The cannabis world is currently in the middle of what has become one of the largest and most important industry events: MJBizCon.

Hosted in Las Vegas, the annual conference and trade show has seen explosive growth in recent years. So much so that the city of Las Vegas has just announced plans to extend the event. Beginning next year, the three-day expo will become a weeklong cannabis event.

Introducing “MJBizCon Week”

This year’s MJBizCon kicked off this week in Las Vegas. It started on Wednesday, November 14, and ends on Friday, Nov. 16. The three-day event features a huge number of exhibits, presentations, and opportunities for cannabis players to network and learn more about what’s going on throughout the industry.

Yesterday, event organizers announced that the conference and trade show is going to expand to become a weeklong event. The change will begin next year.

The decision to launch MJBizCon Week was spearheaded by event organizers and officials from the city of Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada.

“The City of Las Vegas and Clark County have officially proclaimed the debut of ‘MJBizCon Week’ surrounding the annual MJBizCon Conference & Expo beginning in 2019,” organizers said in a press release.

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Ohio’s medical cannabis law went into effect in September 2016. But the program’s implementation has faced a number of delays and setbacks. As a result, the state only began issuing licenses in September of this year. So far, Ohio has approved 300 doctors to recommend medical cannabis program. Regulators process and approve more applications every month. But the thousands of doctors who work for some of the state’s largest healthcare providers, including MetroHealth, University Hospitals, and the Cleveland Clinic, will not be able to recommend medical cannabis to their patients, whether or not they obtain a license to do.

Ohio’s Three Biggest Healthcare Providers Bar Medical Cannabis Recommendations

The three northeast Ohio-based healthcare providers have all issued statements announcing their policy to prohibit their doctors from making medical cannabis recommendations. The announcements came shortly after an Ohio medical marijuana meeting last week in Cleveland.

Each healthcare network cited a different concern for their policy stance, according to Cleveland.com. University Hospitals spokesperson Katelyn McCarthy cited “the discrepancy between state and federal law with regard to the legality of marijuana use” as the reason UH doctors are barred from recommending medical cannabis on any UH campus. University Hospitals employs more than 4,000 providers.

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The National League of Cities – which represents nearly 20,000 cities – has passed two resolutions urging the federal government to reschedule marijuana and to respect state laws that legalize the substance.

In their resolutions the League calls on the feds to remove marijuana as a schedule 1 controlled substance, and to pass legislation “that would ensure states and local governments have the ability to establish laws and regulations on the manufacturing, distribution, and sale of medical and adult-use cannabis within the state.” This is the first time the group has called on the government to reschedule marijuana.

The League also passed a resolution calling for a resolution in the conflict between state and federal cannabis laws and “provide guidance to financial institutions that results in the cannabis market having access to the federally regulated banking system.” This resolution is similar to one the group has passed in previous years.

In addition, in their resolutions the League calls for the addition of federal regulations overseeing “the manufacturing, distribution and sale of legal medical and adult-use cannabis”.

The National League of Cities was founded in 1924 and represents over 19,000 cities, towns and villages.

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Those looking to play a role in the development of medical uses of cannabis in the United States, listen up; Uncle Sam needs you. As reported by Marijuana Moment, a listing posted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse via the Federal Business Opportunities website last week asked for “capability statements” from businesses with the capacity to produce a variety of marijuana strains and products. Prospective firms must also be equipped with storage space for up to 5000 kilograms of cannabis stock.

The posting seems to be excellent news for those who have been waiting for the US to step up the cannabis stock available for critical drug trials. Such projects can only proceed with federally authorized marijuana and only one farm has been approved by the feds to provide such a supply. A University of Mississippi site currently holds the only authorization—as it has since it was approved way back in 1968.

What could have caused this long-awaited entrée to the expansion of cannabis science? Many will point to the recent resignation by request of Trump of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions’ well-known reputation as a salty adversary of legal cannabis may have played a major role in slowing

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This is National Epilepsy Awareness Month, with a campaign designed to raise awareness about the neurological disorder that affects around 200,000 new patients each year. Once considered a fringe treatment for epilepsy, cannabis has now moved to the forefront of epileptic research and will be a focus of the Cannabis and Epilepsy Symposium on November 17 in Denver.

Thanks to new discoveries surrounding cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis and hemp, those suffering from certain forms of epilepsy have seen dramatic drops in seizures without the side effects that often came with pharmaceutical drugs. Epidiolex, a marijuana-derived CBD drug, was even approved by the Drug Enforcement and Food and Drug administrations earlier this year, while over forty states in the country have explicitly approved CBD for medical use.

– Read the entire article at Westword.

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A bi-partisan duo of congressmen from Massachusetts and Florida will co-sponsor a trio of bills that, together, would help make the Department of Veterans Affairs more responsive to veterans who use and are interested in seeking medical cannabis treatments. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat and former Marine Corps office who fought in Iraq, and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz will introduce the bills in the next legislative session, Moulton announced Wednesday.

Rep. Seth Moulton Prepares Volley of House Bills to Provide Cannabis to Veterans

Despite numerous previous efforts to pass legislation that would grant veterans access to medical cannabis treatments through the VA, the Republican-led House has blocked any significant progress on the issue. There were signs, in mid-2017, that Congress would pass a bill allowing VA doctors to issue medical cannabis recommendations for states with legal medical use. For the first time, the amendment made it out of committee. But a House committee blocked it weeks later, sidelining the legislation entirely.

In response to the legislative failures, veterans sought alternatives, often at high cost. Veterans who disclosed their medical cannabis use to their VA doctors risked losing out on prescription medication and other benefits they earned for their years

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Half of the 10 biggest marijuana companies trading in Canada are now U.S. based.

Canada’s competitive advantage in cannabis is disappearing.

Half of the 10 biggest marijuana companies trading in Canada are now U.S. based, including MedMen Enterprises Inc. of Los Angeles, Curaleaf Holdings Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., and Green Thumb Industries Inc. of Chicago. Quincy, Florida-based Trulieve Cannabis Corp. and Boulder, Colorado-based Charlotte’s Web Holdings Inc. are among the top 10.

– Read the entire article at News.

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The Sacramento City Council is considering lifting the cap on cannabis dispensaries allowed in the city in an effort to promote racial equity in the city’s marijuana industry. Sacramento has had 30 cannabis dispensaries doing business in the city since 2014.

Even when the sale of recreational cannabis became legal at the beginning of this year, Sacramento did not allow more marijuana dispensaries to open in the city. Instead, most of the 30 licensed medical marijuana retailers began selling recreational cannabis as well.

Racial Equity in the Cannabis Industry

Malaki Seku Amen, the CEO of the California Urban Partnership, told the Sacramento Bee that none of the city’s cannabis dispensaries’ owners are black. A spokeswoman for Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said that the city does not track the race of the city’s cannabis dispensary owners.

In August, the city council approved a program designed to support ownership in the legal cannabis industry by people in communities negatively impacted by the War on Drugs. The Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity (CORE) program reduces or eliminate costly licensing fees and helps potential business owners navigate the licensing and regulatory process. Councilman Jay Schenirer said then that he believed that other jurisdictions could eventually follow Sacramento’s

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The supply shortages that have plagued many provinces in the first month of legal cannabis will likely persist for years, industry insiders say.

Provinces including British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have all reported varying degrees of shortages.

New Brunswick was forced to temporarily close more than half its stores, while the Quebec Cannabis Corporation has reduced its store opening hours to four days a week. Labrador’s only legal cannabis store said it was forced to temporarily close after being without any product for nearly two weeks.

– Read the entire article at Global News.

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Oklahoma voters legalized medical marijuana just a few months ago, but the state has already issued licensed to thousands of patients and hundreds of businesses.

According to a recent tweet by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA), the state has issued medical marijuana licenses to over 12,200 patients since the application process opened in late August.

In addition, the state has issued (as of November 11) licenses to 651 medical marijuana dispensaries, 1060 marijuana cultivators and 277 companies intending to process marijuana products. In total the OMMA has issued over 14,000 medical marijuana licenses.

“Thanks to the hard work of our Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) project team, we have been able to meet the required timelines of SQ 788 and provide a system that will efficiently provide for the processing of applications,” says Interim State Health Commissioner Tom Bates. “It has taken many long hours and great coordination between partners to reach this benchmark and we could not have accomplished our work without the help and expertise of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and our software vendor, Complia Government Solutions.”

For the full text of Oklahoma’s new medical marijuana law, click here.

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