With the prospect of a potential November vote in Florida on cannabis legalization, a GOP legislator, Representative Ralph Massullo, has introduced a measure that would establish strict restrictions on THC potency in the event of voter approval. Introduced last week, Massullo’s measure suggests a THC cap significantly lower than the prevailing limits in most cannabis markets.
The proposed limitations would become effective 30 days after voters endorse any future constitutional amendment endorsing legalization. The measure proposes a 10% THC limit for smoking-related marijuana products and a 60% limit for other cannabis products, such as extracts. The highest amount of THC allowed in edibles under this legislation would be 200 milligrams, with a 10-milligram cap on each serving.
Such stringent limits could pose significant challenges in commerce and logistics within the potential recreational cannabis market, likely drawing backlash from stakeholders, advocates and consumers. Notably, the average THC content in marijuana flower sold at recreational or medical dispensaries usually ranges between 20% and 30%. This mirrors the existing scenario in the state’s medical marijuana market, where the measure’s focus on “recreational use potency limits” may create complications by establishing different THC regulations for recreational consumers and patients.
Contrastingly, Florida’s current medical marijuana dosage limits, revised in 2022 amid some controversy, do not depend on THC percentage. The bill introduces a complex definition of potency, specifically addressing cannabis dispensed to a caregiver or patient in terms of relative cannabinoid strength and total THC content.
The bill seems to specifically target the impending legalization vote initiative awaiting the outcome of the state’s Supreme Court ruling. A legal challenge against the reform put up by Smart and Safe Florida, which gathered almost a million signatures to qualify for the ballot, is being led by the state’s attorney general, Ashley Moody. Even though the court heard oral arguments in November, its position on the initiative is still unknown.
Crucially, the ballot measure itself does not establish THC potency limits. Therefore, Massullo’s bill could potentially preempt the initiative, preventing voters from deciding on the matter independently. This legislative strategy is reminiscent of moves made by Ohio GOP legislators after voters approved a recreational cannabis legalization bill. In Ohio, efforts are underway to amend the marijuana law significantly, with similar discussions about implementing THC potency limits.
Meanwhile, a Florida GOP senator filed a measure last month that would permit approved medical cannabis companies to qualify for tax deductions from the state otherwise not allowed at the national level due to code 280E.
The struggle for reforms isn’t only playing out in Florida. Even jurisdictions where companies such as Cronos Group Inc. (NASDAQ: CRON) (TSX: CRON) have their own issues and efforts to bring incremental improvements are underway.
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CNW420 spotlights the latest developments in the rapidly evolving cannabis industry through the release of two informative articles each business day. Our concise, informative content serves as a gateway for investors interested in the legalized cannabis sector and provides updates on how regulatory developments may impact financial markets. Articles are released each business day at 4:20 a.m. and 4:20 p.m. Eastern – our tribute to the time synonymous with cannabis culture. If marijuana and the burgeoning industry surrounding it are on your radar, CNW420 is for you! Check back daily to stay up-to-date on the latest milestones in the fast -changing world of cannabis.
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“If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.” ~William Blake
God’s gangster is the fool who persisted in his folly. It is the Beginner’s Mind having never allowed the Master’s Complex to dig its claws in. It is the life-death-rebirth process come alive inside us. It is the embodiment of rebirth cultivating the “skyhook” of curiosity lest the “anchor” of certainty hold us down.
God’s gangster is the sacred clown that befuddles all sacred clowns. Antithetical, atonal, amoral, God’s gangster is a dissonant energy that flips all scripts, turns all tables, pushes all envelopes, and flattens all boxes. It is a force of nature first, a person second. It is neither evil nor good, harboring neither pity nor rancor. It is shadow, sage, hero, and trickster all wrapped up into one unifying archetype.
And its power is accessible to us all. We have only to tap into it. And it is vital that we do so. Because God’s gangster is just insouciant enough, just ruthless enough, and just courageous enough to tip the scales in favor of harmony and higher order.
As Joseph Campbell said, “All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells are within you.” Discover yourself by conquering the false Self constructed by your cultural conditioning. Let God’s gangster rise up inside you and flatten the box you so desperately attempt to think outside of.
God’s gangster is the backhand of God—interrogative, humorous, fierce. It takes no prisoners. In fact, it releases all prisoners from their prison of dogma. It is Rumi forcing the human condition’s head over the edge of the abyss: “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?”
God’s gangster destroys all false gods:
“I am not a man. I am dynamite!” ~Nietzsche
When outdated gods need to die, God’s gangster is the energy we need to get past the fortified ramparts of our cognitive dissonance. When the nightmare needs to be rearranged, God’s gangster is the lightning bolt that awakens us from pretending to be asleep.
As Zlavoj Zizek says, “The true task of radical emancipatory movements is not just to shake things out of their commonplace inertia, but to change the very coordinates of social reality.”
As such, God’s gangster is a Nietzschean Overman, a Disaster Shaman, a Cosmic Hero, a New Oracle, and a Sacred Clown who practices Crazy Wisdom while walking the Middle Way path. No-holds-barred, God’s gangster is a fist of Zen, a blitzkrieg of satori, a maleficence of benevolence. Pulling no punches, it strikes hard, and it strikes true, demolishing all finite gods attempting to appear infinite.
God’s gangster is Infinity’s bullhorn: declaring God as Infinity itself, the interconnectedness of all things without a need to pigeonhole it into any single separate entity.
God’s gangster is consistently redefining God, rebirthing God, and allowing God to be truly infinite, thus destroying all religious gods that came before it.
God’s gangster chooses dangerous questions over safe answers:
“There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.” ~James Salter
God’s gangster shatters illusions and demolishes delusions. It keeps courage ahead of comfort and curiosity ahead of certainty. It realizes, as Seneca did, that, “As fire is the test of gold, adversity is the test of men.”
Indeed. Utilize the adversity of questions to test your answers. Toss your so-called answers into the fire. Let them burn if they must. For as PC Hodgell said, “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”
God’s gangster is foremost a fire that burns all false truths. It is a constant reminder that the Truth Quest must remain ahead of the “truth” lest we become stuck in lies, deceptions, or delusions.
God’s gangster stays as close to the edge as possible without going over:
“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” ~Kurt Vonnegut
God’s Gangster is precisely the archetype we’ll need to turn along with the Great Wheel of Change without getting crushed by it. The future is rolling in with a speed that defies reason and threatens to flatten us into obsolete cogs in an outdated clock if we let it.
As Yuval Noah Harari advised, “In the twenty-first century, you can’t afford stability. If you try to hold on to some stable identity or worldview, you risk being left behind as the world flies by you with a whoosh.”
God’s gangster is a force of curiosity, courage, and humor that can help keep us ahead of the curve (or “whoosh”). It’s a tapping of our inner child, inner hero, inner trickster, and inner sage.
We can’t afford stability in the world that’s coming. Stability equals a stagnant and stuck wheel that will sooner or later break apart under too much stress. What’s needed is flexibility, resilience, and adaptability.
God’s gangster keeps us ahead of the curve through spiritual circumspection and existential skepticism. It cuts through the blinding light. It’s a razor-sharp question mark in the dark.
God’s gangster seeks power over power through the greater power of humor:
“Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all, but to have instead the wit constantly to make one’s way anew from the materials at hand.” ~Lewis Hyde
God’s Gangster is a force of humor so powerful that power itself is overpowered. It resolves the problem of the will to power by going next level with the will to humor. Accompanied by a sense of childlike lightheartedness and play, the will to humor ushers in a vital soul-centric perspective as opposed to the ego-centric perspective of the will to power.
If, as Mark Twain said, “The human race has only one effective weapon, and that is laughter,” then it stands to reason that we double down on laughter as a weapon and turn it upon our self-seriousness.
When we are cutting with the kind of laughter that manifests from the will to humor, we are cutting with the sword of humility. We are howling with the voice of God’s gangster: a language older than words.
God’s gangster is only ever serious about not being serious. Everything is inconsequential. Everything is an infinite game. God’s gangster is an infinite player who recognizes the truth of Emil Cioran words: ““Fate” was only a mask, as everything is a mask that is not death.”
God’s gangster laughs at all masks: the mask of the Overman, the mask of enlightenment, even the mask of God. It laughs at all pretenses, especially its own. Most of all, it laughs at the cosmic joke. Not because it is immune to it but because it realizes that everything is the butt end of it. Everything is laughable. Everything is fleeting. Nothing is permanent. All things end.
We are all of us caught in a cosmic blender that we know next to nothing about. Swirling around in our confusion, we are given a choice: languish or laugh. God’s gangster gives us a way to transcend the confusion of the cosmic blender through the trump card of holy laughter.
Image source: The Fool by Oozium
About the Author:
Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.
This article (God’s Gangster) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
I don’t know what the Pennsylvania Dept. of Agriculture is going to find, when they analyze the samples of food taken from the farm. I don’t know what stories they may invent. But sight unseen I would eat and drink that food.
Zero Hedge:
Local media, The Lancaster Patriot, reports that the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture served an all-natural Amish farm in southeastern Pennsylvania with a search warrant on Thursday afternoon.
The farmer, Amos Miller, has been in the crosshairs with the US Department of Agriculture because of his repeated failures to comply with federal farming regulations.
The USDA has tried to bring Miller’s farm into compliance with federal regulations, but Amos has yet to cooperate with the Feds and faces fines and jail time.
According to LancasterOnline, Miller and the Feds have been locked “in a standoff over his compliance with federal food safety rules and failure to pay assessed fines.”
With his sovereign citizen defense, Miller has tried to thwart the Fed’s overreach to get him to comply with food safety rules. He sells all sorts of food to more than 4,000 buyers, such as organic eggs, raw milk, grass-fed beef and cheese, and fresh produce. He doesn’t use electricity, chemical fertilizers, vaccines, or petroleum products in farming.
Commenting on the raid, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said, “Looks like Amos Miller’s farm is being raided. With all of the problems in society today, this is what the government wants to focus on?”
Massie continued, “A man growing food for informed customers, without participating in the industrial meat/milk complex? It’s shameful that it’s come to this.”
Amos Miller has 4000 informed customers. That seems to mean these people know exactly what they’re buying. And if Miller is telling the truth about his food, then we could call what he has with those customers A CONTRACT.
Everybody on both sides is aware of what they’re doing, and they’re agreeing to take responsibility for it.
Whereas the government is demanding Miller obtain all the necessary government LICENSES and certifications to continue as a farmer and a seller.
I’ve been down this road before. Many times. Official licenses versus contracts between private parties without government interference.
The government HATES these sorts of contracts. No one should be responsible for his own health and well-being and choices. No. Instead, the parental authorities must rule the roost.
Under the rubric of PROTECTING, the government can do anything it wants to. For example, it can launch, finance, support, and insist on a killer vaccine.
On top of all this, if Miller is selling raw milk and no one is getting sick, that would be devastating for the commercial processed milk industry.
And meanwhile, Big Pharma is selling countless toxic drugs with the full approval of the government, people are dying at the rate of at least 106,000 per year, and no one is intervening to prosecute and send Pharma personnel to prison for the rest of their lives.
GOVERNMENT: Food should be processed and dead.
AMOS MILLER: No, it should have life in it. Food should produce good health.
Writes on everything from football to medical research fraud to Yellowstone to Rembrandt, movies, mind control, fake culture, King Arthur, Yeats, Biden, censors
OGEN, a cannabis company that recently announced it was shutting down, has initiated the sale of its brand, intellectual property, product line, and genetics.
The sale, announced on January 16, 2024, includes OGEN’s fully trademarked brand, IP assets, marketing plans, campaigns, and social media accounts. The sale is being facilitated by the Canadian Cannabis Exchange (“CCX”).
The sale also includes 77 SKUs sold in eight provinces, including pre-rolls, dried flower, and milled flower, in a range of packaging configurations.
The selection also includes 13 cannabis cultivars for sale that Ogen says were developed through a 5-year pheno-hunting process and is supported by a collection of “historical potency results, rooted clones, and seeds.”
For all inquiries about the sale, contact CCX here.
OGEN announced it was closing its doors in November 2023. Darren Brisebois, President of OGEN Cannabis, told StratCann that high taxes and regulatory fees combined with low margins meant the end of the road for the Alberta producer.
Brisebois says the decision to close was not his; it was at the discretion of their lenders as well as pressures from the CRA.
The company, he said, which had to let nearly ninety employees go after hearing the news of receivership from their lender, had around 25,000 cannabis plants at various stages of production that had been scheduled for destruction.
During the last week of December, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) announced that was formally eliminating cannabis from its list of banned substances for athletes. The change in policy, which took effect on Dec. 31, 2023, also involves entering into a partnership with Drug Free Sport International, its sample collection and shipping company.
The UFC also revealed that it was amending its list based on historical findings, despite stating that it was modelling its list of prohibited substances after the World Anti-Doping Agency.
In 2021, the UFC adopted a policy change that protected professional fighters from penalizations over positive THC tests.
In a press release, UFC’s Hunter Campbell stated that the organization’s objective was to have the best, most progressive and most effective antidoping program in all professional sports. Campbell, the organization’s chief business officer, added that the organization would continue independently administering its drug-testing program, which ensured that all UFC athletes competed under equal and fair circumstances. He also highlighted that the organization was proud of the advancements it has made with its antidoping program over the last eight years.
Jeff Novitzky, senior VP of Athlete Health and Performance at UFC, stated that the updated program was the result of years of trial and error by the organization as well as the incorporation of input. Novitzky added that the antidoping policy was a document that would continue adapting and evolving as science supported changes that could further protect athletes that competed in UFC.
As the legalization movement grows across the country, a growing number of sports organizations are moving to amend their cannabis testing policies for athletes. For instance, the National Basketball Association and its players’ union signed a collective bargaining agreement in June 2023 that involved the removal of cannabis from the league’s list of banned substances and laid out rules permitting players to promote marijuana brands and invest in them, with some exceptions.
In July, the New York Media Softball League announced that it was launching a sponsorship deal with Cornbread Hemp, a CBD company based in Kentucky. The idea behind the collaboration was inspired by moves by teams such as the Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals as well as Major League Baseball, which have also partnered with CBD businesses.
In September 2023, a National Collegiate Athletic Association committee gave its formal recommendation that divisional governing bodies eliminate marijuana from the banned substances list for college athletes. That same year, sports regulators in the state of Nevada voted to present a proposed regulatory amendment to the governor that would shield athletes from penalties over the possession or use of cannabis in compliance with state law.
The changing attitudes of sports bodies toward cannabis could help to remove concerns that some sections of the society may have had about this substance, and as the uptake of marijuana increases, ancillary companies such as Innovative Industrial Properties Inc. (NYSE: IIPR) could do more business with marijuana industry actors looking to meet the growing customer demand.
About CNW420
CNW420 spotlights the latest developments in the rapidly evolving cannabis industry through the release of two informative articles each business day. Our concise, informative content serves as a gateway for investors interested in the legalized cannabis sector and provides updates on how regulatory developments may impact financial markets. Articles are released each business day at 4:20 a.m. and 4:20 p.m. Eastern – our tribute to the time synonymous with cannabis culture. If marijuana and the burgeoning industry surrounding it are on your radar, CNW420 is for you! Check back daily to stay up-to-date on the latest milestones in the fast -changing world of cannabis.
To receive SMS alerts from CNW, text CANNABIS to 888-902-4192 (U.S. Mobile Phones Only)
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Safari Flower, an Ontario-based cannabis producer, received CCAA protection on January 12, listing over $55 million in liabilities.
The Safari Flower Group says it intends to use the restructuring process to effect a reverse vesting orders (RVO) transaction with one of its secured lenders and can be used as a way to inject cash into a company.
Next Edge General Partner (Ontario) Inc., in its capacity as general partner of NE SPC II LP, will be providing a DIP loan.
Reverse vesting orders can be used to assist in recovery in complex insolvencies in Canada, especially in instances where traditional alternatives of asset sales or restructuring plans are not effective or practical.
With a 59,000-square-foot indoor facility located in Fort Erie, Ontario, the Safari Flower Group holds international certifications that permit the company to supply cannabis to the European, Israeli, and Australian medicinal cannabis markets.
“We are thrilled to have built a foundation on quality systems and developed professional talent to deliver cannabis to the stringent safety standards that patients demand in trust, the EU-GMP certification, a testament to our unwavering dedication to quality and compliance,” said Brigitte Simons, CEO of Safari Flower Company at the time. “This achievement reinforces our commitment to ENUA’s brand providing a medicinal variety of cannabis flower by small batch grows.”
Safari was cash-positive at its year-end in 2021 but has not been able to maintain profitability, according to Insolvency Insider, noting that Safari attributes this to the price compression in the Canadian market.
The cannabis industry in Canada has experienced significant financial challenges. At least 72 cannabis companies filed for some form of creditor protection in 2023, according to listings by Insolvency Insider Canada, which focuses on the Canadian insolvency market.
Organic electronics – electronics where the active material is carbon-based – are making possible diverse new technologies ranging from sensors for monitoring cannabinoid levels in cannabis plants to lightweight, bendable solar panels. Real world applications would mean solar panels you roll up and take with you on your next camping trip, or cannabis producers knowing the optimal time to harvest plants.
Key to these advances is a class of substances called conductive polymers, which have good optical and mechanical properties but are cheaper to manufacture than conventional electronics, thanks to low energy requirements; they can be printed in long, thin sheets – like a newspaper – but don’t require the same high temperatures (> 1000° Celsius). Researchers from the University of Ottawa recently used the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan to study how different manufacturing processes can affect the performance of the resulting electronic devices.
“While these applications all sound really different, the reality they all have similar structures and need to be manufactured in similar ways,” explained Benoit Lessard, University of Ottawa professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.
Using the Brockhouse beamline at the CLS, Lessard and his team have been able to examine – at a microscopic level – how the carbon molecules behave during manufacturing. What they’re learning will have huge implications on how cutting-edge devices are manufactured, their size, flexibility, and electronic functionality. Their results are published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
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While the alignment of polymers doesn’t affect the function or structure of larger, solid items such as plastic chairs, it’s critical in building an electrical device like a continuous health monitor that wraps around your wrist.
“Some of these properties might not matter a lot when you’re thinking of mechanical stiffness for commodity plastics, but it might matter a lot when you’re thinking about electronic connectivity,” he says.
Lessard explained that both the structure of the material and how it is being processed are critical when it comes to the functionality of the final product. The knowledge gained at the CLS will inform molecular design and manufacturing processes.
“Ultimately we’re learning more about the manufacturing of these next-generation electronics and what we need to do to get the best devices possible.”
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