Matt Maurer speaks to The Lawyer’s Daily on whether or not the U.S. government will eventually legalize cannabis nationwide

On Dec. 6, anyone will be able to smoke recreational pot legally in Detroit after Michigan voters approved a measure to legalize recreational marijuana as part of the midterm elections earlier this month. However, transporting cannabis from Windsor, Ont., across the Canada-United States border remains off the table until marijuana is legalized at the federal level in the U.S.

Matt Maurer, partner at and vice-chair of Torkin Manes’s cannabis law group in Toronto travelled to Las Vegas earlier this month for the Marijuana Business Conference & Expo (MJBizCon), billed as the world’s largest cannabis business event with 27,600 attendees.

He said that about 15 people heading to Vegas from Toronto told U.S. Customs agents that they were going to the conference and were sent for secondary screening, which resulted in them missing the flight.

It got worse for a Canadian investor who was flying from Vancouver to Vegas to attend the expo and tour a cannabis facility. As the Financial Post reported, the man now faces a lifetime ban from entering the U.S. after reportedly revealing to the border guard that he invests in a Canadian cannabis business that has an operation in Nevada and was told that is a “violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act related to controlled substance trafficking.”

This article was originally published in The Lawyer’s Daily. To read the complete article, click here.