For the Culture By The Culture
Legal cannabis earns billions while thousands remain locked away for the same plant. From Mississippi’s life term to Louisiana’s thirty five years to the federal forty year sentence in Texas, broken expungements and empty pardons keep prohibition alive. Pot Culture Magazine follows the names, numbers, and families still trapped behind America’s fake freedom.
From Florida’s ballot grind to Thailand’s backpedal and Germany’s retreat, the world talked reform while tightening control. Pot Culture Magazine’s Reefer Report Card Vol. 22 grades the week in weed — a reality check on promises, policies, and politics that keep legalization crawling instead of sprinting. Global momentum stalled, but the culture keeps moving.
Virginia legalized cannabis four years ago, then froze its own future. Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed retail sales, keeping weed legal to hold but illegal to buy. Now the 2025 governor’s race will decide if voters finally get what they approved. Virginia’s Legalization Lockdown exposes the hypocrisy, the politics, and the system that turned freedom into fine print.
The Omaha Tribe legalized cannabis and created its own governing body to regulate cultivation, licensing, and sales. Meanwhile, Nebraska still criminalizes flower. This is a story about sovereignty, survival, and state resistance. The border is more than a line. It is a trap. Cross it with weed and you're no longer legal.
Michigan’s new 24 percent wholesale cannabis tax is being sold as a road repair plan but looks more like a cash grab. Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s law faces a constitutional challenge from the Michigan Cannabis Industry Association, while NORML’s Paul Armentano warns that greedy taxation drives consumers back underground and destroys legal markets that voters fought to build. The weed war is back this time in a budget.
Despite legalization in half the country, over 204,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2024, most for possession. The FBI, ACLU, and DOJ data expose how outdated laws, racial disparities, and political hypocrisy keep the drug war alive under new names. America claims reform, yet still profits from punishment. The hustle just wears a badge now.
