undertake a ‘comprehensive review of the initiative process’ while there was a pending initiative on the table? Their behavior deprived Wyomingites of their rights,” said.

Historically, efforts for cannabis bills in Wyoming have been met with little support. Wyoming NORML attempted to get a medical cannabis initiative onto the ballot in 2016, but advocates only managed to collect 13,000 signatures, according to NORML Executive Director Bennett Sondeno. “It was pretty bleak,” he explained. Another attempt was made when collecting signatures in January 2022 for the 2022 ballot, but were unable to collect enough signatures back then as well.

The silver lining of the situation is that advocates did collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot once, and they can do it again. “Either way, this fight is not over. Patients, veterans and Wyoming families succeeded at collecting the signatures. This measure will be law no matter how hard they try to refuse our rights,” advocate Marshall Burt said.

In order for the two cannabis initiatives to still be on the ballot for 2024, it would require them to re-collect signatures from scratch before the legislative session begins. Sondeno called this “unrealistic,” and that it’s not enough time, and more difficult to collect signatures once winter has begun. Additionally, he estimated that it would cost advocacy groups $350,000 to collect enough signatures.

Both Sondeno and Oquirrh Mountain Strategies campaign consultant, Apollo Pazell, are hoping to see if they can have the deadline extended. “It was basically the entire process that was really convoluted and confused,” said Pazell. “I think this will be the first time that I’m saying this, but I think it’s something that legislators should look at.”

In Wyoming, ballot initiatives require a 15% signature count in two-thirds of the state’s counties, which according to the Casper Star Tribune, is the highest requirement in the country. Once advocates receive a petition form from the state, they have 18 months to collect enough signatures, which must be submitted before the start of the legislative session of the same year. In this case, before the legislative session begins in February 2024.

Cannabis bills have not made much headway in the Wyoming legislature in the past. House Bill 0106 was introduced in February 2022 with the intention of decriminalizing small amounts of cannabis but no further actions were taken to discuss or consider it.

Wyoming belongs to a small group of states that do not currently have legal medical cannabis, including Idaho, Kansas, and South Carolina. In addition to this, states such as Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Texas all have limited allowances for medical cannabis, but restrict its use to CBD only.

However, advocacy efforts are higher in some of these states, including Kentucky, whose governor has kept progress moving for medical cannabis accessibility. In March, Gov. Andy Beshear signed a medical cannabis bill and became the 38th state to legalize it, but it won’t take effect until January 2025.

The post Wyoming Advocates Adamant on Collecting Signatures for Ballot Initiatives appeared first on High Times.

The post Wyoming Advocates Adamant on Collecting Signatures for Ballot Initiatives appeared first on Paradise Found.

House Bill 0106 was introduced to the Wyoming legislature to potentially decriminalize small amounts of cannabis and reduce possession fines, if passed.

HB-0106 was filed by Representative Mark Baker on February 15, in addition to 11 co-sponsors, which includes House Speaker Eric Barlow and House Majority Whip Jared Olsen.

According to the current bill text, if passed, cannabis in solid form, such as edibles, ointments, and tinctures would receive new possession limitations. Liquid-form cannabis products would be limited to 72 ounces, and concentrated cannabis would be set at a maximum of 30 grams. The bill would also create “a civil penalty for possessing specified amounts of marijuana and eliminating criminal penalties for possessing specified amounts of marijuana, eliminating use of marijuana and possession of marijuana paraphernalia as crimes; eliminating the prohibition on practitioners prescribing marijuana; amending definitions; making conforming amendments; repealing a provision; and providing for an effective date,” the bill states.

In the 2021 legislative session, two legalization bills failed to pass. One was passed by the Judiciary Committee, which was led by Olsen in the role of chairman. “With my opening remarks, I would pose this question to the committee, which is simply: is Wyoming ready to legalize marijuana?” said Olsen. “That’s the question in front of this committee, that’s the topic that this legislature has not heard for over four years now, so I think this marks an important moment in Wyoming, where we are now discussing a topic that we’ve all avoided for many years.” Unfortunately, the bill stalled in March 2021.

Aside for the legislative effort to decriminalize cannabis in Wyoming, signatures are currently being gathered by advocates for two ballot initiatives to legalize; one aimed at decriminalizing cannabis, and another striving for medical cannabis legalization. Both initiatives are managed by NORML Wyoming and the national Libertarian Party, which has been actively collecting signatures and is holding a Wyoming NORML Lobby Day 2022 on February 24. The organization did not collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot deadline for 2022, but have since set their sights on 2024 as a new goal.

In response to a comment on Facebook regarding the 2024 delay, NORML Wyoming shared promising information about the effort. “We don’t yet have the signatures needed. We should wrap collections by the end of summer,” the organization posted. “We already have more than we got after the full 18 months last time! We are introducing both Initiatives as bills during the intervening legislative sessions, so we may see even faster action.” NORML Wyoming’s approach to decriminalization would make the first and second offenders pay a $50 fee, and other offenses would result in a $75 fine. The medical cannabis legalization initiative, currently referred to as the Wyoming Medical Marijuana Initiative (2024), would allow patients who suffer from a variety of medical conditions, such as “multiple sclerosis, ALS, AIDS, cancer, seizures, Alzheimer’s/dementia, PTSD, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, nausea/wasting, muscle spasticity, depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, and more,” to cultivate their own cannabis at home.

Chief Strategist of the national Libertarian Party, Apollo Pazell, confirmed that it would be ideal for legislators to take on the responsibility of crafting reliable cannabis bills. “We would prefer a legislative process,” he told the Casper Star Tribune. However, he also noted the challenge of opposition fundamentalist legislators. “The fundamentalist candidates have consistently taken a position against cannabis,” Pazell said. “[There are] many more fundamentalist legislators in there now than there used to be.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a little over half of the states in the US have decriminalized small amounts of cannabis. Residents in Wyoming are in support of cannabis. In a survey from 2020, conducted by the University of Wyoming, an estimated 54 percent of residents “support allowing adults in Wyoming to legally possess marijuana for personal use. This continues the steady increase in support observed from 2014, 2016, and 2018, when support rose from 37 percent to 41 percent to 49 percent, respectively.”

The post Wyoming Legislators Introduce Cannabis Decriminalization Bill appeared first on High Times.

The post Wyoming Legislators Introduce Cannabis Decriminalization Bill appeared first on Paradise Found.

Activists in Wyoming are circulating petitions for two ballot measures to reform cannabis policy in the state, including one to legalize medical marijuana and a second to reduce penalties for cannabis-related crimes.

Wyoming is one of about a dozen states that have not yet passed laws to legalize cannabis in some form, despite data from the University of Wyoming that shows a majority of residents support cannabis reform and 85 percent support legalizing medical cannabis. Last year, a bill to study medical marijuana and another measure to legalize and regulate cannabis died in the Wyoming House of Representatives without a hearing, despite both measures gaining the approval of the House Judiciary Committee. 

Activists Advance Two Ballot Proposals

Due to the legislature’s inability to pass cannabis legislation, the Libertarian Party of Wyoming is leading the campaign for two ballot initiatives to reform marijuana policy in the state. The first proposal would legalize the medicinal use of cannabis, while the second would reduce the penalties for cannabis offenses. 

To qualify an initiative to legalize cannabis for the ballot in Wyoming, organizers will have to collect enough signatures to total 15 percent of the vote cast in the 2020 general election, when voter turnout was particularly high because of the hotly contested presidential race. The initiative campaign is also required to collect signatures from 15 percent of voters in at least two-thirds of Wyoming’s 23 counties.

Approximately 278,000 people voted in the general election in 2020, meaning that activists will have to collect more than 41,000 qualified voter signatures for each initiative to qualify for the 2024 election. Initiative campaigns are given an 18-month window to collect the required signatures, setting a deadline for the cannabis legalization measure organizers until January 23 to meet the requirement.

After collecting signatures, organizers are required to submit petitions to the office of the Secretary of State for verification. If enough signatures from registered voters have been collected, the successful measures will be added to the ballot and passed into law if approved by a majority of voters. 

Organizers say that this year’s election is too soon to collect enough signatures for the 2022 ballot. So instead, they hope to qualify the measures for the 2024 general election. Apollo Pazell, chief strategist for the national Libertarian Party, told reporters that the campaign has so far collected about 30 percent of necessary signatures.

“Everything seems to be on pace,” Pazell said.

Not an Easy Proposition

Wyoming’s requirements to qualify a voter initiative for the ballot are among the most strict in the nation, according to election information website Ballotpedia. As a result, it is a little-used method of passing legislation in the state.

“The ballot initiatives are not as common here as they are in other states,” Ryan Frost, public information officer for the state Legislative Service Office, told Caspar Star-Tribune.

Campaign organizer Mario Presutti said that most people who support the effort to reform cannabis policy in Wyoming sign both petitions. But when appropriate, volunteers prioritize the medical cannabis initiative, which now has about five percent more signatures than the initiative to reduce cannabis penalties.

“We think that the patients need to be first,” Pazell said. “This has proven to be an invaluable medication for so many patients… that is being withheld for political reasons.”

Over the past three months, approximately 1,100 residents of Sheridan County, Wyoming have signed cannabis legalization petitions. Chief Travis Koltiska of the Sheridan Police Department warned voters to be sure they know what they are supporting at the ballot box.

“This has been a discussion across the state for many years, and there is language trying to sway people on both sides of the issue,” Koltiska told the Sheridan Press. ”When people look at this petition, they need to educate themselves on the facts. Because some good things might come of it, but some bad things might as well. It’s a complicated issue from our perspective.”

Koltiska acknowledged “there are substances that have proven to have medical benefits” in cannabis, although he is also concerned that cannabis legalization could lead to drug abuse and crime.

“The potential legalization of marijuana for medical use is concerning because there is potential for abuse of any substance that impairs cognitive ability,” Koltiska said. “It’s the same thing with alcohol. If alcohol wasn’t already legal, I’m not sure I would support legalization efforts based on what we see day-to-day in our department. Over 80 percent of our arrests are alcohol and drug-related, and it is difficult to be supportive of something that has the potential for serious abuse.”

Keith Goodenough, a former Wyoming Democratic state senator, tried to pass cannabis reform legislation in the early 2000s but was thwarted by more conservative politicians. He predicted that activists will face even more opposition from the right this time around.

“The fundamentalist candidates have consistently taken a position against cannabis,” he said. “(There are) many more fundamentalist legislators in there now than there used to be.”

The post Wyoming Activists Prepare Cannabis Reform Initiatives appeared first on High Times.

The post Wyoming Activists Prepare Cannabis Reform Initiatives appeared first on Paradise Found.

The post Wyoming Introduces Legislation to Regulate Cannabis appeared first on Paradise Found.

The post Wyoming Looks At Examples of Legal Cannabis In Neighboring States appeared first on Paradise Found.

The post Wyoming Native American Tribes Plan Vote on Legalizing Medical Marijuana appeared first on Paradise Found.