For nearly a decade, cannabis arrests were on a steady decline in the United States. But over the past three years that trend has reversed and arrests are on the rise again. According to data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report, police arrested 663,367 people for marijuana-related violations in 2018 alone. That amounts to one arrest every 48 seconds – and is significantly up from the 659,700 cannabis arrests in 2017 and the 653,249 recorded in 2016. 

“Americans should be outraged that police departments across the country continue to waste tax dollars and limited law enforcement resources on arresting otherwise law-abiding citizens for simple marijuana possession,” NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri said. 

Not only is that a clear increase over the last three years, but it is 21 percent higher than the number of people who were arrested for violent crimes in the same year (521,103). You might want to believe that these were traffickers, drug dealers and people who are dealing with illicit substances other than cannabis – but 90 percent (608,776) of those arrests were solely for cannabis possession offenses. 

Considering the vast change in the landscape of cannabis laws throughout the country, you would think the number of arrests would decrease in the past several years, not steadily increase. Unfortunately, it seems that members of law enforcement are still finding ways to arrest people for cannabis – whether it be in states where the substance remains illegal, or finding ways around legal cannabis, such as arrests for public consumption.

“Prohibition is a failed and racist policy that should be relegated to the dust bin of history,” Altieri, of NORML, said. “An overwhelming majority of Americans from all political persuasions want to see it brought to an end. Instead of continuing the disastrous practices of the past, it is time lawmakers at all levels begin to honor the will of their constituents and support a sensible marijuana policy focused on legalization and regulation.”

While this doesn’t reach the 2007 record of 872,721 marijuana-related arrests, this is a cause for concern. Where law enforcement has the option to focus their efforts on more meaningful problems – violent crimes, dealers who sell harmful substances like crack, heroin, methamphetamine and other opiates – instead they are continuing to arrest people for possession of a plant that does more to help people than any perceived harms. As NORML’s Erik Altieri said, we should be furious with this increase in arrests at a time when public opinion and the laws themselves are clearly going in the other direction. 

Advertised on the shingle hanging above the merchant’s door is a representation of the wares offered within. The butcher and the baker and the haberdasher alike all make their presences known in this way; why should anything be different for the purveyor of herbal wellness remedies? Because marijuana, that’s why!

CBD Kratom is a particularly successful chain of 27 stores in three states that sell, as the name suggests, among other things, CBD and kratom. Kratom is the plant with sedative and other psychotropic effects that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration believes has killed at least 44 people; it has never been banned. CBD is a cannabinoid found in the cannabis sativa plant — the history of which is full of bans.

Added now to that history is CBD Kratom’s sign: a relatively straightforward affair, the words “CBD KRATOM” in a sort of sleek futuristic-type font, adorned with an unmistakable green leaf with seven long, spindly fan leaves. It’s a pot leaf, it’s a weed leaf, it’s a cannabis leaf. What it’s not, at least not according to the FDA, is a marijuana leaf, as long as the plant represented therein has 0.3% or less THC, the legal line dividing Farm Bill-approved hemp from Controlled Substances Act-prohibited marijuana in the United States.

None of this should matter much in 2019 and certainly not in Chicago, a city in the state of Illinois, where recreational cannabis was legalized earlier this year and where recreational marijuana shops will soon open for business. CBD Kratom isn’t that, but CBD Kratom has nonetheless been prohibited by its landlord from hanging its sign outside its new downtown Chicago Loop location, as the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported. The store has since filed suit against its landlord, alleging breach of contract.

According to the suit, filed by St. Louis-based MNG 2005, the organization’s new landlords prevented CBD Kratom from hanging its preferred sign after making “references to the signage as promoting marijuana usage.”

Separate, but related, is a move by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to ban recreational marijuana stores from popular well-trod areas in Chicago, including the downtown Loop and nearby Navy Pier, in an attempt to keep the tourist traps “family-friendly.”

As anyone who has tramped around the hucksters’ den that is a major city’s tourist destination knows, there are plenty of unscrupulous merchants with whom you would not trust your junk mail, let alone a member of your family. So while that reasoning may not make sense, what makes even less sense is agreeing to rent to a place called CBD Kratom, which has a cannabis leaf in its logo, and then telling CBD Kratom it can’t use its sign.

According to the suit, CBD Kratom was told that it could not use its sign shortly before the store opened two weeks ago — six months after the store signed its lease, and roughly around the same time Chicago was doing what almost every city does in the marijuana legalization era by figuring out ways to make retail marijuana sales slightly less legal.

The landlord also made statements to the effect that CBD Kratom was “engaged in illicit activities, specifically the promotion and sale of marijuana and marijuana-related products,” according to the suit.

While a property owner is free to make decisions with regard to whom they allow to lease their space, it seems a little hard to believe that CBD Kratom’s landlord didn’t know what CBD Kratom did and what they looked like while doing it. And so now everybody gets to look at each other in court. This is America’s perverse fascination with the cannabis leaf, a symbol with great and terrible power as well as some benefit. As to when the benefit of being able to sell the plant in peace will arrive, well, who can say?

The first European deal for Canadian firm MediPharm Labs will see its medical cannabis products made available to 20,000 German pharmacies.

With dual listings on the Ontario and Frankfurt stock exchanges, MediPharm says this new deal is an important milestone in its global ambitions.

And, it follows hot on the heels of its first ever international agreement in the Australian market, earlier this year. In a stock market statement MediPharm highlights why it has targeted Germany as its first European port of call.

Up To 50,000 Cannabis Patients

It says the German medical cannabis market currently serves up to 50,000 patients; a very rapid advance since its introduction in March 2017. With a population of over 80 million it is set to be Europe’s largest medical cannabis. 

MediPharm’s ‘white label’ agreement with German pharmacy ADREXpharma will see its supply ‘high quality, purity assured, cannabis concentrate derivative products, including THC and CBD oil, for sale and distribution under the ADREXpharma brand’, it says in the market release. 

ADREXpharma is licensed wholesale distributor of controlled drugs and medical cannabis, saying it serves almost all of Germany’s 20,000 pharmacies. 

MediPharm; ‘The Ideal Partner’

Mario Eimuth, Chief Executive Officer, at ADREXpharma, said MediPharm shares its ‘patient-centric focus’ and is its ‘ideal partner’. Founded in 2015, MediPharm specializes in the production of purified, pharmaceutical-grade cannabis oil and concentrates, utilizing Good Manufacturing Practices and hosting ISO standard clean rooms. 

It has five primary extraction lines with an annual capacity of 300,000 kg of  dried cannabis with complementary wholesale and white labelling capabilities. MediPharm is set to shortly complete construction of a new extraction facility in Wonthaggi, Victoria, which will feature supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, it says in a second market release.

This will  be able to process up to 75,000 kg of dried cannabis annually, as well as incorporating secondary processing equipment for the manufacture of purified and high-concentrate cannabis distillate. 

It has agreed terms, initially for one year, with an Australian Licensed Producer to source dried flower for the facility.