The Year in Weed: 2024 Edition

Welcome back to The Year In Weed, The Blunt Truth’s annual roundup of cannabis-related stories.  As usual, I’ll adopt Dave Barry’s Year in Review (sadly, no longer available for free) format and look at stories month by month. Last year, I hoped that the feds, New York and Alabama would get their acts together, as I was running out of metaphors to describe their respective situations. Did that holiday dream come true? Well…

Let’s begin with January, when the pot situation in Alabama “didn’t smell right,” and New York continued to struggle. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin (R) expressed no interest in setting up a retail cannabis market, and we began the 2024 episodes of the “DEA Re-schedules Cannabis” story.

Moving on to February, we found a running list of lawsuits involving New York cannabis licensing – a lifesaver, because we all need some help to keep up. The Virginia legislature passed bills allowing a retail cannabis market, bless their little hearts. And Germany legalized cannabis, effective on April 1. (Really? Not April 20?)

Which brings us to March, when the New Hampshire legislature considered legalization. Spoiler alert: don’t bet on it. A retail market bill went to the Virginia governor’s desk, and then the possibility of a big stadium deal for Northern Virginia appeared. Could the governor be persuaded to allow a cannabis market in exchange for support for the stadium? Second spoiler alert: don’t bet on this either.

And so on to April, when (shocker!) Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed a bill to set up a retail cannabis market in Virginia. The Florida Supreme Court allowed an adult-use legalization bill onto the 2024 ballot, and we warned readers that the 60% threshold might be hard to meet. And commercialization hit the 4/20 holiday, with many businesses offering special deals. To end the month, the DEA announced it would re-schedule cannabis.

The merry, merry month of May brought a lot of wildly optimistic talk about cannabis re-scheduling. We advised readers to put off those celebrations, and we stand by that recommendation. New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) decided a major shake-up was needed in the state’s Office of Cannabis Management. Comments on the proposed cannabis re-scheduling rolled in to the DEA by the thousands.

The month of June brought news that South Dakota voters would (again) have the opportunity to weigh in on cannabis. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) vetoed a ban on intoxicating hemp. Coincidentally, but not surprisingly, the hemp industry heavily supported the campaign against legal adult-use marijuana, as did the governor. Legislators were unable to agree on a cannabis bill in New Hampshire, so the Granite State still has only medical marijuana.

And, all of a sudden, it was the second half of 2024, as the calendar turned to July. This month, we saw the other northeast outlier, Pennsylvania, attempt to legalize adult-use cannabis, and have no more luck than New Hampshire. We nominated the DOOBIE Act as the best cannabis-themed legislation acronym ever. And our friends at 420 Intel offered up an analysis of Vice President Kamala Harris’ position on cannabis.

Then, we entered the dog days of August. Ohio opened a retail market. New York cracked down on illegal dispensaries. North Dakota joined its southern neighbor to put adult-use cannabis on the November ballot. And it became clear that re-scheduling was not going to happen in 2024.

And so the fall foliage and crispy temps told us it was September. The Nebraska ballot initiative saga began, with sufficient signatures collected to put the initiatives up for a vote. Or not, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Adult-use cannabis came to North Carolina, via the Eastern Band of Cherokee’s tribal dispensary. We discovered that President Richard Nixon (R) thought marijuana was “not particularly dangerous.” And the cannabis industry’s first NCAA sponsorship deal was announced between the University of Southern California (USC) and Cookies.

And then, it was October. Which started off with lawsuits surrounding cannabis initiatives, which should be a surprise to no one. Both Nebraska and Arkansas saw legal challenges, which dominated the news for the month. But Snoop Dogg also grabbed some attention for his foray into weather forecasting.

In November, well, a lot of things happened. And not much of it was good for the cannabis industry. We did a round-up of election results, with links to more granular data than just the final tallies. Shout-out to our friends at Marijuana Moment for their county-by-county breakdown of results. The Great Nebraska Ballot Initiative Saga, as it came to be known, began. The cannabis industry was delighted with the news that President-elect Trump (R) had nominated Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to be Attorney General, due to his pro-cannabis views. Spoiler alert: this euphoria was short-lived.

And finally, we reached December. Where we talked so much about the Nebraska ballot initiative situation and the DEA‘s administrative hearing that we considered changing the name of the column to “The Broken Record Report.” But we also passed along a job ad from Toker’s Guide, where they’re looking for someone to use a lot of cannabis and write “amazing reviews.”

So there we are, 2024 in twelve little paragraphs. What will 2025 bring? It seems a fool’s errand to guess, but something will happen with federal re-scheduling, and presumably Nebraska will run out of courts to opine on signature collecting. Enjoy your New Year’s celebrations, and we’ll be back beginning January 3 to bring you a look at the news throughout the coming year.