Feature

Selected bites of fresh cannabis news sliced from the headlines, with a legislative flavor and sweet Ohio twist. Sources are linked.

The famed cannaholiday is upon us again. Will 2022 bring back normalcy, recalling that the pandemic curtailed most activities in 2020 and 2021? Here are a few elucidations, events, and entertaining diversions for your holiday high!

And don’t forget Ohio Lobby Day at the Ohio Statehouse on 4/20. Find out more on Facebook Events here.

This morning, workers at the Westerville Starbucks, 533 South State Street, petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a union election to join the Starbucks Workers United movement that’s currently sweeping the country. The store is the second in Columbus behind four locations in Cleveland and one that filed this week in Cincinnati, becoming the seventh in Ohio and pushing well over 200 nationwide.

Workers at the Westerville Starbucks wrote a letter to Starbucks CEO saying that “the company has now deemed it too expensive to provide adequate coverage for us to properly serve the community we love,” echoing a sentiment streaming out from locations from across the nation.

This morning, workers at the Westerville Starbucks, 533 South State Street, petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a union election to join the Starbucks Workers United movement that’s currently sweeping the country. The store is the second in Columbus behind four locations in Cleveland and one that filed this week in Cincinnati, becoming the seventh in Ohio and pushing well over 200 nationwide.

Workers at the Westerville Starbucks wrote a letter to Starbucks CEO saying that “the company has now deemed it too expensive to provide adequate coverage for us to properly serve the community we love,” echoing a sentiment streaming out from locations from across the country.

The 88 East Broad Street Starbucks will vote on unionizing May 24th. Community members and Congressman Sherrod Brown have shown their support for the union drive as their management retaliates with an anti-union campaign and cutting hours.

“Even if other anti-union tactics are going to be played out, it’s so much more helpful to have that end goal in mind,” Ben Baldwin, an employee at this downtown Starbucks, said in response to getting a date for the union election from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Since the union drive began, Starbucks has launched its anti-union efforts at the location by cutting hours, conducting one-on-one anti-union meetings, and bringing in managers to sit in the cafe throughout the day.

Employees have noticed a large cut in hours since the union drive started, saying that they’re lower than during the lockdown even though business has increased, leaving some desperate to make ends meet. “We have people who can’t feed themselves,” said Jesse Perry, a worker at the location, “they want to punish us.”

Ohio State administration and the Department of Public Safety are using crime reports to manipulate how our community understands safety, and we let them get away with it.

Between July and September 2021, Ohio State blasted out 14 “Neighborhood Safety Notices” by email to the campus community, causing panic and outrage. The result? A petition was circulated pressuring the university to hire more police, and a parent-led group purchased billboards that read “COLLEGE SHOULD NOT BE A CRIME SCENE[1].”

Was there actually a dramatic crime wave last summer? As the university sent us safety tips and continued to send alerts, most of us students assumed worst. But a closer examination of the “safety notices,” along with new revelations about the crimes that aren’t being reported, points to something else. OSU administration is manipulating crime reporting to serve its own goals—goals that have a lot more to do with money than they do with safety.

This morning, employees at Columbus’ 88 E. Broad St. Starbucks location delivered a letter to Starbucks’ CEO announcing that they “choose to join in the national labor movement of Starbucks stores.”

The Starbucks location in the heart of downtown is the first in Columbus to announce a union drive, joining three other locations in Ohio and more than 140 across the country in attempting to unionize. “We know your company can be better, and we choose to stay and help it grow from within,” they wrote.

The store in the Key Bank building facing 3rd street serves government employees, office workers, downtown residents, houseless community members, and tourists.

“We get a good mix of people,” says Damon Shnur who’s worked at this downtown Starbucks for nine years and is part of the location’s organizing committee for the union drive. “I think a lot of our clientele is also just very excited for us. They’re very excited about unionizing in general, but I think they will be very excited and supportive of us.”

Home Grow. Ohio: Adult Use or Medical Only?  Unions. Hemp Acreage. Killer Kush.

Selected bites of fresh cannabis news sliced from the headlines, with a legislative flavor and sweet Ohio twist. Sources are linked.

HOME GROW – 15 REASONS WHY

Read Mary Jane’s Free Press feature article for February Here!

“There’s a lot of talk about freedom these days. Freedom of speech.   Freedom of choice.   Freedom of association.  Why don’t these freedoms apply to cannabis?  If Americans are guaranteed freedom and liberty, growing six harmless plants should be permissible.”

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FEDERAL LEGISLATION    See Federal Cannabis Legislation Table.

117th Congress (2021-2022): House bills = 43 and Senate bills = 15, for a Total of 58.

Undeniably, the right to grow your own cannabis has become a well-known and hotly debated topic surrounding full legalization of the plant. As reform spreads across the country, the concept rings a much more acceptable tone than it did years ago. What is home grow and why is it important?

1.)          Terminology.  First, what is “home grow”? Please see “The Language of Home Growing in Ohio.” Aside from “home,” the terms used to define location often include “primary residence,” “household,” or “registered cultivation sites” – some laws require registration of these plots with the state. Other terminology associates it with an individual or “person,” as in “personal cultivation.” This verbiage juxtaposes home growing against what it is not, “commercial or corporate cultivation.” Thus, the “home grow” can be defined as the cultivation of cannabis in limited quantities and small spaces for personal use without monetary gain.

Joe Motil, former Columbus City Council candidate and longtime advocate of fairness and opportunity for all people states that, “It is time for Mayor Ginther to ask for the resignation of Public Service Director Jennifer Gallagher.”  

Joe Motil, former Columbus City Council candidate and longtime advocate of everyday people, stated that” I received a Columbus City Council Media Release email regarding a public meeting of the Charter Review Commission at 6:46pm yesterday evening. This release stated that the public meeting would take place today, February 15th at 10:00am. This was the first public notification of this meeting and it was going to take place in 15 hours. As the District 6 representative of the Clintonville Area Commission, I asked the city liaison at our meeting this past Wednesday if she knew when the next meeting of the Charter Review Commission would be held. She told me she did not but she would follow up with me.”