Malta Lawmakers Expected to Pass Cannabis Legalization Bill

12/14/2021

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Lawmakers in Malta are expected to approve a law today to allow the personal cultivation and consumption of cannabis, Reuters reports. The move follows a similar plan announced by the government of Luxembourg last October.

Malta’s law will allow adults to grow up to four plants and possess up to seven grams of cannabis. Smoking cannabis in public will remain outlawed and individuals caught consuming cannabis in front of children will be subject to fines between 300 and 500 euros ($340-$564), the report says.

In an op-ed in the Times of Malta last week, Equality Minister Owen Bonnici, who promoted the legislation, said “there is broad agreement” in the nation that the policy of “arresting and taking to court people who decide, out of their own volition, to make personal use of cannabis” should end.

“The government is in no way urging adults to resort to cannabis use or promoting a cannabis culture. The government always urges people to make healthier choices. But if an adult, out of free volition, decides to make use of cannabis, he or she must have a safe and regularized route from where the cannabis can be obtained.” — Bonnici, “Opinion: Cannabis reform: Why the law should be changed,” Dec. 7, 2021

The bill is opposed by the national center-right party, the medical association, and the church.

In the op-ed, Bonnici noted that illicit cannabis sales in Malta will remain “a very serious violation of the law, punishable with mandatory imprisonment” but that the reforms “will bring a change for the better in our society by means of this unprecedented effort in harm reduction within a regularized context.”

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Visa Warns Against Cashless ATM Payments In Dispensaries

12/13/2021

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The payment processing giant Visa issued a warning this month against the practice of cannabis dispensaries using so-called “Cashless ATMs” to circumvent restrictions on cannabis payments. First reported by Marijuana Moment, Visa said in a December 2 memo that the company is “aware of a scheme where [point-of-sale] devices marketed as ‘Cashless ATMs’ are being deployed at merchant outlets,” in violation of Visa Rules.

“Cashless ATMs are POS devices driven by payment applications that mimic standalone ATMs. However, no cash disbursements are made to cardholders. Instead, the devices are used for purchase transactions, which are miscoded as ATM cash disbursements. Purchase amounts are often rounded up to create the appearance of a cash disbursement.” — Visa memo excerpt

Frequent dispensary shoppers may recognize the maneuver which, for customers, essentially replicates the process of paying with a debit or credit card.

While the memo fails to specifically mention state-legal cannabis companies, Visa said that “Cashless ATMs are primarily marketed to merchant types that are unable to obtain payment services — whether due to the Visa Rules … or legal or regulatory prohibitions.”

The ability to process debit and credit card payments is especially enticing for cannabis dispensaries because — due to ongoing federal cannabis prohibition and the resulting lack of banking services — state-licensed cannabis retailers have been so far limited to cash-only transactions, which in turn makes them a prime target for robbery and other crime.

Visa, which is the world’s second-largest payment processing company, said in the memo that any acquirers of “Cashless ATMs” found to be willfully breaking Visa Rules may be “subject to non-compliance assessments and/or penalties.”

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Study: Allowing Cannabis Dispensaries Increases Local Employment Rates

12/13/2021

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A study investigating Colorado data shows that the legalization of adult-use cannabis did not negatively affect worker productivity and in fact, the counties that allowed cannabis dispensaries to open saw an increase in employment rates.

Using eight years of Colorado data, researchers found unemployment went down in green counties when compared to counties with bans on the industry. Additionally, the study — which was first covered by Marijuana Moment — found the increase in jobs was largely tied to increases in the manufacturing sector in “green” counties.

“In terms of jobs, it is clearly the counties with the recreational dispensaries that benefitted most after Colorado legalized adult-use cannabis,” study co-author Avinandan Chakraborty said in a press release.

Because there was no negative effect on wages or the labor force, authors said that any possible negative effects related to increased cannabis access and/or use — things like “decreased job performance” and “reduced efforts to find employment” — are “limited.”

Researchers say their work can be used as a predictor for New Mexico‘s adult-use cannabis rollout, which is scheduled for April 2022.

“Our results suggest that, by preventing counties from banning dispensaries, New Mexico’s approach to legalizing cannabis will yield more widespread employment benefits than those experienced in Colorado. In fact, we may already have begun experiencing some of the benefits as producers begin preparing for dispensaries to open in April 2022.” — UNM co-author Sarah Stith, in a press release

The analysis was done by a team of researchers from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and California Polytechnical University.

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Ohio Regulators Issue Medical Cannabis Product Recall

12/13/2021

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Ohio’s Medical Marijuana Control Program has issued a recall for plant material produced by Galenas LLC, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

The recall is for Blueberry Cookies flower and Blueberry Cookies shake, or trim, and it was prompted by complaints from dispensaries who said they found plastic-like material in some of the company’s packaging.

There have been no reports of harm caused by the affected product, however, the products should be returned to their point of sale, state regulators say. Returned products will not count toward a patient’s 90 day supply quota, according to the report.

According to the Dispatch brief, the following products are covered under the recall:

  • M00000267014: Tier 1 Vap-Hybrid-17.9-0.1-BLUEBERRY COOKIE SHAKE-2.83
  • M00000267018: Tier 1 Vap-Hybrid-17.9-0.1- BLUEBERRY COOKIE SHAKE-14.15
  • M00000266708: Tier 2 Vap-Hybrid-26.7-0.1- BLUEBERRY COOKIE SHAKE-5.66
  • M00000266711: Tier 2 Vap-Hybrid-26.7-0.1- BLUEBERRY COOKIE SHAKE-14.15
  • M00000267001: Tier 2 Vap-Hybrid-31.5-0.1-BLUEBERRY COOKIE-2.83
  • M00000267002: Tier 2 Vap-Hybrid-31.5-0.1- BLUEBERRY COOKIE-5.66
  • M00000267003: Tier 2 Vap-Hybrid-31.5-0.1- BLUEBERRY COOKIE-8.49
  • M00000267004: Tier 2 Vap-Hybrid-31.5-0.1- BLUEBERRY COOKIE-11.32
  • M00000267005: Tier 2 Vap-Hybrid-31.5-0.1- BLUEBERRY COOKIE-14.15

If anyone is experiencing adverse reactions to the products, state officials advise them to seek immediate medical attention and to report the incident to the state health line at 833-464-6627.

Earlier this month, the Ohio Pharmacy Board proposed new rules to increase the amount of cannabis available to patients when visiting dispensaries.

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Poll: 57% of Americans Support Fully Legalizing Cannabis

12/10/2021

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According to a recent YouGov poll, 57% of Americans believe cannabis should be legalized while 27% want it to remain outlawed and 16% were unsure. The survey found 70% of Democrats approve the reforms, along with 61% of independents, and 67% who identified as “other.” Just 40% of Republicans approved of the reforms.

The majority of all age groups polled backed legalization, including 53% of 18-24-year-olds, 61% of those aged 25-34, 62% of 35-44-year-olds, 60% of those 45-54, and 54% of respondents aged 55-and-older.

A majority of both men and women — 58% and 56% respectively — approved of cannabis legalization, while more men (29%) than women (25%) opposed the reforms. Another 14% of men and 19% of women said they were unsure about legalizing cannabis broadly.

Legalization was also popular among all income levels, as 55% of individuals making under $40,000 preferred legalization to prohibition, along with 53% of those who make between $40,000 and $80,000, and 54% of respondents who make $80,000 or more.

The survey was conducted on November 29 and included 40,557 adults in the U.S.

An August poll conducted by Gallup found 49% of Americans had tried cannabis at least once, representing the highest level the polling company has ever reported for Americans that have tried cannabis since it started asking the question in 1970 when the level was 4%. Gallup polling has also found 68% of Americans support cannabis legalization — which is also the highest level in the pollster’s history since they started asking the question in 1969.

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Missouri Bill Would End Warrantless Searches Sparked By Cannabis Odor

12/10/2021

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A bill proposed in Missouri would outlaw warrantless searches based on the odor of cannabis alone, KOMU 8 reports. The bill was pre-filed by Democratic state Rep. Ian Mackey who said the law “makes sense” because of the legalization of medical cannabis in the state.

The measure contains just one sentence: “Notwithstanding any provision of law, the odor of marijuana alone shall not provide a law enforcement officer with probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of a motor vehicle, home, or other private property.”

In an interview with KOMU, Mackey explained that officers should be able to differentiate between fresh and burnt cannabis and that the scent of fresh cannabis should not be a valid reason to perform a warrantless search.

“Obviously smoking marijuana and driving impaired is illegal, as it should be. And so if someone has glassy eyes, if someone’s movements indicate that they’re impaired obviously that is still well within the purview of a warrantless search, but not the smell of cannabis alone.” — Mackey to KOMU

The bill currently carries no co-sponsors and has not yet been added to any committee or House schedules.

Last August, pro-cannabis group Legal Missouri 2022 announced they had filed a ballot initiative to put the cannabis legalization question to voters during next year’s midterm elections. The group must collect 175,000 Missouri voter signatures in order to get the question on ballots.

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Atlantic City Cannabis Café Closed Due to Lack of Permits

12/10/2021

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Atlantic City, New Jersey officials have closed a members-only cannabis club due to lack of permits, the Press of Atlantic City reports. Michael Walsh, the owner of the Rekt Café told the Press that he had obtained the proper permits prior to the opening but indicated he would take the necessary steps to meet the city’s requirements and reopen as a CBD café under the name “Lifted Café.”

In order to meet the city’s demands, Walsh must paint parking spaces, remove an outdoor tent, and build a wall separating food sales from any cannabis-related activities.

The club had allowed members to consume cannabis on-site and the club gifted cannabis products to members who bought other products, the report says. People could become a member by simply signing in when entering the establishment.

Over the summer, the state Attorney General’s Office sent cease-and-desist letters to four businesses over the practice of cannabis gifting.

City Councilman Kaleem Shabazz, who opposes cannabis legalization and represents the ward where the café opened, said regardless of the business, individuals “have to follow the rules to open any business in Atlantic City.” He added that Rekt Café had also received a cease-and-desist letter from the Attorney General’s Office.

Rebekah Mena, a spokesperson for Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr., told the Press that the city licensing department had issued the business a summons for operating without a required mercantile license, and the Casino Reinvestment and Development Authority has also cited the owner of the building for land-use violations, the report says.

Atlantic City Police said they were not involved in closing Rekt.

Walsh said he plans to apply for a cannabis business license once the state starts accepting applications on December 15.

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Wave Washer Ultrasonic 420 Cleaning Machine Review

12/09/2021

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Sometime last year, I remember having a discussion with co-workers about whether there was an easy method or product for cleaning out a dirty bong or pipe — something automated, or at least something better than boiling-hot water and scraping with coarse salt. Nobody seemed to have a good answer.

But this year, there is the Wave Washer, which is apparently the world’s first 420-friendly cleaning machine.

The device itself is super simple to operate, although it uses the not-so-simple physics of ultrasonic sound waves. Here’s a quick description of the cleaning process:

  • You pour a little isopropyl alcohol into your bong, bubblers, or pipes, and cover their openings with provided rubber caps.
  • For bowl pieces, stems, grinders, and other small accessories, you can place these in a plastic baggie with some isopropyl alcohol.
  • Place the dirty 420 accessories you have prepared into a large bowl or small bucket/bin and fill with lukewarm water (and add a dash of dish soap).
  • Add the WaveWasher device in the container, under your glassware, and activate.
  • Wait until the cycle is finished, then remove and rinse the WaveWasher and empty/rinse out your glassware.

While activated, the Wave Washer device vibrates and produces ultrasonic sound waves that ripple through the water and crash against everything you’ve placed in the container. All of the gunk inside your glassware and sticking to your other accessories — which should be pre-rinsed with isopropyl alcohol — will be blasted loose by this ultrasonic energy and, after just a few minutes, will rinse out as clean as ever.

If all of this sounds a little intimidating, don’t worry — I found the Wave Washer to be safe and very easy to use, but it should only be used as described and should be kept out of the reach of children. Read the User Manual closely!

To really demonstrate the effectiveness of the Wave Washer, I wanted to try the device out on a truly dirty bong or pipe. Luckily, I knew exactly which piece I was going to use.

Content trigger warning: this dab rig was in a seriously nasty condition, there is high-definition photographic proof incoming.

This dab rig was left at my place during a dinner party many years ago: it came into my life looking about as nasty as it does pictured below, but then it sat on a shelf between a pair of houseplants and decorative plates for five whole years. Never used since then — or even touched, really — the leftover concentrate caked around the stem and bowl piece slowly solidified. The thing was fully caked with dust and required a generous pour of boiling-hot water just to get the carb cap detached and in its own baggie for the Wave Washer to do its business.

The Wave Washer’s results speak for themselves in the images above, and the process really couldn’t be much easier. Full transparency: this dab rig still required some attention with alcohol-soaked Qtips after one or two ultrasonic cleaning cycles. But for my daily-use bong and most other glassware, which never get as bad as what’s pictured above, only a single session has ever been needed.

At a $169.00 price tag, this device could be a big commitment for many cannabis enthusiasts. But for anyone who is adamant about clean pipes, or who is particularly sensitive to dirty pipes, the Wave Washer is truly delightful.

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Nebraska Gov. on Medical Cannabis: “It’s Not Medicine”

12/09/2021

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Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) is featured in an anti-medical cannabis ad paid for by an affiliate of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), a leading national cannabis prohibitionist group, Marijuana Moment reports. In the 30-second ad, underwritten by SAM Nebraska, the governor argues that cannabis has no medical value and the medical cannabis movement is simply a backdoor to adult-use cannabis in Nebraska. The move appears to be the governor’s effort against a pair of medical cannabis initiatives being circulated in the state.

“The only difference between medical marijuana and recreational marijuana is word choice. Doctors can’t prescribe it and pharmacists can’t provide it because it’s not medicine.” – Ricketts in the ad

The comments in the ad are less inflammatory than his statement in May when he said legalizing medical cannabis would “kill your kids” and it was a “dangerous drug.” However, in the new ad, he does make similarly sweeping statements.

“Today the marijuana industry has set its sights on Nebraska. And the real goal is the legalization of recreational marijuana across the state,” he said. “We’ve seen what happens when progressive politics trump science and common sense. That can’t happen. It’s up to us to protect our kids and defend our communities. Big Marijuana’s way is the wrong way for Nebraska.”

Nebraska is one of only two U.S. states that remain without medical or adult-use cannabis reforms.

The comments come as Nebraskan’s for Medical Cannabis has two initiatives in play for the 2022 ballot, cannabis reform is gaining popularity in the state legislature, and the “Legal Marijuana Now” political party has taken root in the state. And finally, the Nebraska Cannabis Association was recently formed to lobby for updating the state’s cannabis laws.

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BRP Group Launches Management Liability Insurance Program for Cannabis Industry

12/09/2021

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Independent insurance distribution firm BRP Group, Inc. on Tuesday launched a cannabis, hemp, and CBD management liability insurance program called Alpharoot. Management liability refers to a package of insurance policies intended to protect a company, its directors, and its officers.

The plan includes Directors & Officers Insurance (D&O) which protects both the company and the individual directors and officers of the company from claims brought against them for the management of the company; Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPL) which protects the company from claims alleging mistreatment of their employees, including human-resource-related claims; and Fiduciary Liability Insurance, which shields executives and the company from legal liability should a benefit plan administrator miscalculate, mishandle, or practice improper plan care.

Drew Taylor, managing director and head of broking at AlphaRoot, said over the last six to 12 months the company has “seen a number of new entrants try to solve the problem that many private cannabis operators face with management liability insurance — it’s too expensive and the coverage is too restrictive.”

“We feel our Management Liability Program pushes the industry toward a solution that offers flexible coverage with the operator’s budget in mind.” — Taylor in a press release

The company is at least the second this year to launch an insurance program for the cannabis industry. In April, the National Cannabis Risk Management Association launched Trichome, which offers property, general premises liability, and product liability coverage to cannabis businesses.

In September, the National Underwriter Company launched the Cannabis Insurance Coverage Specialist (CICS) program, which was one of the first certification programs for insurance agents and brokers, risk managers, and other professionals who advise cannabis-related businesses.

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Illinois Lawsuit Prevents New Social Equity Licensees from Starting Operations

12/09/2021

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At least half of Illinois’ 118 new cannabis industry licenses have gone to companies majority-owned by non-white applicants, the Chicago Tribune reports. Danielle Perry told the Tribune that now 43% of the state’s licensed companies are Black-owned, 10% are Latino-owned, 9% are owned by coalitions of people of color, and 4% by Asians.

The new ownership figures are in contrast with those from the program’s launch — when none of the state’s cannabis businesses were majority-owned by a person of color. However, the newly-licensed firms have yet to open their business and Douglas Kelly, executive director of the Cannabis Equity Coalition Illinois, said that a court case challenging the most recent licensing round has forced many of those businesses to lose money while the case makes its way through court.

“If it takes another six months to a year, you might as well tear up those (diversity) numbers.” — Kelly to the Tribune

Portia Mittons, a dispensary license applicant and co-chair of the Minority Access Committee of the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois, told the Tribune that while “all the good intentions are great … until we can actually open, it’s not helping us.”

Nic Easley, CEO and founder of Denver, Colorado-based 3C Comprehensive Cannabis Consulting, told the Tribune that Illinois’ scoring program is the worst he’s ever dealt with, saying the scoring system was complex, inconsistent, and secret, and that the bonus points only allowed military veteran-owned companies to receive dispensary licenses.

Illinois contracted KPMG to score industry applications.

“It was just chaos,” Easley told the Tribune. “The whole system’s broken.”

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Cannabis Banking Provisions Removed From National Defense Bill

12/08/2021

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Lawmakers in the U.S. House stripped language to establish cannabis industry banking protections from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week before voting to advance the bill to the Senate. The $768 billion defense bill’s cannabis banking language had been lifted from Colorado Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s (D) Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act.

A bipartisan bill that has passed the House five times but has yet to be considered by the Senate, the SAFE Banking Act seeks to protect banks and other financial institutions that serve cannabis companies from federal money laundering charges.

Rep. Perlmutter requested during a meeting of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday that the language be added back into the NDAA but his request was declined.

“The SAFE Banking Act has been sitting in the Senate for three years and with every passing day their unwillingness to deal with the issue endangers and harms businesses, their employees, and communities across the country. My work on this bill is far from over. As Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Schumer are aware, going forward, I plan to pursue every possible avenue to get SAFE Banking signed into law.” — Perlmutter, in a statement

US Cannabis Council President and CEO Steven Hawkins said that while the group is “disappointed” that the cannabis reforms were not included in NDAA, “we are heartened by the broad, bipartisan support for the … SAFE Banking Act and remain committed to advancing the legislation.”

“We see the consequences every day of the lack of banking access, from the rash of dispensary robberies to the ongoing challenges of minority and small business owners to secure capital,” Hawkins said in a statement. “The SAFE Banking Act would provide urgently needed relief to cannabis businesses of all sizes and put wind in the sails of the broader push to end federal cannabis prohibition.”

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D) opposed adding the banking bill to the NDAA, saying that cannabis reforms should be passed alongside social justice provisions.

“Our nation’s cannabis laws are fundamentally broken and in need of urgent reform,” Booker said in the report. “Although the SAFE Banking Act is common-sense policy that I support, but it has to be coupled with strong restorative justice provisions that seek to right the many injustices experienced by Black and Brown communities as part of our nation’s failed War on Drugs.”

Note: TG Branfalt contributed to this report.

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EU Raises Maximum THC Levels Allowed in Hemp

12/08/2021

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The European Union has changed its Common Agricultural Policy to restore the maximum THC levels for hemp grown in the E.U. from 0.2% to 0.3% THC. The new policy puts the THC levels in line with those of the U.S. The European Parliament had reduced the level in October 2020.

The European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA) said the change, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2023, “recognizes the possibility for farmers to receive direct payments for hemp varieties registered in the E.U. Catalogue that have a maximum level of THC of 0.3%” and that the “change entails a potential enlargement of the number of hemp varieties accepted under the EU Catalogue.”

“As a reminder, this level only applies if farmers want to receive direct payments,” the EIHA noted, “meaning that in Europe it is possible to plant hemp with THC level on the field over 0.3%, provided it is authorized by national regulations (e.g., 0,6 % in Italy; 1 % in the Czech Republic).”

Daniel Kruse, president of the EIHA, said he has been “fighting for this moment for over a decade” but added that the 0.3% threshold is “still a low limit.”

“Scientific studies and many years of experience prove that higher limits pose absolutely no safety risk for consumers. The E.U. lays the foundation for a growing, green and sustainable industrial hemp sector across our Union and it has the chance to achieve a level playing field again in global competition when it comes to the industrial hemp sector.” — Kruse in a statement

Lorenza Romanese, EIHA managing director, said the “small step reflects that EU legislators are closer to fully acknowledging and recognizing the existence of a legitimate European hemp sector.”

“However, as I have said other times, this is not it,” she said. “We need to keep working together, as there are still other areas where hemp deserves to be better regulated, but we are on the right track.”

Last year, the E.U. highest court ruled that hemp-derived CBD is not a narcotic because “it does not appear to have any psychotropic effect or any harmful effect on human health.” In a 2017 report, the World Health Organization described CBD as “generally well tolerated with a good safety profile” and said there is no evidence “of any public health-related problems associated with the use of pure CBD.” The following year, the agency recommended descheduling the cannabinoid.

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Majority of South Dakotans Disapprove of Gov. Obstructing Voter-Approved Cannabis Law

12/08/2021

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More than half of South Dakotans disapprove of the way Republican Gov. Kristi Noem responded to voters approving cannabis legalization in the state, according to a recent poll conducted by Mason Dixon and sponsored by South Dakota News Watch and the University of South Dakota’s Chiesman Center. The poll found 33.4% of respondents strongly disapproved of how she handled the legalization issue — by forcing the issue to the state Supreme Court — with 17.8 % somewhat disapproving, a total of 51.2%.

Another 39.2% somewhat or strongly approved of the governor’s action which effectively overrode the will of 54% of voters who had approved the reforms during the 2020 General Election. Noem had backed a lawsuit by Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. Rick Miller and Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom and issued an executive order claiming that the adult-use cannabis ballot initiative approved by voters “was not proper and violated the procedures set forth in the South Dakota Constitution.”

Ultimately, the state Supreme Court ruled that the initiative contained more than one subject and ran afoul of the state’s constitution. Voters also approved a medical cannabis program during the election, which was not challenged in the lawsuit. State officials, including Noem, are working toward implementing the medical cannabis program.

Despite her opposition to broad legalization, Noem has indicated she might support a bill to decriminalize cannabis use and possession in South Dakota, but in March, her Chief of Staff Tony Venhuizen said she has yet to endorse any decriminalization legislation.

The group behind the successful 2020 initiative, South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws, is planning to put the issue to voters, again, in 2022.

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Florida Opening Cannabis License Applications for Black Farmer Early Next Year

12/08/2021

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The Florida Department of Health has announced the application period for the medical cannabis cultivation license set aside for a single Black farmer, according to a News Service of Florida report. Published on Thursday, the new rule opens the license period from March 21 to March 25, 2022. Applicants must have been in business in Florida for at least five years and have a nursery certificate from the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to apply.

“This has been a long saga. It’s been a long time coming but it’s due,” industry lawyer John Lockwood said in the report.

“I think it’s a big milestone that the state has got to a point (where) they’re in a solid regulatory environment now. They’re able to officially regulate the industry but simultaneously fulfill their statutory duties and start pushing out some of these licenses.” — Lockwood, via the News Service of Florida

The move comes more than four years after Florida passed its medical cannabis framework. The 2017 law notably required at least one license to be awarded to a Black farmer. Aides for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said they have prioritized licensing a Black medical cannabis farmer in preparation for 19 additional medical cannabis licenses, which will be up for grabs in the near future. State officials blame the delay on lawsuits and legal challenges but critics say this is little consolation to Black farmers who have been held back while Florida’s 22 active licensees have flourished in one of the nations’ most lucrative cannabis markets.

The non-refundable application fee for the Black farmer license is set at $146,000, which is more than twice as much as the approximately $60,000 fee assessed during the original batch of applications in 2017. The discrepancy has prompted Agriculture Commissioner and Florida gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried to ask the state attorney general to look into the difference between the two license fees.

“The way that the state of Florida has handled the medical marijuana licensure process for Black farmers is completely unacceptable and discriminatory on its face,” Fried said in a statement. “We should be leveling the playing field for Black farmers who have faced discrimination and other structural obstacles in the farming industry, not doubling their fees and creating additional regulatory burdens for them.”

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Indiana Gov. Still Opposes Cannabis Reforms

12/08/2021

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Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) said on Tuesday in an interview with WANE that he continues to oppose cannabis legalization in the state while it remains federally outlawed but that he would like the state’s colleges and universities to study the plant.

“[The federal government has] still not done anything to make it legal. … I am not opposed to researching marijuana for the potential and possible positive medicinal uses. To do that, obviously, it would go through the same exact process that any other drug would go through to go to market – the [Food and Drug Administration] process.” — Holcomb to WANE

The governor added that he believes Indiana has the best agriculture and medical schools in the nation, Purdue University and Indiana University, respectively, which could lead the way on cannabis research in the state.

“They’d both agree to participate in some of that research,” he said.

In 2019, Holcomb admitted to smoking cannabis while in college but contested that states that have legalized cannabis for adult use had not made “a wise decision.”

Earlier this year the state Democratic Party urged lawmakers to legalize cannabis and indicated that its elected members would introduce legislation next year to enact the reforms, Fox 59 reports.

A 2018 Old National Bank and Ball State University poll found 8 in 10 Hoosiers support both medical and adult-use cannabis legalization in the state.

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Chris Ray: Navigating Change In Alaska’s Cannabis Industry

12/08/2021

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Alaska was one of the very first U.S. states to legalize cannabis after voters there embraced the reforms in 2014; the market was also the very first to get state-wide regulations for social cannabis use, although some towns have passed stricter local regulations than others. But while Alaska’s cannabis market is one of the oldest in the country, its immense size and inherent isolation make doing cannabis business more complicated than many other state-legal markets.

In the latest episode of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, Chris joins our host TG Branfalt to discuss the early days of Alaska’s cannabis marketplace, Chris’ transition from working in cultivation to the retail side of the industry, and strategies he implemented at The Tree House for improving foot traffic and the overall cannabis retail experience. The interview also covers unique Alaskan cannabis industry experiences, like flying on commercial airlines while carrying tens of thousands of dollars worth of cannabis products — because sometimes that’s the only option — and the benefits of getting to know your customer base on a more personal level.

You can listen to the interview through the media player below or through your favorite podcasts app, or keep scrolling down to find a full transcript.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

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Cara Wietstock: Hi. I’m Cara Wietstock, culture editor at Ganjapreneur and host of our YouTube show, Fresh Cut. The best way to understand cannabis business is to speak directly to those who work within it and Fresh Cut was created to shine recognition on the people who fill these roles. In this interview series, we focus on those with their hands and the dirt, both literally and figuratively, from cultivators to bud tenders, educators to advocates, activists to lobbyists, we aim to illuminate the workers who keep this industry thriving. Enjoy one on one conversations with me and guests by watching along on the Ganjapreneur YouTube channel and follow our social channels to keep up with the latest episodes. Have a great day.

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host TG Branfalt and thank you for listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast, where we try to bring new, actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today, I have finally completed my near five-year mission to get somebody from Alaska on this show. I’m delighted to be joined by Chris Ray. He’s the general manager of Anchorage, Alaska’s Tree House. Chris has worked in the state’s cannabis industry since August of 2016. How you doing man?

Chris Ray: Good. How are you?

TG Branfalt: I’m very, very well. Like I said, it’s great to have somebody representing Alaska finally on the show. I have a lot of questions that I think a lot of people have been sort of asking me about so I finally get to have answers for them. But before we get into that, man, tell me about out yourself, your background, and how you ended up in the cannabis space.

Chris Ray: Yeah, before we hopped on here, like I was telling you, I started doing the retail thing after I went to college. I went to University of Idaho for a year, tried to figure out what I wanted to do with life. Realized a four year school wasn’t really for me so I kind of bounced around between Washington, Hawaii and then I ended up in Missouri. Just started working retail down there for a few years then I got a call from one of my old basketball coaches from back in my high school days and he said that he was starting a cannabis retail in Fairbanks and he wanted my help. And so August of 2016 rolled around, I moved up there, helped him out in the cultivation and then helped him out in the retail. Got that going October, 2016 and then I was with them until about April of 2017.

And then I went over and joined Grass Station 49 in Fairbanks. They started off with just one location. We expanded to two more in Fairbanks, so three total within the first two and a half years. And then we opened a store in Nome shortly after that. And then once we opened up that store in Nome, I got a call from a buddy of mine here in Anchorage who was starting up a retail and he had already had a cultivation going. He’s big in the local hiphop scene, which really kind of gained my interest and my attention. And then that’s when I came down here and started working for the Tree House. And so we just opened up in July of last year, so 2020. Haven’t been open for a year yet. Just been kind working through the kinks and trying to get everything going. That’s kind and where we’re standing now.

TG Branfalt: You say that you started in sort of the cultivation, retail and now you’re helping sort of build a store as a general manager. What were some of the challenges for you when you were making that transition?

Chris Ray: I think the biggest challenge is it’s never been done before, the cannabis retail. Essentially everything that you’re doing and learning, it comes with taking some L’s here and there. Some learning lessons. I think the hardest part though for me, is trying to find like the right people to fit in. Because I think everyone who smokes and who’s a stoner wants to be in the industry but you’ll notice that everyone that smokes and a stoner usually doesn’t have the work ethic or the know-how’s to show up on time or to do things like that. The little simple things. That was a big eye opener realizing that everyone isn’t going to really fit that mold. But once you get around the whole staffing because we’re in Alaska so there’s not very many people.

There are people but there’s not a whole lot like you would say in New York or in California to pick from. Getting around that, once you get around that, just trying to find the product too because we’re a big state, not a whole lot of people. There’s a lot of cultivations but you’re talking about anywhere from when I was in Fairbanks, for instance, having to get stuff from Valdez, that’s a whole day and a half trip, a drive down six to eight hours and then you’re talking about getting the product there. Well now you’re not going to drive back because you’ve been driving all day. Now you’re waiting for the next day to come back. If there’s any construction, which in the summer in Alaska, they call it construction season, stopping all the time. Wintertimes you’ve got the snow, snow storms where you can’t travel through. It makes it really difficult when it comes to the whole transportation and I’d say the hiring aspects of things.

TG Branfalt: Well, I had read once this very unique story about somebody, it was when the Alaska market was first sort of coming online and I guess a lot of places in Alaska, you can only get to by aircraft.

Chris Ray: Yeah. A lot of those other places like Juneau or Ketchikan. My buddy Jason, he runs Frog Mountain CO2 Extraction. I’ve been working with him for a few years now and he’s got a fly to Anchorage twice, three times a month just to get product to people. At that point, now you’re trying to get on schedule with all these retails to see when you can deliver, when you can’t deliver. And if you know anything about ordering and stuff like that, sometimes you got money. Sometimes you don’t. Someone’s like, “Hey, I’m coming up on the 30th,” but you just put in two huge orders for the 25th. It’s like, all right, now I got to kind of juggle these around because he’s only coming up this one time. The next time you’re going to see him is on the 15th or on the 20th. Flying by air is crazy.

TG Branfalt: Has anyone come into any issues with sort of regulatory bodies or anything because cannabis remains federally outlawed and you have to get on a plane with it? Or is there anything like that?

Chris Ray: From my experience and doing the transports and what I’ve run to with the airlines, as long as you’re straight and up front with them and you have all your paperwork and it’s all manifested and you have it on your persons, they’ll go through, they’ll take you to a room, they’ll check you out, make sure everything’s good to go. As long as your paperwork is correct, they send you through. At that point, when I go through TSA, I feel like they’re looking for explosives. All the necessaries that they should be looking for when I’m trying to do my job and run a business and I have paperwork from the state that says I’m legally allowed to fly through or transport this, there’s nothing they can really do about it. Now of course they can stop us and be like, “Hey, we don’t feel this is safe for you flying today.”

But I haven’t seen that happen with anyone. I popped on one of the local airliners with 20, $30,000 worth of concentrates and, “Oh yep. All good.” And I’ve got families on the plane sitting in front of me and behind me and I’m just loading up all this stuff on the aircraft and it is what it is.

TG Branfalt: That’s unlike any, no one else, no other operator in any other state has to deal with something like that. Can you tell the audience a bit more about Alaska’s cannabis law and what if anything sets it apart from some of the ones in the continental United States?

Chris Ray: I think the thing where we’re very different is in California, for instance, when you have medical, you have shops that are accessible to go get your medicine and to do what you need to do. In Alaska medical passed years, years ago, I want to say 96, I could be wrong but it passed years ago and we have no medical setup to where anyone can go and buy their own stuff. Everything’s like, all right, you’re medically set up. Here’s a card. You can grow. But in the state of Alaska, it’s already legal for you to grow so the only thing it’s really doing is if you’re a minor and you need it, then you can have someone grow for you. But you still can’t be like, hey, I need to go to the shop. Here’s my med card. Do I get a percentage off? Or is there a certain selection that I can go to? We don’t have any of that.

In Alaska, if you’re 21, you have a legal ID, you can come shop. Your medical card means nothing. And even if you have a medical card, you can grow but guess what? Me and my buddy, we’re legally 21, we’re allowed to grow in the house. It’s very different in that aspect, you would think there’d be something set up to where people could actually use that medical card to go use it and do something positive with it. But all they can really do is what they’re already allowed to do. But other than that, the regulations, we’re allowed to buy up to seven grams of concentrate per purchase per day. I know in Washington, you’re not allowed to do that. We’re allowed to get these cool little baller jars with seven grams of concentrate, in Washington they only get these little itty bitty ones.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. In Massachusetts, it’s the same way you can’t get more than a gram.

Chris Ray: Yeah. Which, if you have someone who smokes a lot, you’re going to be done with that gram by the time lunch is over.

TG Branfalt: Basically. Now you say that you grow your own and you have to grow indoors. Is there an outdoor growing season for cannabis in Alaska?

Chris Ray: Yeah. We have legal outdoor grows. There’s one in Fairbanks. What is it called? Fox Creek Farms or something like that. Rosie Creek Farms. They’re outdoor. They only harvest once at the end of the summer. That’s all they do. Entire wintertime they just clean up, process, make six packs, make joints. Me personally, I don’t think it’s very lucrative but then again, I don’t have an outdoor grow, so what do I know? But I just know in Alaska, once that permafrost sets come end of summer and it starts getting cold, if you don’t have that stuff planted in time right now where it’s still getting cold out in the springtime, you’re not going to be able to harvest in time. But some people do have the greenhouses that are enclosed, that get the sunlight and then it’s fixated with the AC inside so if it gets too hot, it can cool down a little bit. There are some assisted grows like that. Lots of people that are just locals grow outdoor if they have a big backyard or autoflower plants on the back deck are very popular. I know lots of people who do that.

TG Branfalt: Are you allowed? In some states you can’t sell clones? Is that something you’re allowed to do in Alaska?

Chris Ray: Yeah. Yep. If you’re a retailer and you have a cultivation, you’re allowed to sell your clones. I know some places do it on the regular. Some places don’t do it at all because they don’t want that risk of you taking a clone and going home and be like, oh man, you gave me spider mites or oh man, I got PM. And I didn’t get PM till I brought home this clone. And then they blame it on the retail or the cultivation for that matter.

TG Branfalt: Got you. We’ve talked about some of the challenges that you face, when I asked you earlier about the flying and that sort of stuff, what are some of the unique benefits to you think running a cannabis shop in Alaska?

Chris Ray: I feel like you get a lot more personable with the customers because you have your select fan base, not fan base, but customer base that like your store. In California, I’d imagine you’d probably have somewhere closer to 500 to a 1,000 transactions a day at a busy shop in town. You’re probably looking at like 200 to 400, maybe. Those people that are coming in, you’re seeing the same faces every day. You’re able to get up close and personal with those people, learn about them, really find out what they’re like and what they’re looking for and really cater to their needs versus just on a huge, corporation scale, buying everything on the map that you can because it sells or because the computer tells you that it’s doing good. I’d say that’s one of the main, big benefits about being in Alaska.

TG Branfalt: Well, and you talk about the computer and you do use data at the Tree House and could you tell me a bit about how you use that data and how that data translates to enhance the customer experience?

Chris Ray: Yeah, so right now we use GrowFlow for a point of sale. I started using it back in, I want to say 2018 is when we switched over at Grass Station when I was there. My biggest thing for a bud tender to come in and to use the system is I need it to be simple and I need it to be like their iPhone for instance or their Android. They can get on it, they can find their text messages, type it out. It sends, it’s done. When we use GrowFlow to find out those analytics and that information that we need for the retail, using their insights tool that they have to tap in to see all right, when are our most transactions going through? Is opening up at 8:00 AM on Saturday, Sunday worth it?

We found out that it wasn’t on the weekends for us but Monday through Friday we have a bunch of early risers that are there right at 8:00 AM as soon as we open up the doors, almost like getting their morning coffee. From that aspect that really helped us tap in with that and get that opened up because we were wasting a bunch of payroll hours on certain shifts and certain days where we had three people scheduled to where we look at GrowFlow and say, “Hey, from noon to 1:00 you’re only doing this much. Maybe you only need two people instead of three.” It’s been really good in that aspect.

TG Branfalt: Was it surprising to you that you had a bunch of people sort of waiting outside at 8:00 AM during the week?

Chris Ray: For me, no, because when I was in Fairbanks, that was one of the first big changes that I did was I was like, “Hey, it’s cool to open up at 10:00. I get that but there’s people who wake up at 6:00 AM that run out of weed the night before, wake up at 6:00 AM and only have a bowl and they got to be at work at 9:00 so when we open up at 8:00 they just got their coffee. Now they’re here. Let me get a couple of pre-rolls real quick.” Or some folks only have a 30 minute lunch so when they get on a lunch at 12:00, they don’t want to spend 10 minutes driving to the shop, waiting in line for five to 10 minutes and then trying to whizz back to work. If they can come in at 8:00 AM and get what they need, now they can enjoy that lunch that they have at 12:00, smoke that pre-roll. All right, I got 10, 15 minutes to eat my food now and to recover and to go back inside.

That was one of my big eye-openers right there and kind of why I knew it would work. It was just on the weekends. People go out Friday night, get hammered or whatever they might do, smoke a whole lot and then they don’t wake up till 9:00, 10:00 AM the next morning, especially if it’s their day off.

TG Branfalt: Yeah, nowhere in New York, we just went legal we don’t have shops yet and so we go to Massachusetts but they don’t open in Massachusetts until at least 9:00, most of them 10:00, 11:00. I wonder how much they might be doing the same thing you are trying to figure out when the best time for them to be open. Is there any other way that using the data has changed your operations?

Chris Ray: Yeah. With the top sellers and the top suppliers, when I first started using it, it was top brands. And then I know I talked, I can’t remember who I talked to within the company, but I was like, “Hey, like we really and use the brands portion. But if you could make it top suppliers, that would be 10 times helpful.” Because everything that pulls in through Metrc is going to pull the supplier name and the cultivation. Off the rip, if you can do something with suppliers that are doing the best, that’ll tell me which ones I need to really order from. And then that really helps out with your whole ordering on a big scale. You know who you need to spend what money with or who’s getting the large orders and who’s getting the smaller orders because a cultivation might have eight strains but only one of them is selling really well in your shop, which there’s nothing wrong with that. I just know that I need to buy lots of that one and have that one so it’s never running out because that’s one of the top five sellers.

Same thing with the products, whether it be a vape cartridge or shatter live resin, whatever it might be. I really might like refined and live resin but if it’s only selling 2,000 to $3,000 worth of stuff in the shop per two weeks, but Frog Mountain or someone else is selling five to six and that’s not my favorite and that still tells me that I need to go with Frog Mountain a little bit more versus what I like, which at the retail side, that’ll kill anyone quicker than something else was just ordering what you like. It’s like going to a restaurant. There’s 20 things on the menu for a reason. You know what I mean? You might not like pasta but someone else might come in and that’s what they’re looking forward to.

TG Branfalt: You’ve been in the industry since, for basically for what? Seven years now or six years.

Chris Ray: Yeah, I was Pakalolo’s first employee.

TG Branfalt: What do you think is or what have you noticed is, through the data, is the most popular sort of form maybe not brand, but is it flowers? Is it concentrates? Because state by state it differs.

Chris Ray: Pre-rolls.

TG Branfalt: Pre-rolls.

Chris Ray: Yeah, I would’ve thought, me personally, I love buying flower and rolling it up myself but there are so many people on go in Alaska, whether they’re going fishing, camping, whether they’re driving on a six hour trip to go somewhere up north or going on a road trip. Because everywhere in Alaska, you got to drive to get there. You’re looking at no less than an hour drive somewhere. I feel like people just traveling a lot and being on the go, those six packs and those four packs that we sell and just pre-rolls and all just take over the market. There’s lots of good flower out there and there’s lots of good concentrates, but people from concentrates there’s only a select few that use them.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. You mentioned people having to travel and as we discussed before we went on here, Alaska’s one of those places that I really would love to visit. Very much considered moving there at one point. What portion of your customers are tourists? And what role does tourism play in your bottom line ultimately?

Chris Ray: When I was in Fairbanks, tourism played I’d say during the summertime about a good 30 to 40% of your customers are tourists.

TG Branfalt: That much.

Chris Ray: Because you got people coming up. They’re trying to just see what it’s like in the summertime, trying to enjoy themselves. In the wintertime, I’d say it dies down a little bit because not many people want to come deal with the cold but they want to see the lights, especially in Fairbanks. Now, when I got to Anchorage, we kind of opened up right before the pandemic so the whole tourism thing, it really hasn’t kicked into full gear or I don’t even know if it will this summer. I know Alaska’s offering the vaccine to anyone that comes to Alaska that wants to get it. That might bring some tourism up. But at the Tree House, I really haven’t seen that in full scale yet but from Fairbanks in that summertime, I’d say a good 30 to 40% in the summertime. And then probably about 20, maybe 25% in the wintertime. But a lot it’s just your diehard locals that want to come through and support local businesses.

TG Branfalt: Do you guys have that corporate culture up there that have sort of permeated in other states?

Chris Ray: We have a couple of shops up here that have kind of taken that bigger, all right, we’re going to take a larger footprint. We want three cultivations. We want four retails. There’s a couple like that. Not a whole lot. I’d say for the most part with us being in Alaska, everything still seems small craft for the most part. But I hope it doesn’t come in here like that.

TG Branfalt: No, you’re super fortunate because the idea of an entire market being a craft market is it’s really unheard of down here.

Chris Ray: Now, there are a lot of cultivations to where I feel like there’s a lot more midgrade weed that it outweighs the good weed that’s out there for sure. And some of those guys that have two, three cultivations, that they’re putting out a lot of mid grade stuff. Those smaller guys that only have the one cultivation, sometimes they get overlooked.

TG Branfalt: And you find them through data, right?

Chris Ray: Oh, you have to, you have to, yeah.

TG Branfalt: You mentioned that the Tree House just opened around the time that COVID hit. The pandemic obviously didn’t change your operations that much at the Tree House. But when that did hit, what did you have to do? What did the industry have to do in Alaska to deal with that?

Chris Ray: The industry actually opened up curbside pickups. They didn’t open up for delivery but they did allow us to do some curbside pickups. Us at the Tree House where we’re at, we didn’t feel comfortable doing the walking outside with product and dropping it off to people. We kind of just went with the whole social distancing, cleaning on the hour, every hour, wiping down everything. Thankfully with our shop, we only have about 10 to 12 employees so keeping everyone safe and healthy for the most part, we were good. We didn’t have anyone break out with any cases or anything like that.

But the industry as a whole, with them doing the curbside pickup, I feel like it helped out a lot of shops because a lot of shops don’t have the floor space that we do to where people can come in and be distanced. For them to walk out real quick and all right, here you go, boom, boom, boom. You already paid for it. All right. Thank you. Make it real quick for them. I feel like it made some of the customers and the consumers feel safer about coming to get their product but once it kind of laxed up a little bit, I feel like people they’re looking forward for things to opening back up and being able to come back in and see the big jars of weed and smell them and have a more hands on experience. Because I feel like that’s why most people come to the shop is to have that hands on experience.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. It definitely had to sort of change the way that people were buying cannabis. Did you notice any sort of?

Chris Ray: Yeah, we thought sales might slow down a little bit because people not wanting to leave the house or whatever it may have been but with us being an essential worker in the state of Alaska, business stayed the same if not got better. A lot of people came out, they were willing to spend more money because they only wanted to come once or twice a week versus the four times they were coming. You had some people who were just at home more so they weren’t going out as much so they were smoking more. I’m sure anyone who’s a smoker knows how that goes. If you don’t have to leave the house or go check in or meet with anyone, you’re just smoking up because it’s there. No, business stayed pretty steady. Pretty good. It was a good time. It definitely had some learning lessons as far as how to pivot when a pandemic hits. That was definitely my first time working through something like that. Just following the guidelines of the state of Alaska and stuff like that.

TG Branfalt: And as general manager, you were the one that basically had to implement all this stuff.

Chris Ray: Yeah. And it’s tough, when some places are going overboard with it to where they’re only allowing five people in store at a time to where some shops were like, all right. people can come in as long as we’re distanced. Kind of putting it on the bud tenders a little bit like, “Hey, if you see it getting packed in here, ask some people to wait outside in the hallway.” But thankfully our bud tenders are pretty good. They’re pretty quick. Keeping the constant flow within the shop and we have an entrance one way and an exit the other way. Just kind of keeping that traffic streamlined and not having a whole lot of people pass by each other was a good thing.

TG Branfalt: Has the pandemic affected sort of your ability to keep, get or retain the employees because down here it’s, everybody is hiring all the time now because the unemployment check is good. Has that been something that you faced as well?

Chris Ray: No. The only thing that we really face is some employees they might get a job offer from a job that offers them medical benefits or something like that, to where it’s like, “Hey, I’m going to go take this job because I need the benefits,” or, “Hey, I’m going to go take this job because I only have to deal with five people now instead of 200.” But never did I have anyone be like, “Hey, I don’t feel safe working because of the pandemic or COVID or anything like that.” Like I said, we have a lot of space in our shop so even the bud tenders, from register to register, there’s a good four to six feet. And then from the customer to the employee, it’s already a good four feet. Just add another two feet to that, I feel like it made everyone feel pretty safe.

TG Branfalt: It’s good to hear that you guys did particularly well, just with health and being able to manage the pandemic. One of the things that I always found interesting about sort of Alaska’s cannabis law was that they were early adopters of allowing or eventually allowing social use. And a lot of states have since then either enacted their own law or included it in their own reforms. How do you think lounges will affect the industry?

Chris Ray: I’m very curious to see how it’s going to go. One of the first ones just opened up in Fairbanks but I don’t know if you know but it kind of varies from city to city with the rules on which you can consume. In Anchorage, they put it out to where, all right if you get an endorsement for the onsite, you’re only allowed to consume edibles. Well, in Alaska, the max for edibles is 50 milligrams per package. Exactly. I don’t see very many people be like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to go over here today and go buy some cookies and go sit down and eat these cookies.” I just don’t see that being lucrative to anyone. But in Fairbanks, they have it to where you can buy up to a gram of flower from that place and you can smoke it there.

The place in Fairbanks that’s open, they have, you can walk in there, there’s a cafe, TVs, it’s an old Chili’s building so kind of imagine a Chili’s. Walk in there, you get you your coffee or your smoothie or whatever, you buy a pre-roll, one gram pre-roll or buy one gram thing of flower and you can roll it up yourself. Smoke that and then leave. I’m just kind of curious though, if cops are going to sit around the corner, like they do at new bars when new bars open up or something like that and kind of camp out. I think it’ll be cool but I’m very curious to see how it’ll all pan out in the end.

TG Branfalt: I love the idea of an old Chili’s being able to smoke weed at an old Chili’s.

Chris Ray: Yeah. It’s got to grow in there. It’s got a little cafe and then they got the retail on the other side. It’s pretty big.

TG Branfalt: That’s great use of space, man. There’s an old Pizza Hut here. I hope they do the same thing here. Are you guys planning? You said you have a big space, are you guys planning to try to get that endorsement?

Chris Ray: I think if Anchorage were to ever change it to where you could smoke flower or consume concentrates, then I think it would be worth the conversation but just how it right now with just the edibles I don’t think it makes sense because you have to have a state of the art ventilation but I don’t know why you’d have to have a state of the art ventilation if there’s only edibles allowed. It just doesn’t make sense right now.

TG Branfalt: Is the beverage game strong up there?

Chris Ray: In comparison to Washington, it’s pretty weak or like California it’s pretty weak. There are a couple of good beverage companies up here, like Fire Eater, they make a few different sodas. Red Run makes a lemonade that a lot of people tend to like but other than that, there’s really not very many drinks. And again, that counts as an edible so the entire soda can only be 50 milligrams. I know most people are looking for a 100, 250 milligram drink because they want to drink half of it and store the rest of it for later or something.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. In Michigan when I was in Michigan, the max was actually 10 milligrams.

Chris Ray: Wow.

TG Branfalt: Yep. On a beverage. And that was actually medical too. But then you could get at the same time, you could also get basically syrup that was 500 milligrams a bottle and that was a good time.

Chris Ray: Yeah. We have the syrup but again, the syrup it counts an edible so it can only be 50 milligrams. There’s a public comment out right now to raise that from 50 to a 100 to see how that goes. I’m hoping they do. Enough people have voiced their opinions about it. I think that’s on the next meeting or the next agenda to see if they’re going to push that through. And if that does, I think that’ll open up the edible game a little bit to where more people want to come in and experiment with edibles and try them. Because I know right now, 50 milligrams to a 200 pound man, it’s really, it’s not going to do much.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. On the flip side though, if you’re worried about police also sitting around outside, you get someone who’s not used to it at all and 50 a hard.

Chris Ray: It’s a good amount.

TG Branfalt: It’s a hard ride.

Chris Ray: For sure. For sure.

TG Branfalt: You’re a young dude in this industry, you’ve been in your position now for a little under a year but you’ve been in the space since 2016, really at the beginning in Alaska. What’s some advice that you would have for someone looking to get into the industry, man?

Chris Ray: Be willing to come in and get your foot in the door any way that you can. When I first came up, I came up to help run the retail so I was the assistant store manager. When I left there, I had to go to a new company and just to get my foot in the door there, I just came in as a packager. If you’re good at your job and you can voice your opinion here and there and the right people are willing to listen, they will. But that would be my biggest thing is just be willing to get your foot in the door some way. A lot of people don’t want to come in and bud tend or package but a lot of the people that I know today that are in their top positions at certain companies within the state of Alaska, they all came in and they bud tended for a year, a year and a half, they packaged or they watered and trimmed for a year.

They did the little things to kind of study the people around them moving and making the bigger decisions so when the time came to where they needed someone else to make those decisions, they kind of already been watching and it’s a lot easier to teach. I feel like a lot of people come in on their high horse and want to be a manager or a key holder, someone of importance right away instead of coming in and just taking it easy and learning a little bit. It’s a brand new industry and a lot of places there’s a lot of room to grow and companies are just going to keep popping up right and left. If you’re doing your job at the one place, and they got nothing but good things to say about you, a lot of these other places are going to come to you, knocking at your door, looking to build with you instead of just having you be someone come in, making 15 an hour, showing up for 30 hours a week and clocking in and clocking out.

TG Branfalt: And maybe have showed up on time, right?

Chris Ray: And you hope so. Man, you’d be surprised, dude. You’d really be surprised.

TG Branfalt: I worked in the bong industry for a very long time, you can’t be surprised.

Chris Ray: Man, it’s just like, people want more and they want to raise or something but you can’t show up on time six out of the six days out of the week, seven days out of the week. It’s really not hard to show up five minutes before your shift. If you’ve got it to where you’re flexible and you can show up whenever, then by all means do that. But usually when you’re a bud tender or a packager, it’s like, hey, your shift starts up 4:00 so be ready to work at 4:00, not show up at 3:59, take your hat off, take your jacket off, go use the bathroom and then by the time you come out in front to count your drawer, it’s 4:10. It’s like, dude, where you been?

TG Branfalt: That will not get you far in the cannabis industry in Alaska or anywhere else I don’t think. Where Chris Ray can people find out more about you and more about The Tree House?

Chris Ray: All of my social medias are @shawnhemp_, that’s Shawn, S-H-A-W-N-H-E-M P_. That’s my weed moniker. I’ve been rolling with it for a little bit now but that’s pretty much where I post anything that I like, local cannabis, lots of buddies of mine that grow lots of rec stuff that I try for the first time, stuff like that. I’m pretty active on there. But the Tree House, all of our social medias are TheTreeHouseAK. And then we have our website, thetreehouseak.com. That pretty much has our deals, our menu, what we’ve got going on. We try to keep that up to date. And then just story on Instagram for the Tree House is pretty active and always shows what’s going on in the store and stuff like that.

TG Branfalt: Well, if I ever make my way to Alaska, I’ll know where to land the plane.

Chris Ray: Yeah. If anyone is coming to Alaska and they want to see some shops or smoke some good weed, come hit me up, shoot me a message on Instagram, reach out. Everyone in Alaska is super friendly, man. That’s the one thing I love about it here. It’s not like going to Vegas or California, there are some sheisty people in Alaska, don’t get me wrong. But for the most part, everyone who is involved with the weed game, they’re pretty good people.

TG Branfalt: Well, I really thank you for taking the time out and coming on the show and giving me this sort of perspective and insight because it’s been a long time that I’ve been trying.

Chris Ray: I’m surprised it took you five years. That’s crazy to me, man. There’s two or three podcasts up here that talk about marijuana on the local scene. There’s 30 shops. I’m just, I’m surprised no one’s reached out.

TG Branfalt: You guys are sketchy of us mainlanders.

Chris Ray: Oh, see man, I learned all my experience down there on the mainland. I was right down between Kansas City and St. Louis for about three, four years down there in Columbia.

TG Branfalt: Columbia. I’ve never been, man. I’ve never been.

Chris Ray: Yeah. It’s an interesting place, man. It’s like a tunnel between Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City and St. Louis.

TG Branfalt: Chicago’s a great city.

Chris Ray: It’s right where the University of Mizzou’s at. A lot of people come through there, a whole lot of different walks of life.

TG Branfalt: That’s Chris Ray. Thank you so much again. Hopefully you can keep me posted on whether or not that push works to get the level of THC in edibles raised. And hopefully we’ll talk again soon, man. I really appreciate it.

Chris Ray: Yeah. Yeah. Reach out whenever.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com, on Spotify and in the Apple iTunes Store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

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Scott Campbell: Data Solutions for Scaling a Commercial Cannabis Grow

12/07/2021

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Running a successful and compliant cannabis grow facility requires vast expertise and careful attention to detail — to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of a rapidly scaling business model, most operators have incorporated technology to help streamline the cultivation process.

We recently caught up with Scott Campbell, CEO of AROYA — a cannabis cultivation technology and processing firm — to discuss the company’s technology suite. This interview covers the power of data collection, how the company’s real-time tracking capabilities can streamline the upwards scaling of commercial cannabis farms, the types and amount of R&D that went into creating the integrated software and technology platforms, and more!
Find the full interview below.

Ganjapreneur: When did METER Group decide to start AROYA, and what was the inspiration behind that decision?

Scott Campbell: So we’ve been operating in the sensor and soil moisture analysis spaces for almost 40 years. Our company draws its roots in academic research, and invented and patented the technology that helps people measure their environment with that same level of precision.

The extension of those technologies to cannabis, including new instruments we brought to market along the way, wasn’t an immediate get for us at first. But it’s a natural fit. Cannabis shares much in common with broader horticulture yet it’s the one crop in the market experiencing significant year-over-year growth. We saw the opportunity.

We realized if we could develop robust, integrated software in-house to help growers make sense of their data, that we could shape the way cannabis is cultivated, harvested, and produced. People have been growing for generations, yet not at this (legalized) scale. AROYA ultimately is a tool to help steer that scaling process in a way that helps everyone win.

How does Aroya improve the daily operations of a cultivation team?

It’s funny, you know, I walk into a lot of growhouses when we visit clients or prospective clients, and I’m surprised how many operations still use things like whiteboards, spreadsheets, and pen-and-paper to keep track of their data. People who walk around with a clipboard or literally stick their hands in the dirt.

Everything in your growhouse, from your plant to your drying room to the substrate to the C-suite, contains valuable data. There’s so much lost opportunity when you don’t have access to all of it in a way that’s integrated, organized, easily accessible and actionable. You’re doing a lot of guessing and manual entry.

The way AROYA works is to give everyone visibility into what’s going on, what’s worked before, and how to continuously learn and improve. Not just every day, but with every batch. Everyone can focus their efforts on what they do best because we do what we do.

What makes AROYA different from other optimized cultivation platforms?

I think we’re different because we’re not an optimized cultivation platform. Or at least, that’s not all that we are. For us, cultivation software and analytics are a feature, not a product.

Yes, we can help you crop steer. Yes, we can help you increase yields by giving you access to valuable insights during prop, veg, and flower stages. But we’re also the instruments that give you the foundation of rich, precision data in real time and across time. We also provide hardware and software to help post-harvest with drying, processing, compliance, and so on. It’s a true seed-to-package solution, and I know that’s a buzzword, but I think what makes us different is that at least from what we know about the space so far … we don’t have natural competitors. No one’s yet followed us to all the places we go or to the places AROYA has yet to go.

What long-term benefits might a cultivator expect to see after implementing AROYA software?

The short answer is an increase in grams per square foot per year. That’s the metric that matters when it comes to increasing profitability over time.

More than that, though, is a streamline of processes and an increased ability to test, track, learn, and improve. You can keep track of all your historical data with extraordinary detail, access it anytime, and be able to use it to keep your quality consistent and also experiment with the way you grow.

AROYA helps everyone do their job better and gives the right people visibility to everything they need to know, to continue to run their operation better over time.

What kinds of data does AROYA software capture and store?

Rather than rattle off a list of everything we measure, I could keep it high level and say there’s very little in a grow room that can’t be measured. The substrate “black box” isn’t a black box anymore. We provide that level of visibility with our instruments and those readings feed right back into the software. We have precision climate sensing technology for your environment as well. You can really dial in your cultivation practices that way.

Post-harvest, we also measure moisture content. Drying should be an exact science, especially if you’re trying to optimize for quality. We help you do that with an integrated solution that’s about 10x more accurate than anything else on the market today.

When you take all that data and you bundle it with IPM, business intelligence, compliance (we integrated with METRC in several states and keep adding to that list), and plant tracking, the amount of data available to AROYA and therefore to you is almost endless. Still, we find we can always add additional features to be even more robust and we’re excited to keep pushing the envelope there.

What kind of customer support do you provide for clients when they experience Metrc outages or issues with integration?

We have a dedicated customer success team for our commercially licensed growers. We have SMEs on the hardware, software, business, and cultivation sides who can triage and help you troubleshoot. We’re always looking to elevate our support, too. We want our customers to have faith that the thing they trust to just work keeps working, whether that’s with Metrc outages or integration.

How might a cultivator use this information to help scale their operation? And are there other applications for this data that can be beneficial to a business?

So I think specifically increasing yield and making high-quality grow ops replicable are the main things that speed up the scaling process. At least on the cultivation side. And everyone I talk to has plans to keep expanding: new facilities, new states, new markets, more vertical integration.

But I also think that streamlining workflow and providing that extra layer of visibility in a secure, seamless way helps people save on time, labor, additional tools, etc. So you can run lean and mean while ramping up: a 10,000 square foot facility, if they purchase AROYA and use it to its full capability and give the plants what they need, could make their money back on it in less than a month. Now imagine if you’re getting 4, 5, 6 pounds per light instead of 2, 3. Now you’re getting 2x, 3x, maybe more, out of the same physical imprint. That’s massive for scaling purposes.

How does AROYA help growers manage cultivar-specific crop steering?

So we help people track and take action rooted in their data by strain, by room, by batch. So at the cultivar level AROYA gives insights into recipes. You can create them, save them, and recall them when you want to replicate what’s worked before for that specific cultivar. It’s pretty powerful to be able to trust that by following the same process, you should get the same results. That level of consistency builds trust in your own customers and ultimately elevates your brand and reputation in the market.

When did the company introduce processing features?

Starting in 2020, we rolled out processing as another set of features to AROYA and we just kept releasing post-harvest updates and features through 2021. That’s when we really started calling what we offer a cannabis production platform. It’s not just crop steering, it’s not just cultivation. It’s the whole lifecycle of the plant and the protection of your IP. It’s really a game-changer and I think it still goes underutilized. We’re looking to change that and continue to add even more to help people improve every aspect of their cannabis production operation.

What kind of R&D did you go through before launching the processing platform?

Our company is rooted in research. For example, our TEROS 12 along with our wireless Bluetooth mesh capability are paradigm-shifting technologies that have been rigorously tested and honed over time. I call those out specifically, because the ability to accurately measure EC in real time is fundamental to everything we do. The wireless data collection is unique to AROYA and to get those essential capabilities to market took obsessive innovation and piloting of the hardware and networking.

We have engineers, data scientists, cultivators, QA, testing, and access to operators around the country to help us continually refine what we build. This stuff takes months to research, develop, test, and refine roll out successfully.

We also do listening tours of our customers and do site visits often. We want to know what they’re seeing, what they’re needing, what they’re lacking, and what in their hands they want to be able to produce the highest quality product. I think customer insights are the most valuable of all. You can do all the engineering in the world, if the stuff you make isn’t valuable to your customers or aligned with their strategic vision or addressing their pain points, then it won’t fly.

What do you think the future of commercial cannabis cultivation looks like?

The industry is definitely in growth mode and with it comes a maturity and a thinning of the herd. Commercial cannabis cultivation is going to standardize and optimize for efficiency as it grows and the market reaches saturation. Prices will come down, margins will need to be protected. It’ll look and feel closer and closer to other comparable agriculture and horticulture verticals. There’s a lot of anxiety in the industry now about what things will become in the future, even among the most successful operators. Things evolve quickly but markets all tend to follow the same path to maturation. (Even if that path is volatile and highly regulated.)

We all know as the money pours in from people who didn’t come up through the legacy market or from companies that have no prior attachment to cannabis, we run the risk of Big Cannabis becoming too “corporate” and recreating the same inequities we see in other industries. So I think as the industry matures, we need to preserve the culture of cannabis and find a way to protect legacy growers, foster opportunities and access to the people who shepherded this plant through the prohibition era.

We have a slam-dunk opportunity to do this the right way and let everyone passionate about this plant be able to share in the rewarding experience of steering the industry out of the darkness and into its golden era.

Big thanks to Scott for sharing his insights on the use of data in cannabis cultivation. Learn more about AROYA and Scott Campbell at aroya.io.

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GKUA Ultra Premium Cannabis: Growing Weezy’s Weed

12/07/2021

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In 1982, Jacida Carter gave the world Dwayne Michael Carter, the G.O.A.T we know as Lil Wayne. Raised in Hollygrove, New Orleans, where violence and crime rates are far higher than the national average, Lil Wayne could have become another Hollygrove statistic — instead, he was destined to be the G.O.A.T. With his calling as a hip hop icon solidified by age eight and a love for cannabis since his teen years, it only made sense when Lil Wayne officially launched his cannabis career in 2019.

Mr. Carter is my favorite lyricist and musical storyteller (the song “Mona Lisa” is like a movie!). Parts of his story also resonate with me at the soul level: I’m a Libra rising, was raised by a Scorpio, I knew at age eight that I would be a traveling writer living out of a suitcase, and I also began my career in cannabis in 2019.

So it is my honor to share my latest cannabis brand spotlight and interview series, conducted while on tour with GKUA Ultra Premium.

About GKUA Ultra Premium

Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter and his business partner Beau Golob launched the cannabis brand GKUA Ultra Premium in 2019.

“When I met Lil Wayne, he told me he used to smoke weed to get high and now he smokes to get inspired,” Beau Golob, GKUA President and Co-founder, said during our interview. Nothing goes into a cone, jar, or cartridge unless it has been Lil Wayne-tasted and approved.

GKUA Ultra Premium can be found in five states and over 400 cannabis dispensaries. The brand is a representation of Lil Wayne’s passion: culture, art, dreams, collaboration, and a love for premium cannabis. GKUA is headquartered in the Bay Area; their team is made up of various artists, experts, and creatives — all people who are as passionate about cannabis, culture, and art as Lil Wayne himself.

From corporate to cultivation, everyone is motivated and inspired by their love for cannabis. The leadership team at GKUA Ultra Premium consists of:

  • Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter — Spokesman, Face of the Brand, and Co-founder
  • Beau Golob — President and Co-founder
  • Cory Simmons — Director of Cultivation
  • Baqi Kopelman — Creative and Marketing Director

GKUA President Beau Golob said the brand is passionate about the synergy between cannabis and hip hop: “We have people that send us music and say that GKUA products helped them create it. We think it’s awesome to hear about how GKUA helps people create art.”

For GKUA, it’s about inspiring artists through multiple mediums, which holds true even for Lil Wayne, who is very involved in all things GKUA.

“We celebrate life, and one way we do that is celebrating music and cannabis: concerts, special events, and parties; inviting people out to enjoy these moments with us,” said GKUA’s Creative & Marketing Director Baqi Kopelman. “These things really move me.”

Because Mr. Carter wants to share the same feelings and inspiration that cannabis gives him with the world, GKUA is detailed and strict in their sourcing for breeders and cultivation partners. The GKUA team visits sites, reviews lab reports, and samples all products utilizing various consumption methods to ensure that premium quality remains the name of the game.

GKUA cannabis colas
Photo Credit: GKUA Ultra Premium

The GKUA brand culture and mission

GKUA is dedicated to being more than just a cannabis brand. “It’s a whole lifestyle brand,” Beau said, which gives people who love, support, and are inspired by Lil Wayne the opportunity to be a part of his lifestyle.

Their full line of premium cannabis products are tailored towards luxury — #thatgkua is here to make brains happy, faces smile, and vibes elevated. Both the brand’s culture and mission are rooted in premium experiences that link music, exotic cannabis, and artistic freedom.

The executive and cultivation teams support the culture and mission, and Lil Wayne is hands-on with his input. As stated above, nothing goes into a jar until Mr. Carter has consumed and approved it. They mean it literally when they say it’s “Weezy’s Weed” — the team cultivates exclusive genetics because, according to Beau, “the goal is to give fans and supporters of Wayne the best high of their life.”

According to Director of Cultivation Cory Simmons, who is aptly nicknamed the Willy Wonka of Cannabis, “The goal is also the creation of unique and consistent genetics. We want to be on the cutting edge of working with the finest breeders, who are creating the next generation of GKUA strains. We definitely want to support breeders and constantly introduce new strains to the market.”

GKUA’s Creative & Marketing Director Baqi Kopelman said it’s simple: “My mission is to make sure that everyone on the earth knows that GKUA is producing the ultimate cannabis strains and products, that they are able to find and enjoy these products, as well as share the inspiration they feel from enjoying these products. Whatever people’s passions are in life, we want to hear about those, from the people consuming GKUA Ultra Premium products, and indulging in this lifestyle.”

As for the rest of the GKUA team, and the team’s culture, Baqi said that he can’t recall a favorite moment because from GKUA to Young Money Entertainment, a record label also founded by Lil Wayne, “It’s a celebration every time we link up.” He describes the energy, love, and passion amongst the GKUA team as being unmatched.

They celebrate the brand, their work, and their efforts at every opportunity. The team is often given tickets to Lil Wayne shows and consumers can find them lighting up places like Planet 13 in Las Vegas. Unlike some other MSO’s out there, GKUA embodies the spirit of cannabis.

The GKUA cultivation tour

During my visit to GKUA’s beautifully clean and terpene-raging cultivation facility in Los Angeles, California, the cultivators, breeders, production staff, joint rollers, and everyone in between greeted me with smiling faces. The energy was amazing, the passion was obvious, and the information and education they shared was priceless.

I stepped into room after room of gorgeous indoor cannabis grown by industry vets. The vibrations raised way up when we entered the GKUA Ultra Premium, Mr. Carter OG curing room. She was the star of the entire tour: bold, dense, and radiating beauty. Her terpenes were raging and my mask didn’t stand a chance; her aroma broke through that barrier with ease.

GKUA is one of the very first brands to offer a cannabis product experience like Mr. Carter OG, which features the same genetics and flavor in multiple product forms: flower, vape pod, concentrate.

The tour ended with much expression of gratitude from both sides. I was and still am grateful for the experience of touring, learning, and seeing GKUA Ultra Premium cannabis plants in the process of growing and curing. The cultivation site was grateful for me taking the time to come see them and learn from them. The tour was, to me, another representation of GKUA embodying the spirit of cannabis.

Photo Credit: GKUA Ultra Premium

What’s next for GKUA?

GKUA plans to host small events in cities across the country with quarantine and lockdowns no longer impacting life so severely. Detroit, Oklahoma City, and Denver are just a few of the planned locations. There are also new strains coming: one will pay homage to Hollygrove, the place that raised the G.O.A.T. Also watch for future strains Mula, GKUA VIP, and Uproar, coming soon!

The company is also planning new partnerships with breeders, new unique genetics, and some amazing upgrades to the GKUA vape pods.

And the big announcement in Spring 2022 Michigan will see the grand opening of the first GKUA retail store, GKUA Ultra Premium. The retail location is going to be more than a place with GKUA products, it will be a place that defines hip hop, music, and culture. Eventually, GKUA plans to have stores open across the country, and space within those locations to celebrate life and cannabis with small events and parties for their customers.

Like Lil Wayne said in “Best Rapper Alive”:

“I hope everybody else feels the same way about their craft, you know what I mean? If you do, it makes it better for the people.”

GKUA Ultra Premium embodies the fun, loving, and inspiring spirit of cannabis. They are a fun brand celebrating life, art, creativity, and collaboration. I remember seeing Lil Wayne in concert in Indianapolis during the I Am Music Tour. During his set, he asked for all the music to stop and he took a moment to thank the fully packed arena for being there, for our support. GKUA, the brand and the mission, are, to me, extensions of Lil Wayne’s appreciation for his supporters.

“So, next time you mention Pac, Biggie, and Jay-Z, don’t forget Weezy, baby.”

Note: My journey to LA was sponsored by GenoType CBD, a Black-owned skincare company in the South (it was important for me to keep it southern on this one).

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Study: Blood & Saliva Are Poor Indicators of THC Impairment

12/07/2021

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A study by researchers at Australia’s University of Sydney suggests that blood and oral fluid THC concentrations are poor and inconsistent indicators of cannabis-induced impairment. Lead author Dr. Danielle McCartney, from the university’s Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics, explained that “higher blood THC concentrations were only weakly associated with increased impairment in occasional cannabis users while no significant relationship was detected in regular cannabis users.”

“Of course, this does not suggest there is no relationship between THC intoxication and driving impairment. It is showing us that using THC concentration in blood and saliva are inconsistent markers for such intoxication. … Our results indicate that unimpaired individuals could mistakenly be identified as cannabis-intoxicated when THC limits are imposed by the law. Likewise, drivers who are impaired immediately following cannabis use may not register as such.” — McCartney in a press release

For the study, researchers reviewed data from 28 publications involving the consumption of either ingested or inhaled forms of cannabis, then characterized the relationships between blood and oral fluid THC concentrations and driving performance or driving-related skills such as reaction time or divided attention. For occasional cannabis consumers, some significant correlations between blood and oral fluid THC concentrations and impairment were observed but the researchers determined that most of these correlations were “weak” in strength.

No significant relationship between blood THC concentration and driving performance was observed for ‘regular’ cannabis consumers — or those who use cannabis weekly or more often. The researchers also found that how “stoned” individuals self-reported was also only weakly associated with impairment.

Academic Director of the Lambert Initiative, Professor Iain McGregor, explained that inexperienced cannabis consumers “can ingest a large oral dose of THC and be completely unfit to drive yet register extremely low blood and oral fluid THC concentrations” while experienced consumers “might smoke a joint, show very high THC concentrations, but show little if any impairment.”

“THC concentrations in the body clearly have a very complex relationship with intoxication,” McGregor said in a statement. “The strong and direct relationship between blood-alcohol concentrations and impaired driving encourages people to think that such relationships apply to all drugs, but this is certainly not the case with cannabis.”

The study was published last month in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

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Minnesota Approves Gummies for Medical Cannabis Program

12/07/2021

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Starting in August 2022, medical cannabis patients in Minnesota will be able to purchase infused cannabis products, including gummies and chews, the state Health Department announced last week. Currently, the state only allows for pills, vapor, liquids, topicals, powdered mixtures, and orally dissolvable products, like lozenges.

Minnesota Commissioner of Health Jan Malcolm said the expansion “will mean more options for patients who cannot tolerate currently available forms of medical cannabis.”

In May, state lawmakers approved a measure to allow smokable forms of cannabis in the state’s medical cannabis program, which the Health Department said would be available to patients in March of next year.

The agency indicated that the rulemaking for flower products is currently underway and that the rulemaking process for edibles will commence later this month.

The Minnesota Department of Health also announced that no new qualifying conditions for the state’s medical cannabis program were added this year but that anxiety disorder or panic disorder were considered before officials rejected the conditions “due to a lack of scientific evidence to support effectiveness as well as concerns expressed.”

“We received many comments from health care practitioners treating patients with anxiety disorder, and they urged us to not approve it as a qualifying medical condition,” Malcolm said in a statement. “We recognize that not everyone has equal access to therapy — which is considered the front-line treatment — but ultimately we concluded that the risk of additional harms to patients outweighed perceived benefits.”

The Health Department said the review of the conditions was requested by Malcolm and that the agency performed “an in-depth review” before deciding on the denial.

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Vermont Cannabis Regulators Reject Health Warnings on Labels

12/07/2021

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The Vermont Cannabis Control Board (CCB) has decided against recommending specific warning labels on the health effects of cannabis products, VT Digger reports. The decision comes after the Vermont Medical Society had urged the inclusion of warnings on cannabis products that will be sold in the state, including notices about psychosis, impaired driving, addiction, suicide, uncontrollable vomiting, and harm to fetuses or nursing babies.

The product label warnings recommended by the CCB read: “CONTAINS THC”, “NOT SAFE FOR KIDS” and “KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.”

James Pepper, the board chair, said the subcommittee that worked on the recommendation didn’t want to overload the labels and that a safety flyer would be handed out with cannabis purchases that would address the perceived ill health effects of cannabis. Vermont’s legalization law also includes up to $10 million per year for cannabis education and prevention efforts, Pepper told VT Digger.

The Medical Society had also urged THC caps of 15% on adult-use cannabis products sold in the state, which Pepper said runs counter to the purpose of the legalization law, which is to replace unregulated sales.

“In order to do that, we have to provide the products that the illegal market is supplying. To think that people that are growing for the illicit market are trying to cap their THC at 15% … it’s just not a product that’s prevalent on the illicit market and therefore I think it’s important for the board to recognize that.” — Pepper to VT Digger

The legislature has already capped THC limits at 30%, the report says, and Pepper noted that “there is kind of a natural cap” of about 30% THC for cannabis.

The label rules are not yet finalized, requiring review by the Interagency Committee on Administrative Rules and a public comment period before moving to the legislature which will rule on whether the rules are in line with the intent of the law.

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Ohio Pharmacy Board Proposes Increased Limits for Patients

12/07/2021

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The Ohio Board of Pharmacy has proposed raising the 90-day supply of cannabis allotted to patients, the Columbus Dispatch reports. Under the new rules, patients will be allowed nine ounces over a 90-day period, regardless of THC concentrations. Currently, patients are limited to 8 ounces or 5.3 ounces of high-potency cannabis per 90 days.

“The daily allotment of 2.83 grams didn’t properly factor into that amount, which left patients unable to get a full 90-day supply,” the report says.

According to a Cincinnati Tribune report, patients made up the difference by turning to the unregulated market or by going to Michigan dispensaries. The new rules are in concert with a bill in the Ohio legislature that would change the three-month allowance to nine ounces, the Dispatch notes.

“This will ultimately simplify the days’ supply count for dispensary staff and reduce confusion amongst patients about what constitutes a single-day supply,” board spokesman Cameron McNamee said in the report.

Ohio began its medical cannabis system by dispensing cannabis products according to THC weight and what constituted a patient’s “90 day supply,” not by product or dry weight like in other medical cannabis states. Despite the updates, patients have long complained of high prices and product shortages in Ohio.

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California Cannabis Operators Consider Withholding Taxes In Protest

12/06/2021

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The California cannabis industry is reportedly considering a mass exodus on tax payments, The Mercury News reports.

Some operators described the possibility as a “California Weed Party,” which hearkens back to the 1773 Boston Tea Party — one of the country’s first and most famous acts against England before the American Revolutionary War. But rather than dumping or destroying their cannabis crops, the industry would withhold tax payments in protest of the state’s unfair treatment.

The plan was proposed in reaction to California‘s recent move to raise the industry’s cultivation taxes by about 4.5% starting next year. The state’s cannabis tax rate is already far higher than the national average, reaching as high as 45% in some jurisdictions. And, while there are many hundreds of licensees in operation, the industry is also competing with the state’s well-established and relatively low-risk illicit marketplace.

Jerred Kiloh, who owns a cannabis retailer and serves as president of the United Cannabis Business Association, said he had previously considered a mass withholding of industry taxes but was told it would be “too drastic,” according to the report. Now, after several years of inaction by the state, the strategy is being revisited.

“This is the response you get when you feel like you’re being taxed and you don’t have representation. That’s really how it feels right now in cannabis. Everyone is taking the money and no one is doing anything to protect our industry.” — Kiloh, via The Mercury News

Michael Steinmetz, the co-founder of Flow Cannabis Co., described California‘s cannabis tax structure as “excessive” and “completely broken” in a November op-ed. “Instead of collecting more income for the state, it’s creating a thriving illicit market, putting people out of business and killing what could be one of the greatest industries of California,” Steinmetz wrote.

In addition to high taxes and other regulatory complications, many operators have been repeatedly targeted for armed robbery, vandalism, and burglary.

Some officials have recognized the untenable position facing many cannabis operators: in San Francisco, city officials recently decided to delay the implementation of a new cannabis tax to help local operators compete with unlicensed merchants.

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