By The Associated Press

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday advanced a marijuana sales tax measure that goes farther than the Republican governor’s plan.

Gov. Brian Sandoval proposed in January that the state impose a 10 percent sales tax on recreational pot and send the revenue, expected to total $70 million over two years, to public schools.

The Senate Democrats’ measure would impose a 12 percent sales tax on all marijuana, with 10 percent going toward public schools and 2 percent funding substance abuse programs.

The bill would also raise taxes on medical marijuana growing facilities to the same 15 percent rate planned for recreational pot growers.

Medical marijuana sales and growers are currently taxed 2 percent.

“It was important that we have an efficient and streamlined taxation system that took into account medical marijuana and now recreational marijuana so that it was something that we could implement in the real world,” said bill sponsor Sen. Julia Ratti, a Democrat from the Reno suburb of Sparks.

The Senate Revenue and Economic Development Committee passed Senate Bill 487 on a party-line vote.

Nevada voters decided in November to allow people age 21 or older to use pot recreationally — becoming one of eight states to do so.

Recreational marijuana sales are expected to begin in July.

By Kathleen Foody, The Associated Press

ATLANTA — Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal approved an expansion of the state’s medical marijuana program on Tuesday, allowing people being treated for six additional medical conditions to possess cannabis oil.

The new qualifying conditions include autism, AIDS, Tourette’s syndrome, and Alzheimer’s disease. Patients must register with the state to be eligible and have a doctor’s permission.

Many of the additions restrict use to patients who are in severe or end-stage condition. The new law also allows people in a hospice program, regardless of diagnosis, to legally possess the oil that’s low in THC, the chemical responsible for the marijuana high.

The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Allen Peake, has received national attention for his work on the issue and taking part in a network that gets the oil into patients’ hands from other states where it can be sold and manufactured legally. Georgia doesn’t allow that. Peake introduced separate legislation this year to allow a small number of medical cannabis manufacturers licensed and regulated by the state but opposition from Deal and law enforcement halted any debate.

“I’m grateful to my colleagues, Speaker David Ralston, and Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle for their support in getting this bill to Governor Deal’s desk,” Peake said. “My hope is that in 2018 we can fill the gaping hole that still remains, and provide legal access to medical cannabis oil here in our state with a safe, lab tested product produced within our own borders. The job will not be finished until we accomplish this task.”

Tuesday marked the final deadline for the governor to sign or veto lawmakers’ proposals.

By Emma Gannon, Courthouse News

DENVER — An insurer refuses to cover a Colorado-based marijuana candy company for selling the “Karma Kandy Orange Ginger” under whose influence a man supposedly became psychotic and murdered his wife.

Hours before he shot and killed his wife on April 14, 2014, 49-year-old Richard Kirk had consumed a Karma Kandy Orange Ginger candy that he bought from the company Gaia’s Garden.

As Kirk readied for trial last year, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, the couple’s three children brought what is believed to be the country’s first wrongful-death complaint against a recreational marijuana company.

Kirk later changed his plea. He is serving 30 years in state prison for his wife’s death, but the suit against Gaia’s Garden and its distributor, Nutritional Elements, is dragging on.

United Specialty Insurance fired back last week with a federal complaint against Gaia’s Garden and the children, through their guardians.

Denying that it has any obligation to defend the candy maker, United Specialty says Gaia’s Gardens is on its own.

“The policy specifically did not cover, and was not intended to cover, bodily injury arising out of one of Gaia’s products where the injury occurred after Gaia’s had ‘relinquished possession’ of the product — i.e., after the product was sold and distributed,” the complaint states.

“Per the allegations of the lawsuit, the bodily injury (the death of Kristine Kirk) occurred after the distribution and sale of the product. … Therefore, it was not a covered hazard under the policy.”

In fact, the insurer says, the policy had a psychotropic substances exclusion, for “any bodily injury ‘which would not have occurred, in whole or in part, but for the actual … ingestion of, contact with, exposure to … or presence of psychotropic substances.’ A copy of this endorsement is attached as Exhibit 5.” (Ellipses in complaint.)

Finally, United Specialty adds: “The psychotropic substances exclusion includes a (non-exclusive) list of psychotropic drugs. Included in the list are ‘marijuana’ and ‘cannabinoids.’” (Parentheses in complaint.)

The insurer also says that Nutritional Elements, the store that sold the drug to Kirk, has reached its own settlement with the family, and “United Specialty was likely prejudiced as a result.”

United Specialty seeks declaratory judgment that it has no duty to defend Gaia’s Garden or indemnify it for any loss. It is represented by Reid Neureiter with Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell. Neither this Denver attorney nor Gaia’s Garden has returned a request for comment.

In their 2016 lawsuit against Gaia’s Garden in Denver County Court, Kirk’s sons note that the label on the candy their father took purported to contain “101 mg. THC.”

Though a dose of 10 mg of THC is considered enough to get an average person high, the Denver Post reported that the candy police found at the crime scene, roughly the size of a Tootsie Roll, had been only partially consumed.

A toxicology test of Kirk’s blood from the night of the shooting also showed he had just 2.3 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood. The state’s legal limit for stoned driving is 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter, according to the Denver Post.

Kirk’s children are seeking damages for negligence, failure to warn, wrongful death, deceptive trade, strict liability, breach of implied warranty, misrepresentation and consumer law violations. They are represented by Gregory Gold, of Greenwood Village.

The effects of marijuana can be much more powerful when it is eaten rather than smoked. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, on a visit to Colorado, wrote a much-cited column about the misery induced by eating marijuana candy.

One longtime jazz musician, no stranger to marijuana, told Courthouse News he suffered the same misery as Dowd after he ate marijuana candy on a visit to Denver. “I’ve smoked a lot of pot,” the musician said, “but it was nothing like that. It was not pleasant at all.”

Courthouse News editor Robert Kahn contributed reporting.

This story was first published on CourthouseNews.com

By Sadie Gurman and Eric Tucker, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials have been weighing new guidance that would encourage prosecutors to charge suspects with the most serious offenses they can prove, a departure from Obama-era policies that aimed to reduce the federal prison population and reshape the criminal justice system.

The guidance is taking shape in the form of a memo that ultimately will be shared with the nation’s federal prosecutors, but the timeframe for release is unclear. Drafts of the memo have been circulating for weeks and have undergone revisions, so the final language is not yet certain.

A person involved in the discussions described one version to The Associated Press speaking only on condition of anonymity because the guidance has not been publicly announced. As outlined, that version would encourage prosecutors to charge people with the most serious, provable offenses — something more likely to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. Those rules limit a judge’s discretion and are typically dictated, for example, by the quantity of drugs involved in a crime.

Such a policy shift has been expected since Attorney General Jeff Sessions was appointed and is in keeping with his tough-on-crime public posture, resistance to proposals he sees as overly lenient and repeated statements about running a Justice Department that enforces laws as they’re written. In 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft enacted a similar policy that directed prosecutors to “pursue the most serious, readily provable offense in all federal prosecutions.”

Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told AP that Sessions has called for a review of all department policies ” to focus on keeping Americans safe and will be issuing further guidance and support to our prosecutors executing this priority — including an updated memorandum on charging for all criminal cases.”

The new policy statement is likely to represent a major departure from a 2013 initiative known as “Smart on Crime,” in which then-Attorney General Eric Holder discouraged harsh sentences for low-level, nonviolent offenders, which advocates say contributed to a national rethinking of how America’s drug criminals should be prosecuted.

Holder’s guidance was aimed at reducing costs of a crowded federal prison system, encouraging shorter sentences for drug offenders not seen as threat to public safety and preserving Justice Department resources for more serious and violent criminals.

The Obama policy shift coincided with U.S. Sentencing Commission changes that made tens of thousands of federal drug prisoners eligible for early release, and an Obama administration clemency initiative that freed convicts deemed deserving of a second chance. Combined, those changes led to a steep decline in a federal prison population that now stands at just under 190,000, down from nearly 220,000 in 2013. Nearly half of those inmates are in custody for drug crimes, records show.

Obama administration officials cited that decline and a drop in the overall number of drug prosecutions as evidence that policies were working as intended. They argued prosecutors were getting pickier about the cases they were bringing and were seeking mandatory minimum sentences less often. Efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system secured bipartisan support in recent years as Republicans embraced its cost-cutting potential while Democrats saw a chance to correct what they consider unduly harsh sentences.

Still, some prosecutors felt constrained by the Holder directive and expressed concern that they’d lose plea bargaining leverage — and a key inducement for cooperation — without the ability to more freely pursue years-long mandatory minimum punishments.

Sessions himself has long signaled his opposition to the “Smart on Crime” policies, and has repeatedly warned that eliminating mandatory minimums weakens the ability of law enforcement to protect the public.

In the Senate, he was among a group of GOP lawmakers last year who opposed legislation that would have allowed judges to reduce prison time for some drug offenders. He warned that the bill would release thousands of violent felons and endanger lives, at a time when crime in some large cities was rising.

After becoming attorney general, he promised in March there would be new guidance on criminal charges. He also directed the nation’s federal prosecutors to intensify their focus on the worst violent offenders.

“My vision of a smart way to do this is, let’s take that arrest, lets hammer that criminal who’s distributing drugs that have been imported in our country,” Sessions said in a speech that month to law enforcement officials that some advocates viewed as a harbinger of his intent to revise Holder’s policies.