Latest news with #DACS
Forbes
18-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Florida Bills Seek To Regulate And Tax Hemp-Derived THC Products
Industrial hemp plants grow in a greenhouse at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and ... More Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Mid-Florida Research & Education Center in Apopka, on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) Florida lawmakers have moved forward with two bills aimed at regulating hemp-derived THC products, setting up a taxation system, and establishing rules for sales. The House Committee unanimously approved on April 16 two proposals that would strengthen regulations on hemp-derived THC products and introduce a 15% excise tax on their retail sales. Although Florida legalized medical cannabis in 2016, recreational cannabis remains illegal in the state. However, hemp-derived THC products have become popular across Florida and in all U.S. states as an alternative to illegal recreational cannabis. Now, as these products exist in a legal gray area, lawmakers are looking to regulate them. The first bill that aims to shape the hemp-derived THC industry in Florida, HB 7029, would require all retailers selling these products to register with the state's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, known as DACS. The plan includes a 15% excise tax on all hemp-derived THC products. The first $6 million raised would go straight to DACS, funding enforcement, and product testing through its General Inspection Trust Fund. Anything beyond that would flow into the state's general fund. The legislation doesn't stop at taxes. It lays out how businesses should handle payments and filings. Retailers would also need to keep detailed records. DACS would have the authority to inspect and audit to ensure everything's above board. The bill also sets penalties for those who try to cut corners, especially when it comes to fraud. Every package would need a scannable code linking to key info like batch numbers, expiration dates, and how much THC or other cannabinoids are in each serving. Estimates suggest this tax could bring in over $1.5 billion each year, based on numbers from 2022. But it wouldn't kick in right away. The tax only takes effect on January 1, 2026, if HB 7027 or a similar bill also makes it through. The second bill, HB 7027, takes indeed things further with tighter rules. It would limit sales to businesses that hold a food permit and block anyone under 21 from even entering those stores. It also changes how the state defines 'hemp extract,' expanding it to cover anything with more than a trace amount of THC. The bill sets dosage limits for various product types, and by 2029, those limits would be cut in half. Also, stores couldn't sell these products near schools or at public events, and each customer would face daily purchase limits, depending on the type of product they're buying. While the Florida House is working to regulate hemp-derived THC, the state Senate is taking a different approach. The Senate approved a new set of rules targeting this fast-growing market last week. The Senate bill, SB 438, would ban all Delta-8 THC products outright. It also puts strict caps on hemp-derived Delta-9 THC products, limiting it to five milligrams per serving or 50 milligrams per container. Hemp-infused drinks wouldn't be exempt, as they'd be capped at five milligrams of THC per container and could only be sold in stores with a liquor license. Testing would also be ramped up. Every final batch of hemp extract would have to be tested in a certified marijuana lab. The results would need to be verified and signed off by two lab employees before the product hits shelves. A similar bill cleared the Senate with full support last year. But Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed it after pushback from the hemp industry. While both House and Senate proposals aim to tighten control over hemp-derived THC products, the details split the two bills down different paths. The House version doesn't ban Delta-8 or other synthetic cannabinoids. The Senate bill does. The House proposal further includes a daily purchase cap of 100 milligrams of THC and blocks sales at public events, festivals, and convenience stores that allow anyone under 21. The Senate proposal, however, takes a tougher line. It calls for a full ban on synthetics and tighter controls overall. Where the House leaves room for compromise, the Senate leans into strict regulation. Industry voices have pushed back, especially against the daily cap and the broad packaging restrictions, as reported by Florida Phoenix. Some even worry about the impact on CBD products that don't cause a high, like Jodi James, president of the Florida Cannabis Action Network, as reported by Cannabis Business Time. Nevertheless, the message from both the Florida House and Senate is that the wild they're of hemp-derived THC in Florida may be coming to an end. Florida wouldn't be the first state to regulate hemp-derived THC products. Some states have already banned them, while others have placed restrictions. In February, an Alabama senator introduced a bill to ban intoxicating hemp products like delta-8 THC. States such as California, Colorado, and New York, where adult-use cannabis is legal, have fully banned delta-8 THC. On the other hand, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Maryland have chosen to regulate it. In other states, hemp-derived THC products remain legal but remain largely unregulated.
New European
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
The iron curtain and the silver screen
In Warsaw during the iron curtain years, a young artist is shown into an unfussy private screening room and offered a cup of tea. Then, the latest Hollywood blockbuster begins to play for an audience of one – sometimes with subtitles included, sometimes with an official reading over the dialogue from a translated script. When the artist emerges into the light, they have only one brief: to produce a poster for the film that they have just watched, but in a style that bears no resemblance whatsoever to typical western film posters. 'We relied on visual metaphors, symbols, to produce cultural statements,' says Andrzej Klimowski, one of the art school graduates who produced work for the communist government's centralised film distributors. Ironically, given the circumstances, he says, 'There was a great deal of freedom – freedom for self-expression.' Klimowski's work forms part of a remarkable exhibition of Polish film posters currently running at London's Coal Drops Yard as part of Kinoteka, the Polish film festival. Made from the postwar period to the present day, they present unique and unsettling visions of cinema and the world forged in what literally was an alternate reality. The Polish poster for the 1979 sci-fi horror Alien , designed by Jakub Erol Andrzej Klimowskiʼs poster for Down By Law (1986) Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror The Shining as designed by Leszek Żebrowski Images: Kinoteka/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025 Klimowski, born to Polish parents in London, chose to return to a Soviet-era Warsaw after an undergraduate degree at St Martin's, London. The lure was the art being produced there – impressionistic images that are occasionally playful, occasionally paranoid, deeply political without overtly criticising the regime. He says: 'After the second world war there was a big surge of rebuilding, and while you may have disagreed with the ideology, there was a recognition that culture would be at the heart of this. There was a certain pride in Poland's artistic past, our heritage. To produce posters for film and theatre, the ministry of culture set up a panel of experts, one of whom was Henryk Tomaszewski, who was later my tutor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. 'His condition was that there would be no insistence on copying American posters, with a picture of the biggest star in the centre of the frame and the actors' names in size of their supposed importance. These would be statements in their own right. 'There was no commercial pressure for us, or the distributors – the cinemas and theatres were always full anyway. The work had to be approved, but largely we could do what we liked. The posters appeared on the cinemas and the streets and I saw that they would prolong the power of the film, not just promoting it but giving the audience something else to think about when it was over.' The poster for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), designed by Waldemar Swierzy Witold Dybowski's poster for Return of the Jedi (1983), the third instalment in the original Star Wars trilogy The Polish poster for John Schlesinger's drama Midnight Cowboy (1969), by designer Waldemar Swierzy, featured in the Familiar Strangers Outdoor Polish Film Poster Exhibition at Coal Drops Yard, King's Cross, London Images: Kinoteka Similar posters were made in other eastern bloc countries, but Klimowski says, 'We did it better, and I don't say that because of national pride. After the war Poland was not as strong in material goods as, say, East Germany or Czechoslovakia but artistically and intellectually I think we set the trends that the others followed. We had the most artistic freedom and we could take more chances.' Klimowski returned to London in the late 1980s and later became head of Illustration at the Royal College of Art, continuing to design posters and book jackets. He was once praised by Harold Pinter, a man who did not offer praise readily, in glowing terms: 'He is a free man and you'll never catch him… He leads the field by a long furlong, out on his own, making his own weather.' Now 75, Klimowski is enthused by the work of younger artists in the exhibition and notes that in the digital age, reimagining posters for classic and cult films has become a cottage industry thanks to websites like Etsy. But, he says, 'It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable for the people that create them. The thrill of it for me, for us, was that our work wasn't on the wall in a private home, or a private gallery. Our gallery was the streets. We were on every corner.' Familiar Strangers is at Kiosk N1C, Lower Stable Street, King's Cross until April 2. Kinoteka, the Polish film festival, runs across London and the UK until April 29; details at Edifice , a new graphic novel by Andrzej Klimowski, is published by Self-Made Hero
The Guardian
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Give it a Polish! Classic film posters with a twist
Step into a world where Hollywood classics are transformed through the bold, imaginative lens of artists from the Polish poster school. Familiar Strangers: Hollywood and British Cinema in Polish Poster Art is at Coal Drops Yard, London, until 2 April. All photos courtesy: Kinoteka Polish film festival This exhibition unveils how Polish artists interpreted US and UK films such as The Shining and Return of the Jedi while navigating the harsh realities of communist and post-Soviet Poland, at a time when censorship, propaganda and surveillance were omnipresent It also highlights a new chapter in the evolution of the Polish poster school, as London-based digital artists will be reinterpreting these posters for digital screens Photograph: ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025 Blending raw intensity with haunting beauty, these posters reflect the psychological landscape of a society shaped by repression. This poster, inspired by Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972), is from the Kinoteka archives Additional posters will be on display in a digital exhibition at Samsung KX, London, until 2 April
