More details have emerged regarding the Netherlands’ upcoming experiment with producing government-regulated cannabis, which is technically illegal in the country.

Authorities are particularly concerned with ensuring that non-consumers of the drug don’t start using, and, thus, have decreed that cannabis grown by the state must be sold in “unattractive” packaging to minimize its appeal.

Producers are only permitted to use the Helvetica font on packages, and only black ink may be used to print labels. Packaging must also be “free of all processing and branding, which could make it more appealing,” per NRC.

Growers must also refrain from declaring the type of effects users could experience upon consuming the product, although a mandatory health warning must be prominently displayed on the label.

The labelling rules are even stricter than those in Canada, where adult-use cannabis has been legal since October 2018.

The Dutch federal government said this summer that it intends to forge ahead with planned experiments (aka the Wietexperiments) of regulated cannabis production in a maximum of 10 cities in the country, starting in 2021.

The four-year-long trials are a result of the federal government’s coalition agreement and was of particular importance to Dutch Liberal democratic party D66.

Authorities hope the experiment will eradicate the ambiguity surrounding the sale of cannabis and infused products in municipally licensed coffee shops, as well as illegal production and wholesale supply.

From casinos to grocery stores, most everything in Las Vegas is open 24 hours a day. Now, that same commitment to meeting consumer needs at any hour of the day is getting applied to cannabis. Residents in and around Las Vegas can now get weed delivered to their door 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The deliveries are done by MedMen, the same company that recently launched marijuana delivery in California. MedMen CEO and co-founder Adam Bierman recently told Vegas Inc. that the company plans to offer the same customer experience through delivery that it provides in its three Las Vegas area locations. The service is free for customers in Nevada.

Bierman said the company’s delivery service is “fully owned and operated by MedMen. All of our drivers are MedMen employees, so they have the same training, knowledge, commitment and experience as our in-store associates.”

That’s a change. Up until now, most deliveries made in Nevada were through third-party companies, not the companies running dispensaries. 

Nevada And Marijuana Have Made A Good Match

Marijuana delivery by the dispensary itself is the latest leap forward for a city and state that legalized recreational marijuana in November, 2016. It shows progress and demand as the industry continues to grow.

Of the handful of states that approved legal adult-use marijuana that same month and year, Nevada was the first to offer sales, beginning in Las Vegas in July of 2017. Income from legal marijuana has exceeded expectations as well, with the state generating almost $70 million in the first year of sales, and almost $100 million in the second full year of sales. 

State lawmakers have also made it illegal for an employer to reject an applicant because they failed a marijuana drug test. They’ve also proposed putting millions of more marijuana tax dollars to support education. 

In Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, county commissioners have voted to spend up to $12 million in pot tax dollars to help combat homelessness.

The State Trains Drivers On Delivery Regulations

State officials with the Nevada Dispensary Board have also established a program that teaches dispensary owners about delivery regulations. One of those regulations is that delivery can only take place during the dispensary’s normal business hours. The MedMen location at Paradise Road and East Harmon Avenue in Las Vegas is open 24 hours, so that’s what led to the around the clock delivery option in the city.

Other regulations include:

• A driver can’t deviate from a planned delivery - that means no stopping at a convenience store or for gas. Every trip is pre-planned and must be followed.
• All deliveries must be within 25 miles of the dispensary
• All vehicles are unmarked
• All drivers must wear a body camera
• All marijuana products must be kept in a secure lock box while transported

Another Las Vegas area dispensary, Planet 13, also recently decided to move its delivery service in-house. This follows a growing trend for many marijuana businesses, who want to move into delivery in order to add an additional revenue stream.

Planet 13 has followed a different path to differentiate themselves, however, with the company billing itself as a “cannabis superstore and entertainment complex.” That includes an aerial orb show, interactive laser art and giant LED lotus flowers on the top of the building, further proving that, in the cannabis industry, the experience for consumers is still limitless.

In the past few years, legal cannabis has emerged as a booming global industry, despite the fact that it remains prohibited both by U.S. federal law and the UN Single Convention treaty from 1961. This is a growing contradiction on the world stage, and there is a sense that fundamental change is inevitable — despite deeply entrenched stigma and prohibitionist dogma. 

Whether you want to know where to plan your next vacation or are sick of feeling behind on the constantly evolving regulations, we’ve got your back with an overview of the state of legal cannabis today.

What U.S. States Have Legal Adult-Use Cannabis? 

Today, 11 states and Washington, D.C. have legal recreational cannabis: Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada, Vermont, Michigan and Illinois.

However, four of these states have not yet set up their legal cannabis markets. In 2014, voters in the District of Columbia approved cannabis consumption, although implementation of the market has been bottlenecked by Congress, which controls the district’s budget. In January 2018, Vermont became the ninth state to legalize cannabis and the first to do so by legislation — but their law included no stipulations for setting up legal dispensaries. Michigan voted to legalize in November 2018, and has yet to open any adult-use stores. In May 2019, Illinois became the second state to legalize via legislation, and is similarly working to set up their legal market.

Do U.S. Territories Have Legal Cannabis?

The Northern Mariana Islands, a self-governing commonwealth in association with the United States, in September 2018 became first U.S. territory to legalize adult-use cannabis. It was also the second U.S. jurisdiction after Vermont to do so by legislation rather than by popular ballot. This April, the U.S. territory of Guam enacted a cannabis legalization measure that calls for the establishment of an adult-use industry on the island.

What U.S. States Have Medical Cannabis?

That’s a somewhat trickier question. California led the way with passage of Prop 215 in 1996. Since then, 32 more states have passed medical marijuana laws (of widely varying degrees of leniency) either by legislation or referendum: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Washington. Guam, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. also have medical marijuana laws on the books.

But there are some ambiguities here, as some states have restrictive rules that make it functionally quite difficult for citizens to get medical cannabis. For example, the New York and Minnesota laws allow for medical use of extracts, but not herbaceous cannabis.

And then there are the so-called “CBD-only” laws. Utah in 2014 passed a law allowing medical use of cannabis extracts that contain the non-psychoactive cannabinoid CBD. Several other states have since followed in passing CBD-only laws, including Wisconsin, Wyoming and Virginia. Texas and Florida allow low-THC CBD-heavy strains of herbaceous cannabis, but bar actually smoking it, allowing only vaporization.

Only three states that have no medical marijuana provisions whatsoever: Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota. However, there has been some progress. South Dakota in 2017 passed a provision legalizing CBD contingent on approval by the state health department and Nebraska in 2015 passed a law that allowed for a CBD pilot program under the auspices of the state university. By this reckoning, Idaho stands alone with no legal space for medical marijuana (very broadly defined) whatsoever. This is less significant since last year’s Farm Bill legalized hemp-derived CBD coast to coast.

Amid all the progress, there are still states where cannabis is harshly prohibited — such as Louisiana, where even the medical program has been bottlenecked by bureaucracy.

What U.S. States Are Moving Forward with Cannabis Legalization?

Quite a few. “Virtually every legislature in the country is taking a close look at its marijuana policies, and many have adopted significant reforms in 2019,” Karen O’Keefe, who directs state policy at the Marijuana Policy Project, recently told The Hill. 

The MPP released a report in July on legislative progress for cannabis reform. A record 27 states have considered cannabis legalization bills this year. High hopes were dashed when statehouses failed to approve legalization bills in New York, Connecticut and New Mexico. New Mexico legislators did, however, vote to decriminalize cannabis. And in New York, lawmakers widened the state’s decrim law as a consolation prize to legalization advocates.

While there is much contestation about the details of what legalization would actually look like, in both New York and New Jersey, the governors are officially on board. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf has also just come out in favor of legalization.

What’s the Federal Status of Cannabis?

Cannabis remains a Schedule I substance under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act — the most restrictive category, absurdly shared with heroin. There are several pending measures in Congress to change that, and remove cannabis from the list of controlled substances.

On Sept. 25, the House passed the SAFE Banking Act, which would give cannabis businesses access to the federal banking system. The bill now moves on to the Senate. In July, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on cannabis policy that advocates hailed as “historic,” with numerous Congress members openly embracing legalization.

What’s the Federal Status of Hemp and CBD?

Hemp (defined as cannabis with less than 0.3% THC) and hemp-derived CBD were officially legalized by passage of the 2018 Farm Bill last December, but legal ambiguities persist. Most significantly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has still failed to promulgate regulations for use of CBD as an additive or ingredient. This means that any products adding in CBD are technically illegal in the eyes of the federal government, though it seems uninterested in enforcing this distinction.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has similarly failed to bring its regulations into conformity with the new federal law — leading to litigation by would-be Native American producers, who depend directly on USDA approval thanks to their unique jurisdictional status. The USDA is now promising the regulations will issued this fall, in time for next year’s planting season.  

What Countries Are Moving Toward Cannabis Legalization? 

Only two countries on Earth have formally legalized cannabis — Uruguay in 2013 and Canada in 2018. (Here too, there is some contestation: two Canadian provinces have banned homegrown cannabis, recently a matter of litigation.)

Pressure to legalize cannabis is fast mounting in several countries around the world.

Last October, the same month that legalization took effect in Canada, Mexico’s Supreme Court issued a binding decision that cannabis prohibition is unconstitutional, and ordered the country’s congress to amend the law. Mexican lawmakers in September introduced a legalization bill.

New Zealand has also pledged a referendum on legalization, to be held next year. 

The recent fall of the conservative government in Italy has raised hopes that it could be the first European country to formally legalize. Bills to legalize were introduced in Portugal this year, but saw little progress. The Netherlands, contrary to widespread misconception, has not legalized cannabis, and its permissive decrim policy has recently sparked a backlash from conservatives.

In the Middle East, legalization is being increasingly embraced by the political establishment in Israel and in Lebanon.

South Africa decriminalized cannabis last year, and neighboring Lesotho now has a booming cannabis economy under what some have termed a policy of de facto legalization.

Comedy is truth and subversion. As the truth evolves, the jokes change with it. Humor subverts old ideas and clichés. It clears debris and makes room for the new, writes Emerson Dameron.

In the era of cannabis legalization and cultural acceptance, the standard tropes of weed-based humor are ready for the gong and the hook.

A Brief History of Weed Humor

For nearly a century, cannabis has been a source of subversive yuks. During prohibition, simply bringing it up made one a bit of a rebel. The most familiar clichés around weed humor crystalized during the ‘60s and ‘70s as part of the hippie counterculture.

In the '70s, the magazine High Times did more than anything else to define the sensibility, aesthetics, literature, and humor of marijuana. Founded by an outrageous character named Thomas King Forcade, it broke the law, stuck it to the man, and opted out of square culture. It began as a parody of Playboy, with centerfolds featuring splayed-out weed plants. As the years went by and the Reagan Administration militarized the War on Drugs, High Times ventured further into the peripheries of Amercian culture, spreading conspiracy theories and radical libertarianism.

Meanwhile, the comedy stylings of Cheech and Chong, the misanthropic surrealism of cartoonist R. Crumb and director Ralph Bakshi, the experimental funk of George Clinton, and characters such as George Carlin’s “hippy dippy weatherman” brought that offbeat humor into view of the mainstream, even if prohibition meant that it could never fully assimilate. It became a dominant style. The alternative was to get high and watch Reefer Madness, ironically.

The basic tropes of weed comedy has stayed fairly consistent through the decades. The stupidity of prohibition, by itself, provided a lot of comic fodder. Stoners reject authority by indulging in a forbidden hobby, but are almost always limited by overindulgence, rendered too hapless to affect much change in society. Their rebellion is passivity. Weed enhances their ability to make a mockery of the system but limits their potential to fight it.

“I don't think it changed much until a few years ago,” says Scott Dikkers, author of How to Write Funny and founding editor of The Onion. “It had its heyday in the ‘60s and ‘70s for sure, when it was always shock-based, making fun of stoners or stoner culture. Then I feel like it took a break in the ‘80s and ‘90s, with the exception of a couple of stoner movies.”

The successful stoner films and shows of the ‘90s owed a significant debt to Up In Smoke and High Times. If they weren’t set in the ‘70s (Dazed and Confused, That ‘70s Show), they used familiar gags, characters, and plot conventions (Half Baked, How High, Friday, or Dude, Where’s My Car?). 

Stoners are loveable schlubs. They stumble into hijinks and capers mostly through confusion. Their primary superpower is their inappropriately chill and subdued reactions to wild and improbable events, as long as they don’t have to hear "the fuckin’ Eagles." 

The sensitive geeks of the early Kevin Smith oeuvre are distinguished by their witty pop-culture patter, but their love of weed is still tied in with their depiction as shabby, detached outsiders. Weed is a key element of the humor that runs through hip hop, but it’s still used to augment the same defiant worldview. Devin the Dude and Snoop Dogg may not be particularly threatening, but they qualify as lackadaisical outlaws because their defining characteristic is, or at least was, against the law. 

Without prohibition, these jokes lose a lot of their punch.

“I know a lot of comedy writers who use weed to feel more creative, but somehow they aren't using it to make better jokes about weed,” Dikkers says. Now that the societal currents around cannabis are changing, maybe humorists will find fresh ways to crack wise about it. They can start by laying to rest a stock character who's been loitering in comedy for 50-odd years.

Is the Stoner Over?

He's dopey. He's messy. He’s usually a duuude, although female variants exist. He's antisocial in a dumb, non-threatening way. Although he may have moments of sublime, savant-like wisdom, he's generally at the mercy of circumstance. He's a loser, someone to be looked down upon, not one of us.

And that goes for his whole subculture. In comedy, stoners don't accomplish much, and their scenery rarely changes. They're left out of the larger conversation because they lack ambition. They're lazy, solipsistic, and never really pick up the rhythm or connect with those beyond their dens and front porches.

Historically, the stoner scene has been a place for misfits. But now that all sorts of people are using cannabis to relieve stress, treat their medical ailments, explore their psyches, and get more pleasure from their normal, respectable lives, it’s time for the stoner to evolve, to find new and more interesting ways to rebel.

On to the Next Scene

“I'd love to see more observational humor about using weed,” says Dikkers. “There are so many relatable aspects at this point. Just stories and experiences recounted about what being high is like, of what it's like to use marijuana in this day and age when it's not stigmatized anymore. I don't hear that much. Also, stories about new weed users who don't fit the old stereotypes could be funny.”

Some emerging writers and performers are already experimenting with new angles on weed:

• In his groundbreaking series First High, the big-hearted comedian Mike Glazer showcases the endearing and relatable personality traits that weed can coax out of people who’ve never smoked it before.
• The elaborate parlor games of Abdullah Saeed also show how weed can enhance creative exuberance and promote social engagement
• Some of the most fresh and unusual takes on weed comedy come from women: 
  • The work of Rachel Wolfson is grounded in enthusiasm for mental health and entrepreneurship, and her observations on weed culture avoid the shock value associated with prohibition.
  • Adrienne Airhart presents herself as a responsible and sophisticated high-status figure who knows exactly what she’s doing with her drugs (notice how she contrasts herself with a badly drunk interviewer)
  • Abbi and Ilana of Broad City are classic stoners in some ways, but their respective neurotic obsessiveness and Machiavellian hustle are modern adaptations to the economically and socially unforgiving landscape of 21st Century New York

The next wave of stoner comedy will call for a new cast of characters. There will be snobby connoisseurs who exclude others in defense of their own social status. There will be naifs who stumble in and refuse to take responsibility for eating an entire edible. Commercialization will bring with it all the excesses of marketing and capitalism.

Prohibition hasn’t ended overnight — we’re still in the transition period. Some of the old gatekeepers, scaremongers, and bumbling mall cops will hang around for a bit, pulling their old shenanigans, and they will be as ripe for mockery as ever.

“The best satire comes from comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, so I'd like to see comedy writers making more fun of officials who still think weed is dangerous or a gateway drug,” Dikkers says. “We should be celebrating people who are able to use weed legally in the face of such anti-freedom nonsense. There are plenty of jokes to be made from that subtext.”

Cannabis can help us appreciate paradox, absurdity, and hidden irony. It can open us up to the weird, the wacky, and the counterintuitive. It can help us draw connections that elude the merely caffeinated. A culture in which weed is a part of the mainstream may be a markedly different one from the one we know. It will call for new strains of satire and mockery, especially when there’s more than ever to be wigged out about.