New Jersey Sees $24 Million in Recreational Cannabis Sales in First Month
New Jersey cannabis retailers have seen $24 million in adult-use marijuana sales in the first month. According to the Associated Press, the 13 legal cannabis retailers in the state have seen an average of about $5 million in sales per week since the industry officially opened on April 21st. Cannabis regulators also granted conditional licenses for 12 more retailers, 13 manufacturers, and 21 cultivators. Lawmakers have been putting pressure on the Cannabis Regulatory Commission to accelerate the licensing review process.
Federal Cannabis Arrests Continue to Decline
New data from the Justice Department shows that federal arrests for marijuana continue to decline year after year. In 2010, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) made 8,215 marijuana arrests. By 2020, DEA made only 2,576 federal cannabis arrests, indicating a decline of about 11 percent each year. While drug-related cases made up 16 percent of all federal arrests for the fiscal year 2020, most were for powder cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin. Cannabis arrests saw the most significant decline of all the drugs covered in the report. There doesn’t appear to be a singular cause for the drop in these arrests, but advocates hope and believe the trend will continue as more states legalize some form of marijuana, and the AG heading the Justice Department has been vocal about the fact that he sees low-level cannabis arrests as a waste of federal resources.
Oklahoma Issues a Recall for 99 MMJ Products
Officials in Oklahoma are accusing a testing lab of fraudulently reporting passing results for numerous contaminated medical marijuana products. As a result, the Oklahoma Health Department issued an emergency order to temporarily suspend Scale Laboratories’ license to test medical marijuana products. The state’s Medical Marijuana Authority issued a recall of 99 products that were supposedly contaminated with salmonella, E. coli, mold, yeast, and aspergillus. The recall impacts 33 cultivation and processing businesses. The state’s program requirements mandate that the businesses that produced the products inform those to whom they sold the products and dispensaries must inform any patients who purchased the recalled products.
