Another poll shows adult use support lags in Florida • U.S. DOJ starts asset forfeiture against illegal grows • Germany’s cannabis law will be tweaked • & more …

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58% of Floridians polled said that they would vote in support of legalization, according to a new poll from the Florida Chamber of Commerce. A total of 37% are opposed, while 5% are undecided. 

Florida voters will decide on cannabis legalization this November after the state’s Supreme Court decided in April, as Cannabis Wire reported at the time, that the language of a ballot measure to legalize adequately met the bar to move ahead. A total of 60% of voters must approve Amendment 3 in November, and recent polling has shown support falling short of that bar. 

“With 144 amendments since its creation in 1968, Florida’s constitution has long been a target of special interest groups with agendas and recreational marijuana is no different,” Florida Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Mark Wilson said in a statement.

“The Florida Chamber continues to lead the fight it has fought for over 20 years against similar proposed amendments that could be addressed legislatively rather than through altering Florida’s foundational document.”

Over the past year, the conversation around illegal cannabis cultivation, especially in states like Maine and Oklahoma, has grown louder. As we reported in this newsletter back in January and February, GOP Congress members asked the DEA for a “briefing” on illegal cannabis farms. Earlier this month, Maine U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that it identified roughly 100 illegal grows in the state and that it was working with DEA, FBI, IRS, and Homeland Security. And, as we reported in this newsletter last week, the DEA flagged the issue in its annual drug report.

Now, the feds are ramping up their enforcement efforts even further. Late last week, the DOJ filed four forfeiture complaints against four different properties in Maine used for illegal cannabis cultivation.

You can read the complaints here, here, here, and here.

+ Some more context: While some GOP lawmakers, like Rep. Pete Sessions, have suggested that these grows are “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) affiliated,” the Maine U.S. Attorney’s Office has been more measured.

“According to the DEA, there are currently transnational criminal organizations involved in illegal marijuana growing activities in at least 20 states. The possibility that organized criminal enterprises with alleged ties to China are using Maine properties to profit from unlicensed marijuana operations and interstate distribution makes it clear that there is need for a strong and sustained federal, state and local effort to shut down and thoroughly investigate these operations,” they wrote this month.

Further, they wrote, “No Maine property owner or anyone else should ever be assumed to be part of a criminal enterprise simply because of their surname or nationality.”

Back in March, in the final stretch of the adult use push in Germany, concerns emerged around whether the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, would hold up the bill by calling for amendments, as Cannabis Wire reported at the time. However, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach assured lawmakers at the time that adjustments could be made after the bill was signed into law.

This week, that amendment process will begin in the German Parliament. One bill, which will be briefly debated on Friday and then sent to the Health Committee, will give German states more control over the cultivation that will take place by the adult use membership clubs allowed under the new law. 

Another bill, which will be sent to the Transport Committee, will seek to define cannabis-impaired driving. It will propose a 3.5 ng/ml blood limit. 

+ Looking ahead: The impaired-driving bill is likely to be controversial, as existing research doesn’t support such limits. Just last month, as Cannabis Wire reported in this newsletter, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration outlined in a report to Congress all the ways in which they are working to understand cannabis-impaired driving, and how much remains up in the air.

+ Looking further ahead: All eyes are on Germany’s second phase of legal adult use, which is expected to establish pilot projects for retail cannabis sales. (Under the current model, membership clubs can only sell among members, and each club is limited to 500 members.) It will be fascinating to see how the debates over these smaller amendments play into that much more robust anticipated reform, for which there is no set timeline, and no legislative language, yet.