Arkansas got an ok for e-sigs…e-signatures that is, we have an update on the lawsuits against PetsMart for selling CBD, and if you were thinking about escaping this planet, you’ll want to make sure you can have your cannabis and coffee in space first, right? Right.
The Morning Buzz presented by TRICHOMES brings you late-breaking news that tells you what’s happening within the cannabis industry.
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Arkansas is Allowing the Collection of E-Signatures for a Cannabis Legalization Campaign
A report from Ganjapreneur says the Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled that cannabis legalization activists can collect petition signatures electronically as part of their campaign to put the question to voters in November. The ruling comes after state officials shut down the signature-gathering process for petitions in the state amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite the pandemic, the group has to submit around 89,000 signatures by July 3rd. Arkansans for Cannabis Reform Executive Director Melissa Fults said the organization has collected about 23,000 so far, noting that they “had just gotten money to hire paid canvassers like two weeks before” the coronavirus pandemic shut down most of the country’s economy and led to stay-at-home orders.
In addition to the push to gather signatures electronically, the group is also planning a signature-gathering campaign through the mail.
If approved, the measure would allow people over the age of 21 to purchase and possess cannabis and grow up to six mature and six immature plants in their home. It would also increase the number of dispensaries to 30 per congressional district, with at least one in each county. Dispensaries would be allowed to grow a maximum of 200 mature plants and 200 seedlings; currently, dispensaries are capped at a 50-plant limit.
** Next, a follow up from last week’s story, the Federal Lawsuits Against PetSmart Have Been Voluntarily Dismissed
According to Hemp Industry Daily, two similar federal lawsuits against PetSmart were voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs who accused the company of selling hemp products for pets without approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The attorney representing the plaintiffs in both lawsuits filed paperwork Friday saying the parties were dropping their claims “without prejudice,” meaning they could be filed again at another time.
Each of the lawsuits were filed in Broward County, Florida, and were filed on behalf of individual customers but both were seeking class-action status. The lawsuits claimed that because the FDA hasn’t approved the products, they are considered unsafe “and cannot lawfully be sold.”
The voluntary dismissal filings did not give a reason for why the lawsuits were being dropped.
** Last up today, you might remember a few months back when there was a story that said hemp and coffee were being taken to space for study. We have an update…
According to Cannabis Business Times, Front Range Biosciences in partnership with SpaceCells USA Inc. and BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado Boulder sent samples of hemp and coffee aboard the March 6 SpaceX CRS-20 cargo flight to the International Space Station, where the tissue cultures were housed in a temperature-regulated incubator for 31 days under the care of U.S. ISS astronauts.
Now, the Front Range Biosciences team is regenerating and growing out the tissue cultures, examining the plants to see how microgravity and the various stressors the samples experienced have altered the cell cultures’ gene expression.
It will take anywhere from six to 24 months to produce a viable plant from the tissue cultures, according to Front Range Biosciences CEO Dr. Jon Vaught, and the team isn’t quite sure what it will discover through this project.
“This was really the first experiment on coffee and hemp plant cells like this, so it’s definitely what I would consider an early-stage research project, meaning we’re not sure what we’re going to see,” Vaught tells Cannabis Business Times and Hemp Grower Magazine. “We’re trying to cast the net wide and see what happens to the underlying biology of these plants in this format, when they go into zero gravity and the space environment, in low orbit, where the Space Station sits.”
Currently, sequencing studies on the plants are underway, and Vaught hopes to have data to report within the next few months. Then, by the end of the year, he expects that the tissue cultures will start to develop into actual plants, with visible plant-like characteristics.
