Sunday 1 January 2017

Weed, guns and catfish: 2017 brings new laws, big changes – Fox News

Just as a result of Congress floor to a digital halt in 2016 doesn’t imply the nation stopped making new legal guidelines.

From taxes to minimal wage to gun management, a broad vary of changes is coming on the state degree as Americans ring in 2017. And, as has been the development these days, the new yr will deliver far broader legalization of marijuana.

It’s what The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, in a letter to Vice President-elect Mike Pence arguing towards pot prohibitions, referred to as an “unprecedented schism between state and federal law in regards to … cannabis statutes.” While that debate will play out anew because the Trump administration takes workplace with a law-and-order mandate, the “schism” grows wider in 2017.

Already, revelers in Massachusetts and California could have the legal choice of pairing their New Year’s Eve champagne with a joint. Approved by voters in November, legal leisure pot use took impact on Dec. 15 in Massachusetts; legal private use of the drug took impact in California shortly after voters authorised it there, although retail gross sales are nonetheless months away from implementation.  

Nevada legalized leisure pot on Jan. 1, and Maine will comply with quickly after.

Voters in the last election authorised legalizing the drug for medical functions in North Dakota, Montana, Florida and Arkansas. In Colorado, one of many first states to legalize pot, licensed medical marijuana growers will now be allowed to promote pot as nicely.

Colorado voters additionally backed a rise within the statewide minimal wage.

Starting Jan. 1, the wage elevated from $eight.31 to $9.30 per hour for non-tipped staff and will improve by $zero.90 per hour yearly till it reaches $12 an hour on Jan. 1, 2020.

Voters in Maine, Arizona and Washington additionally voted in favor of minimal wage hikes. An appeals courtroom in Arizona lately rejected an effort by state companies to delay the Jan. 1 implementation.

As wage hikes enter the pipeline, so have tax hikes:

In Portland, Ore., the town council handed a so-referred to as CEO tax, a primary-in-the-nation ordinance to place a tax surcharge on publicly traded corporations whose CEOs earn 100 occasions greater than the median wage of different firm staff. According to the National Law Review, a surcharge of 10 % of the bottom tax legal responsibility can be imposed on these corporations starting on Jan. 1.

Buying presents subsequent Christmas or something from Amazon additionally might be costlier for Utah residents in 2017 because of a new law requiring on-line retailers to cost shoppers a four.7 state gross sales tax on the level of sale, fairly than counting on the honour system.

On the tax aid aspect of the ledger, Illinois accredited a measure tossing out a 6.25 % “luxury” tax on tampons.

Illinois handed dozens of different legal guidelines, together with changes in order that beginning Jan. 1 it can not be unlawful to catch catfish utilizing a pitchfork, speargun or bow and arrow. Critically, the time period “public hunting ground for pheasants” will be replaced by “public hunting ground for game birds.”

On the West Coast, gun house owners in California will face new restrictions after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law banning the acquisition of semiautomatic rifles with so-referred to as “evil features.”

The “evil features” embrace pistol grips, flash hiders and bullet-buttons that make it simpler to take away and substitute ammunition magazines. The Los Angeles Times reported a rise in gun purchases within the lead-as much as the Jan. 1 implementation.

The gun measure is likely one of the few new California legal guidelines that would not have roots on the desk of state Sen. Jerry Hill, the sponsor of 17 payments taking impact within the new yr. The laws run the gamut from how police retailer their weapons of their automobiles to tour bus security to restrictions on water use.

While Congress itself largely was inactive over the previous yr, a new regulation stemming from the Affordable Care Act, and set to take impact Jan. 1, might have far-reaching implications throughout the nation.

Under the change, states will have the option to hunt so-referred to as Section 1332 waivers to attempt to modify elements of ObamaCare for his or her residents. Quite a few states have sought to get that course of began – although the incoming Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress need to repeal and exchange the law as an entire subsequent yr. 


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