While Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) didn’t pay $26 billion to get its foot in the door of the cannabis industry, one could argue that its deal with a small company that makes “seed to sale” tracking software could turn out to be a bigger deal. Any profit it makes from its offering of KIND Financial’s software is gravy whereas the pile of cash it paid for LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) is going to take a long time to repay.

KIND’s Agrisoft Seed to Sale for Government software runs on Microsoft’s Azure Government cloud platform and is designed to allow governments and regulatory agencies in states where marijuana sales for medical or recreational use is legal to monitor all aspects of cannabis compliance, from plant management, point-of-sale transactions, and financial reporting.

Is Microsoft placing a bet that California voters will finally pass a measure to legalize pot sales in the country’s most populous state? Voters in several other states may be casting ballots either to legalize medical or recreational marijuana: Nevada, Florida, Massachusetts, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio are at some stage of getting measures on the ballot. Pennsylvania has passed a bill through the legislature that still awaits the governor’s signature, and Vermont’s state legislature is considering a measure.

Here are excerpts from other recent cannabis-related news stories.

Medical Marijuana Clinics Open Across Minnesota
Medical marijuana is legal in Minnesota, but for many outstate patients, it’s been out of reach.

For most of the program’s first year, there were only three places in the entire state where patients could pick up a prescription: Minneapolis, Eagan and Rochester. That left vast stretches of the state hours from the nearest clinic.

That’s about to change. By the first of July, there will be more than twice as many medical cannabis clinics in the state than there were on the first of June.

The state’s two cannabis companies are scrambling to meet a deadline to have eight storefronts up and running in every one of Minnesota’s eight congressional districts.

Minnesota’s fourth cannabis clinic opened June 6 in St. Cloud. The fifth opened Saturday in Moorhead. By July 1, three more should be open in Hibbing, Bloomington and St. Paul.

Read more at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Gary Johnson: Marijuana Doesn’t Make You Stupid
Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson is sticking up for marijuana after 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney last week said smoking the drug “makes people stupid.”

“I do not agree with that,” Johnson told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an interview scheduled to air Sunday on “OutFront.” “As someone who has used marijuana, I do not agree with that.”

Johnson, who was the governor of New Mexico from 1994-2003, has been an advocate for legalizing marijuana since 1999. In his interview with Burnett, he suggested that marijuana “competes with legal prescription painkillers and drugs that statistically kill 100,000 people a year.”

He noted that there has not been one documented death due to medical marijuana.

“On the recreational side, I have always maintained that legalizing marijuana will lead to overall less substance abuse because it’s so much safer than everything else that’s out there starting with alcohol,” Johnson said.

Read more at Fox40.com.

One Out of Four US Senators is a Marijuana Prohibitionist — Is Yours One of Them?

Marijuana legalization now consistently scores majorities in national public opinion polls, marijuana is already legal in four states and the District of Columbia and likely to be legal in a handful more, including California, before year’s end, and the Obama administration has effectively thrown federal pot prohibition to the wind in the legal (and medical marijuana) states, yet Congress remains to a large degree stuck in the last century when it comes to marijuana policy.

Granted, there are some small signs of progress, some nibbling around the edges of pot prohibition, through bills and spending amendments that seek to stop the feds from interfering in legal and medical marijuana states, but Bernie Sanders’ bill to end federal marijuana prohibition doesn’t sport even a single cosponsor. When it comes to fixing marijuana policy, Congress is going to have to be dragged crying and screaming into the 21st Century.

One reason is a sizeable contingent of senatorial prohibitionists. According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which just released its 2016 Congressional Scorecard, more than a quarter of US senators received a failing grade when it comes to supporting progressive marijuana policy reforms. A failing grade indicates “that this member expresses significant and vocal opposition to marijuana law reform.”

The marijuana consumers’ lobbying group arrived at the grades based on the member’s 2015 voting records on three amendments to appropriations bills: the Daines/Merkley amendment (would have allowed VA doctors to recommend medical marijuana in states where it is legal), the Mikulski amendment (would block the Justice Department from interfering in state medical marijuana programs), and the Merkley amendment (would have blocked the Treasury Department from punishing banks providing services to legal marijuana businesses).

Read more at StoptheDrugWar.org.

Marijuana Skeptics Take Aim at Potency in Colorado
Colorado pot skeptics have been cleared to start work on the most sweeping effort yet to attack legalization of the drug.

A ballot measure cleared for petitioning Thursday by the state Supreme Court would set new potency and packaging limits on recreational marijuana.

Under the proposal, packaging would have to include warnings that marijuana carries a risk of “permanent loss of brain abilities.” The measure also includes a new potency limit, meaning that popular forms of marijuana such as vape pens and some edibles would be illegal.

Supporters of the measure say that most marijuana sold today is too strong and that current warning labels are inadequate.

The pot skeptics tried and failed this year to get state lawmakers to limit potency. Lawmakers were sympathetic but resisted the change because the state constitution expressly permits all forms of marijuana. The industry compared the change to regulating the strength of alcohol.

Read more at The Denver Post.

Marijuana Businesses Are One Step Closer to Banking Access
One of the things that keeps the cannabis industry feeling like they still aren’t quite a legitimate industry is the cash-only nature of the business. Any transactions related to the sale of marijuana in any form, flower, oil, hash, edibles, etc. is still considered to be illegal, according to the federal government at least. For this reason, banks and credit unions, while they would like to invest, simply stay away from the cannabis industry altogether.

This is a very dangerous thing for those working in the industry. Without a safe place to store the thousands of dollars they bring in each week – hundreds or more each day even – they are leaving themselves open to robbery and theft. Governments need to consider that a cash only industry of this size could easily fudge numbers or avoid paying taxes altogether. In the long run, it would definitely be better if banks felt safe working with the cannabis industry.

While there are currently two standalone bills – one each in the House of Representatives and the Senate – it will still likely be a little while before we see them passed. Until then, the Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed an amendment to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill which would protect banks who chose to work with those in the marijuana industry. The amendment passed narrowly at 16-14.

This amendment still needs to be approved by a vote of the full Senate and once it is approved it will still need to travel through the House of Representatives before it will be an official part of the Act for the fiscal year 2017. A similar amendment to this one was voted on in the House in 2014 and the Senate in 2015, but neither of those times did it make it to the final bill, leaving banks without a shred of protection from federal prosecution.

Read More at The Marijuana Times.

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