cannabis industry

Steve DeAngelo: Evolution of the Cannabis Industry

9/11/2019

by

Steve DeAngelo — who is is nothing short of a cannabis industry icon, having co-founded Harborside, Steep Hill Labs, Arcview Group, and the NCIA — recently returned to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast for an interview with our host TG Branfalt.

In this interview, Steve shares the experiences that led to his entry to the cannabis movement and eventually the professional cannabis space. From his earliest advocacy efforts, toking up in front of the White House at the annual 4th of July smoke-in, to the modern industry’s launch following California’s historic medical cannabis legalization, Steve shares the inspiration behind Harborside and explains how the birth of that now-iconic business led also to the founding of Steep Hill Labs (the nation’s first cannabis testing lab), the National Cannabis Industry Association (the industry’s first trade association), and eventually the Arcview Group. He also shares stories of grappling with the reality of doing business in a post-prohibition landscape despite the thousands of individuals still locked away for cannabis crimes, and explains his plan for ending cannabis imprisonment on a global scale.

You can tune in to the interview below or scroll further down to read along with a full transcript of this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

Commercial: This episode of the Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by 4:20 friendly service providers in the Ganjapreneur business directory. If you need professional help with your business from accounting, to legal services, to consulting, marketing, payment processing or insurance, visit ganjapreneur.com/businesses to find service providers who specialize in helping cannabis entrepreneurs like you. Visit the Ganjapreneur business directory today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.

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 you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders.

Today, I am joined by a man that probably doesn’t need my introduction. He is Steve DeAngelo, often called the ‘Father of the Cannabis Industry.’ He’s the Chairman of Emeritus of Harborside, Inc., a pioneering cannabis entrepreneur, activist, and author. In addition to Harborside, he co-founded several iconic cannabis businesses and organizations, including Steep Hill Laboratory, the first dedicated cannabis lab; the Arcview Group, the first cannabis investment firm; and the National Cannabis Industry Association, the industry’s first trade association.

Thank you so much, Steve, for coming on the show. I can’t wait to get into the weeds, so to speak, with you. We have a lot to talk about. How you doing this afternoon?

Steve DeAngelo: I’m doing very well, Tim. Thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt: As I said, you deserve more introduction than I could give you. But for those out there who don’t know you, give me a little bit of background. How did you end up in the cannabis space?

Steve DeAngelo: Well I was a precocious kid. I encountered cannabis for the first time at age 13 and had a transformational experience with it. Came out of that experience knowing that cannabis was going to be a part of my life forever, and also, knowing that I wasn’t prepared to be a criminal forever. Legalizing cannabis was just a basic prerequisite of my personal happiness at first.

As time went on, and I learned more about how and why cannabis had been made illegal, and the incredible benefits of the plant, then I started getting really, really angry and determined to make this plant legal.

TG Branfalt: You were one, again, you’re often called the ‘Father of the Industry’, and you got your start — ’90s California. Tell me about those early days, man.

Steve DeAngelo: I got my start on the East Coast actually, around the Washington, D.C. area. My earliest days of cannabis activism were putting on the annual Fourth of July smoke-in, in front of the White House.

TG Branfalt: No shit.

Steve DeAngelo: That lasted for about a good decade. I focused on doing that work and then started working on hemp and Hemp Tour.

Those years were basically just being an activist and doing what activists do, traveling around the country, talking to people, organizing demonstrations, disseminating information. But over time, I developed a niche in socially conscious businesses, cannabis businesses that would allow me to make a living, but also spread my message about cannabis.

The first of those was a hemp company called Ecolution, and that company basically lasted from 1990 to 2000, when I moved to California.

TG Branfalt: I want to just step back before we get into the push for medical legalization in California. Can you tell me about who is president when you were the smoke-ins? Can you describe to me the climate in the country as it was towards activism during that period in history?

Steve DeAngelo: Yeah, sure I can. Let me roll it back to 1971 for you. This is the height of the Vietnam War and height of the anti-Vietnam War protests. It’s Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., I am 13 years old, the president is President Richard Nixon, who was a complete enemy of the anti-war movement. On this day, the pro-Nixon forces held a rally called Honor America Day, which was organized by the Reverend Carl McIntire, and all of these right-wing, pro-war folks came and gathered at the Washington Monument.

It was very personal for us in those days. We had the draft then. We had friends, we had brothers who had just been plucked out of our communities, and sent to Vietnam and come back home in body bags. So it was very personal to us when we saw all these right-wingers down at the monument calling for even more people to die.

That was the first Yippie smoke-in. I didn’t help organize it, but I was there. If anybody really wants to see what a wild crazed demonstration looks like, just Google Honor America Day or the first smoke-in. It was a angry time in our country, as angry as it is now. It was confrontational. People on both sides were raised voices and profanity. We even threw a few things around to make our point.

That was the early, early days, and it was where my, I guess my style of activism was forged in that milieu.

TG Branfalt: At that time, we know now that Nixon’s administration had really clamped down on the war on drugs to keep the blacks and the hippies down. That’s what the documents that are now released showed. Was there any indication back then that that was the impetus behind the crackdown by the government?

Steve DeAngelo: Oh we knew exactly that that was the impetus. There was zero doubt in our mind. By that time, we knew enough about cannabis to know that this was not a well intentioned effort of the government to keep us from something that was dangerous. It was very, very clear.

At that time, the federal government under Nixon was really in a state of domestic warfare with the anti-war movement. They were sending FBI agents into anti-war groups trying to convince people to set bombs and they would put informers in. Then if people agreed to do these crazy things that the informers always proposed, then people would be arrested on these conspiracy charges, what we would call terrorism charges today.

There was no doubt in our mind that the campaign against cannabis was intended to hurt us, the hippies, the anti-war forces, black people and brown people.

TG Branfalt: It’s unbelievable. Let’s move ahead to the ’90s and the legalization of medical cannabis in California. Tell me about what was your role in that and the early days of that industry.

Steve DeAngelo: Well I was still living in Washington, D.C. in 1996 when Prop 215 passed. I did travel out here. I did make donations and I did do some volunteer work. But that effort was led by my dear friend, Dennis Peron. I can safely say this now, that Dennis and I were engaged in underground trafficking activities with each other before it was possible to have a license, and so I was tracking what he was doing pretty carefully.

We really have Dennis Peron to thank for the birth of the modern medical cannabis industry and movement. This was the time of the AIDS crisis. The AIDS crisis was hitting San Francisco especially, especially hard. The gay community in San Francisco was having funerals every weekend, instead of having parties. You didn’t know anybody who wasn’t either sick or didn’t have friends that were sick.

Dennis was a weed dealer. He was a gay man, he was a Vietnam vet. This strange thing started happening. Dennis was always very generous with his cannabis and gave it to OAs as much as he would sold it. He noticed that his friends who had AIDS, who were consuming cannabis were living longer and having a higher quality of life than people who didn’t.

As soon as he noticed this, he started spreading the news, and started giving away as much cannabis as he could to AIDS patients and forming alliances with people like Brownie Mary. Brownie Mary was in her 70s when she started this work with Dennis Peron. Dennis would get cannabis for Brownie Mary, Brownie Mary would make it up into brownies, and then she would distribute those brownies to AIDS patients on the ward at San Francisco General Hospital where she was a volunteer. She’d been a volunteer there for years, and years, and years.

This was all taking place in the late ’80s, 1990 and 1991. Dennis was the lead organizer for I believe it was called Proposition 91 in San Francisco. That was the very first … Oh, no. It was Proposition P in San Francisco and it won in 1991. That made San Francisco the first legal jurisdiction for medical cannabis. Then five years after that, Dennis, another good of mine Jack Herer, and a lot of other folks were the prime movers behind Prop 215, which passed in 1996 and made California the first medical cannabis state.

TG Branfalt: What was it set up like? Was there licenses like there is now? What was that early industry … How was it regulated at all?

Steve DeAngelo: Well it basically wasn’t regulated in the early days. Prop 215 called on the legislature to license and regulate the cultivation and distribution of cannabis, but law enforcement agencies, and the League of Cities, and the Association of Rural Counties all got together and put political pressure on the legislature, and prevented them from doing that, because the law enforcement organizations did not want cannabis to be legitimized.

You had this crazy situation where it was legal for people to possess and use cannabis legally at the state level, but there was absolutely no mechanism by which they could get that legal cannabis. The whole intention of the law was being frustrated by the failure of the legislature.

Activists took matters into their own hands. People who had zero interest in being business people, who had never thought about profit, or net profit, or a spreadsheet in their whole lives opened up little stores. They were very raw in the beginning. You’d walk into a store front that had been started by activists who were just frustrated that people couldn’t get medicine, and there would be a couch, there would be a widescreen TV, there would be a little cabinet, there would be a cigar box that was your cash register, and there would be some bags of weed that look very much like the same bags of weed that you would buy at a dealer’s house.

That was the earliest version and that was a problematic version because what happened is the activist dispensaries started doing huge business. Nobody really expected it, but it was the only place that people could legally get cannabis. People who had never run a business before, suddenly they’re seeing millions and millions of dollars coming in through the doors, and all kinds of traffic and volume.

Well all of that volume and money attracted another sort of dispensary operator. These were folks who really liked the gray area. They were people who … Well, their backgrounds say a lot about them. One of the guys who jumped into that space was a guy whose previous gig was selling “organic Kona coffee.” But the coffee was neither organic, nor from Kona. It was poppy we believed. There was another guy whose previous gig was running an underground gambling casino in Anchorage. These were folks who were really not motivated by desire to serve medical cannabis patients, but motivated by a desire to make as much as money as they could, as quickly as they could.

The places they put up were really problematic. You’d go and there’d be a whole bunch of security, barbed wires, bulletproof glass, these great big thuggish gooney guards. There was no real effort to treat people like patients, to educate them about cannabis, to do anything other than get them in and out as quickly as possible, and take as much money from them along the way.

These operations started getting a lot of publicity. They started appearing on news stories. The image of medical cannabis started shifting from one of service, to one of criminality and exploitation. There were some raids up in Northern California around this time where I remember one story where somebody was raided and they had $600,000 in a garbage bag, and had owned several luxury cars, and 200 pairs of sunglasses or something.

It became clear to me that we needed a gold standard of cannabis retailing to show that this was an activity, when done with good intention, could bring benefits to communities, rather than harms. That’s what led to the starting of Harborside.

TG Branfalt: Since then, you’ve founded a lot of several other businesses that are not dispensaries, not retailers. Steep Hill, as I mentioned, laboratories, Arcview for investment. Obviously you realized at that time when the [inaudible 00:16:04] players started to coming into California, that you needed a gold standard. When was it apparent to you that the industry needed these types of businesses and resources?

Steve DeAngelo: What happened is Oakland became the first jurisdiction anywhere in the United States to license medical cannabis retailing. That happened in 2006 because some of the problematic dispensaries that I’ve been talking about opened in Oakland, they were clustered in one area. The city council responded by passing this licensing program and forcing all of the dispensaries in the city to get licenses.

Harborside got one of those licenses. Our intention from the beginning was just to create a really top-flight retail store experience for cannabis consumers, that would be the equivalent of any other top-shelf retail experience. The market really responded to that. I think that by the end of our third year, we were up to $20 million a year in sales, we were serving hundreds and hundreds of patients every day.

With that success, came some attention, some media attention. A few things grew out of it. First was Steep Hill Laboratory. Before I opened Harborside, I had contacted every single commercial analytical laboratory in the Bay Area, and I asked them to test our cannabis because I didn’t want to call it medicine unless I 100% knew that it was safe, and I knew what its potency was, what cannabinoids were in it. But they all refused because of federal law.

I got together with my two co-founders, Addison DeMoura and Dave Lampach. We formed the world’s first dedicated cannabis analytics laboratory, Steep Hill Laboratory. We did that in 2010, which allowed Harborside to become the first dispensary anywhere that sold cannabis that had been tested, that sold CBD rich cannabis. That was an outgrowth. It was just a need that was there.

Then another need became apparent as we got a lot of media attention. I started seeing and hearing from two kinds of people. The first were folks who had successes in the cannabis industry, but wanted to grow and needed some investment capital in order to reach their full potential. The other, and this was mostly through my partner Troy Dayton, who had previously been a fundraiser for Marijuana Policy Project. He was having conversations with people who were very generous donors to the cannabis reform movement, high net worth individuals.

After he started talking to them about donations frequently, the conversation would turn to the new legal industry. Troy was asked, “Where are the deals? How do we understand what’s going on there? Who are the players? How do you assess the risk?” They wanted to put money into the industry, so it was obvious that you have these groups of people and they just really needed a meeting place. They needed to learn each other’s language, they needed to understand each other’s concerns. That’s what led to the starting of the Arcview Group, that was just an effort to introduce cannabis entrepreneurs to cannabis investors.

TG Branfalt: Incredible. It’s incredible to me just how these things are grown out of necessity and then the laboratory is not regulated. You guys are like, “Well we want this,” and you create.

Now you’ve been in the dispensary business, the laboratory business, the investing business. Then you found the NCIA, the National Cannabis Industry Association. Tell me about the mission of the NCIA and what in your opinion the organization does to normalize the cannabis industry.

Steve DeAngelo: It’s interesting when we first started talking about the National Cannabis Industry Association, which I think was also 2010, people would laugh at us. Even friends of mine, I’d go to and say, “Hey, I’m starting the National Cannabis Industry Association,” they’d laugh at me. They’d think that I was joking, that was trying to be humorous because it seemed so improbable to people.

But the folks who started the NCIA, people like myself, like my partner Troy Dayton, like our executive director Aaron Smith, we were amongst the earliest cannabis industry entrance and we all came from a movement background, from a social justice background. We wanted to make sure of two things. First of all, that California wasn’t the first and the last state to have legal cannabis. We wanted to make sure that there was a mechanism to defend against federal attack.

Remember that this time, you had feds coming into California and raiding dispensaries, taking people off to prison. We had people who, in that period of time, were sentenced to sentences so long that they’re still serving them now. There’s a young man who was a young man then, who’s in his middle age now, Luke Scarmazzo, who did much the same thing that I did. He was in, I think Modesto, I was in Oakland, he was sixth months before I did it. He caught, I believe it was a 20 year federal conspiracy charge.

TG Branfalt: What a shame.

Steve DeAngelo: We very much were aware of the need to have a defense mechanism to make sure that this nascent industry wasn’t strangled in its grave. That was part of the impulse I’d say, probably the main impulse behind the found of NCIA.

The second impulse was to make sure that the industry that grew up was an industry that was cognizant of its social justice roots, that did not just become a organization to help people make more money, but that remained an organization that was dedicated to bringing about cannabis freedom and cannabis justice.

TG Branfalt: On the same justice thing, you said in a recent interview that you want every single cannabis prisoner in the world out of prison. You’ve launched the Last Prisoner Project in an effort to do just that. Tell me about this project and how it will work toward that goal of getting every single cannabis prisoner in the world out of prison.

Steve DeAngelo: Yeah, I’d be happy to do that. Thanks for asking. The inspiration for the Last Prisoner Project really came from a personal experience that I had after California had voted to legalize cannabis, but before it was completely 100% the law had been implemented. During this period, I like a lot of cannabis entrepreneurs and business people in California, was meeting with investment bankers, was meeting with people who can help you get onto the stock exchanges, can help you raise capital because we were gearing up for this new adult-use market.

I was in one of these meetings, in a really big fancy skyscraper, huge conference table, amazing view. I’d been talking to a lot of folks who were really, really excited. We were looking at numbers, we were adding them up, it was looking really good. There was excitement in the room because everybody knew that we were going to be making money doing this and making significant amounts of money doing this.

Towards the end of the meeting, right at the end of the meeting actually, I get a phone call and it’s my friend Chuck. Chuck has been imprisoned in the state of Pennsylvania for four years, for 14 pounds of cannabis. We, in that conference room had been talking about magnitudes more. We had been talking about tons and tons of cannabis.

TG Branfalt: Literal tons.

Steve DeAngelo: None of us had to worry about going to prison.

I excused myself, I took the call, I talked to Chuck. He’s a tough guy, so he wasn’t whining or anything, but I could tell that he was miserable, he was lonely, he was really upset because his elderly mother didn’t have anyone to shovel the snow from her walk.

I hung up the phone and it just struck me. I was like, “God, we’re sitting here talking about creating intergenerational wealth, millions, and millions, and millions of dollars, creating a whole new industry that’s going to be on stock exchanges, and my friend Chuck and thousands of people like him are sitting there in cells.” Imagine, how would you feel if you were sitting in a cell, looking out your windows or watching TV, and seeing this huge new legal industry, and all these people talking excitedly about all the investments, and the conferences, and the money, and you’re sitting there in that cell for doing exactly the same thing.

I know how I would feel and I don’t want anyone to feel that way. That was the genesis for the Last Prisoner project.

TG Branfalt: What are you doing over there with the Last Prisoner Project? What are you guys working towards, I guess?

Steve DeAngelo: Well the first thing that we’re doing is really just assessing the problem. It turns out that it’s not easy to determine how many people are locked up in the United States on cannabis charges. Lots of jurisdictions don’t even really track charges by particular drugs. Lots of times people end up with the crime of violating probation or violating parole, but the underlying cause of that violation is a bad cannabis urine test. It can be difficult to assess, and the first thing that we’re doing is really just trying to figure out where all of our people are and what situations that they’re in, an assessment, and figuring out what it’s going to take to free them.

Where we’re headed is towards a formal launch in September. It will be a really exciting launch. I’ll you know about it as it happens.

TG Branfalt: Please do.

Steve DeAngelo: I can’t talk too much about it right now, but the centerpiece of our program in the earliest days is going to be clemency petitions. Right now, there are a number of states that have passed cannabis laws and some of those laws have provisions for clemency in them, some of them do not. But in all cases, the governor of a state has the power to give clemency to any prisoner, to let them out of prison immediately. Governors in some of the new reformed states, like Michigan and Illinois, have indicated in public statements that they’re willing to do this.

The problem is that the technical effort of actually filing out these thousands and thousands of clemency petitions, submitting them, reviewing them, getting them cleared and actually releasing prisoners is a huge task. That task usually just goes through the governor’s office. It doesn’t have a huge staff.

What we’re going to be doing is working with governor’s offices around the country to help develop streamlined clemency procedures, and then we are recruiting and training a small army of lawyers who will work with all of the prisoners to file their individual clemency petitions. We think this is the fastest way to get the most people out for the least amount of money, so we want to do that as quickly as we can.

But moving on, there will be cannabis prisoners who don’t qualify for clemency. I’ll give you one example. One of the prisoners that we’re in touch with is facing a 42 to 60-year sentence, a de facto life sentence. It was his third cannabis sale, but he lived on a farm. If it was just the cannabis sale, he would have gone to prison for a long time, but not that long. But because they were guns in another part of the farm that were unrelated to the sale, but were on the legal property, he was given gun charges as well. This person who had never committed a violent crime, nobody was ever hurt, he wasn’t carrying guns, is now looking at a 42 to 60-year sentence.

In these kinds of cases, we are going to have to move towards petitions for resentencing, and petitions for retrial in some cases. They will be more expensive, they will take longer, but we’re not going to stop until we get the last one out.

TG Branfalt: I really can’t wait to see some of the headlines that pop up as a result of this project. Thanks for filling me in a little bit before the launch.

Talking about the money that can be made in the industry, and a lot of states, townships, cities have launched social equity programs whereby some licenses are given to people usually most affected by the war on drugs. In your opinion, do these programs do enough to provide those so-called reparations?

Steve DeAngelo: Well I think they’re a start, but they’re not sufficient in themselves. What’s really important to remember in this whole conversation is that the racial disparity in cannabis enforcement was not just some unintended consequence that just happened. The original animating purpose of cannabis prohibition in the United States was to control black and brown communities. That is why the laws were passed in the first place, that was their intention, and the disparity was planned from the beginning.

If we do not do something to make sure that this is a diverse industry, that people of color have an opportunity, a real opportunity to participate in, then we are piling injustice on top of injustice. But we have this amazing opportunity to fix it.

I think that that operates at several levels. Yes, we need some preferential licensing provisions to make sure that we get folks from communities of color licensed in the first place, but getting a license is just the beginning of it. After you get a license you have to get a location, you have to recruit a team, you have to write a plan, you have to raise money, you have to set up all of your compliance, all of your security, all of your bookkeeping. That’s a big task for somebody that hasn’t had an opportunity to participate in a business before. It takes a lot of money to do it.

What we’re finding in too many cases is that people from communities of color who have received licenses are unable to actually put those licenses into effect and create businesses. In cases where they have been able to do that frequently, they are unable to keep the business open or sometimes, and in other cases, just not able to grow it to its full potential.

I think that we really need a network of support around people who have been awarded equity licenses and I think that takes a number of different forms. I think there needs to be training, and you have some private companies who are stepping into that gap now, and acting as brokers between investors and equity licensees. That’s one way of tackling that.

I would really like to see a world class training center for cannabis equity licensees. Some place that would be in a beautiful prestigious location where equity licensees from all over the country could come and get the very best, I’m talking like Harvard level cannabis training, both workers who are in the workforce and entrepreneurs.

Then I’d like to see a dedicated showcase mall attached to that university, to that training center where the graduates of those programs would be able to move right into locations that would be licensed, so that they have an opportunity to really take the skills that they learned, and take the license and execute on it, and make it something that happens. That’s not something that can happen by the government by itself, but I think that could happen.

I’d like to see a fund. I think that the cannabis investors should get together and put together a fund with the understanding that the money that came out of this fund would be supplied to entrepreneurs from communities of color, and would be supplied at a very advantageous rate that would give them a little bit of competitive edge in the marketplace.

I think that there’s things that can and should be done to supplement the licensing regulations. The licensing regulations are just a starting point that give us the ability to start building, but we have a lot of building to do after that.

TG Branfalt: It’s a very, very interesting idea that you have. There are, to be fair, quite a few angel investors in this space that I’ve actually had on the show that do what you outlined there, where they do offer these social equity applicants better rates and training programs for the space.

I want to switch gears a little bit while we still have some time and talk to you briefly about going public on the CSE, the Canadian Securities Exchange. How important is such a move as the industry gets more competitive? You’ve told us from the ’70s to now, you go from a little shop in Oakland to now being publicly traded. Tell me about your opinion too on the evolution of the industry?

Steve DeAngelo: The evolution of the industry has been massively accelerated by the opening of the Canadian public stock exchanges to cannabis companies. What you’ve seen, certainly in California and really around the country, is companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars on the Canadian stock exchanges are now coming into the United States and either acquiring U.S. cannabis companies, or merging with U.S. cannabis companies, or forming some type of strategic alliance with cannabis companies.

If you really want to be in the top tiers of cannabis companies in the United States, you almost must have some type of public market strategy in order to continue growing at the pace that your competitors are growing.

TG Branfalt: Is it a little bit crazy to you going from where you started, with the gray market, to launching that same company on a national exchange?

Steve DeAngelo: It’s incredibly validating. Harborside, it was just a little over three years ago, no excuse me, just a little under three years ago that the federal government of the United States finally rested the civil forfeiture cases that they were prosecuting against us trying to seize all of the locations, the real estate that we operated in and close us down.

Now to have successfully resisted the federal government’s effort to close us and close the whole industry, to have gone through the 2018 regulations in California, which were intense, and successfully enter the Canadian Securities Exchange through one of the most demanding, due diligence processes that exists on planet Earth, that’s exhilarating and validating for me.

TG Branfalt: I remember when I was younger, my friends I would talk about legalization. We were like, “We won’t see it in our lifetime.” Here we are. I’m in New York, so it’s still not legal, but I am seeing legalization in my lifetime. Can you speak to that as somebody who’s been an activist for as long as you have and seeing as much as you have?

Steve DeAngelo: Yeah. I get this question all the time and my basic answer is I always knew that this plant would be legal. I thought that we would actually get it done in a much shorter period of time that has taken us.

There was a period of time in the 1970s when we had about 15 states that decriminalized cannabis. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter endorsed the nationwide decriminalization of cannabis. But then Ronald Reagan was elected and he rejuvenated Nixon’s whole war on drugs thing, and a lot of the decriminalization states recriminalized cannabis. That’s taken us all of these years since then to claw our way back to the point that we are now.

I don’t think I answered your question though, Tim. Do you want to … ?

TG Branfalt: You did answer my question. In the last minute here, so what advice would you have for entrepreneurs looking to enter the cannabis space?

Steve DeAngelo: My advice to entrepreneurs who want to enter the cannabis space is to take a look at whatever it is that you already know how to do. Chances are, you’ll be able to take that skillset and apply it in the world of cannabis. The reality is that cannabis has been illegal, and cut off from most modern business technology, or practices or ideas ever since the beginning of modern business.

Whether you’re a software engineer, or you’re a compliance specialist, or you’re a marketing person, or you’re in HR, the cannabis industry is going to need all of these skillsets and all sorts of ideas. Use the knowledge that you have, take a look at the world of cannabis, and you will probably see gaps, you will probably see places where you’ll say, “Gee, I know how we can fix that problem.” That of course is, in my mind, the essence of all successful entrepreneurship is spotting a problem and figuring out a solution to it.

TG Branfalt: Steve DeAngelo, this has been absolutely fascinating. I could sit here literally and talk to you for another three hours. Where can people find out more about you, your story and what you have going on?

Steve DeAngelo: Sure. You can go to my website, stevedeangelo.com. That’s probably the best way to get me. You can also track me on IG, it’s @stevedeangelo. I will be speaking widely. You can go into Green Flower Media. I have a little show on Green Flower Media that’s called Ask Steve. My brother and I are working on a podcast, which we expect to launch sometime in the next coming weeks.

TG Branfalt: That is all very super exciting stuff. I’m going to send you so many questions on Ask Steve. Steve DeAngelo, he’s an OG, he’s the ‘Father of the Cannabis Industry’, he’s the Chairman of Emeritus of Harborside, he’s the co-founder of Steep Hill, he’s basically done it all. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show, Steve.

Steve DeAngelo: Thanks so much for having me, Tim.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com, and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will 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, and this outro was botched by TG Branfalt.

End

CannaCon South Returns to Oklahoma City September 27-28

9/11/2019

by

CannaCon South, Oklahoma’s largest B2B cannabis expo, is returning to Oklahoma City this September 27-28 for another weekend of cannabis business networking, education, technology demonstrations, and more. After a hugely successful flagship event last year — and in light of the Oklahoma medical cannabis industry’s successful launch — CannaCon South is fully prepared in 2019 to put on another successful weekend.

This year’s event will kick off at 10:00 am at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

CannaCon South’s seminars include an Infused Cooking Demo with Chef Shaun O’Neale, who was named America’s best chef during September 2016 and crowned Season 7 Champion on FOX’s MasterChef. Chef O’Neale has won the favor of multiple world-famous chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, Christina Tosi, Daniel Boulud, and Wolfgang Puck; his seminar will explain in detail what chefs need to know about the cannabis decarboxylation process and how to dose properly when cooking with cannabis.

Meanwhile, cultivation-centered seminars will include:

  • Crop Optimization and High Tech Irrigation with Doug Jacobs, the technical advisor for Grodan, a sustainable agriculture tech firm.
  • So You Wanna Get Into the Cannabis Industry? with Blake Johnson, an attorney at Crowe & Dunlevy who represents more than 100 cannabis companies.
  • Solventless Extraction & The Entourage Effect with Chet Tucker, the executive director of Arcadia Brands.

CannaCon South is also set to feature more than 200 booths on a fully fledged exhibition floor, where the next generation of cannabis technology and consumer products will be on display; more than a dozen seed vendors will also be present, many of whom are expected to be dropping exclusive cannabis strains for the event.

In total, a diverse group of entrepreneurs, investors, industry experts, and ancillary service representatives will be mingling in a unique opportunity to drive Oklahoma’s cannabis industry forward.

Visit CannaCon.org to learn more about the event, or click here to buy tickets now.

About CannaCon

CannaCon is the leading business-to-business cannabis networking event of the year. With annual expos scattered throughout the United States, CannaCon has helped bridge the gap between cannabis entrepreneurs, investors, and ancillary services for years and is dedicated to advancing the cannabis movement through education and professionalism.

End

Report: Hemp Production Quadruples from 2018

9/11/2019

by

Hemp production in the U.S. has quadrupled since last year, according to Vote Hemp’s 2019 License Report, which estimates 230,000 acres of hemp will be planted this year. The group says that 50 percent to 60 percent of that acreage will be harvested, resulting in 115,000 to 138,000 acres of harvested hemp.

In all, 511,442 acres of hemp has been licensed throughout the U.S. and 16,877 grower licenses have been issued. The licensed acreage increase represents a 455 percent increase over last year, which Vote Hemp says shows “intent.”

“Intent is a useful indicator but we know from previous years that significantly less hemp is planted than what is licensed due to a variety of factors including access to seed and/or clones as well as experience.” – Vote Hemp, 2019 U.S. Hemp License Report

Following the federal legalization of hemp via the Farm Bill, 13 states passed legislation to enact a hemp program, meaning 46 states total now allow hemp cultivation. Idaho, South Dakota, Mississippi, and New Hampshire are the only U.S. states without a hemp program.

Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, said that with federal prohibition lifted, “it’s time to build the infrastructure and expand hemp cultivation.”

The Congressional action last year removed hemp from the federal drug schedule but it left enacting regulations to individual states. Those rules – which are referred to as pilot programs – must be approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture before becoming permanent. So far, the USDA has not approved a program under the law.

End

Illinois Community College Offering Certificate Course in Cannabis

9/11/2019

by

Des Plaines, Illinois’ Oakton Community College has launched its certificate course in cannabis, according to a Herald & Review report. The program focuses on molecular biology, drug laws, treating terminal illness, and other technical and practical knowledge to help students get a job in the burgeoning industry.

The seven-course cannabis-focused program is the first by a community college in Illinois – which legalized cannabis via the legislature earlier this year – and counts among 100 students taking part in the first semester’s offering. It consists of 12 credit hours, including classes dispensary operations, and carries tuition of $1,635 for Illinois residents.

Ileo Lott, vice president for academic affairs, said “the curriculum is driven by what the industry needs, what they’re looking for in an employee.”

“They’re looking for people who know how to work with chronically ill patients and understand what they need. They’re not looking for enthusiasts who love to use the product.” – Lott, to the Herald & Review

The Cannabis Business Association of Illinois plans to hold its first job fair on the Oakton campus next month. Pam Althoff, head of the association, said cannabis industry employers are looking into potentially offering internships or workshops and licensed cultivation centers so students can also have hand-on experience with the plant.

Southern Illinois University is also reportedly considering offering a 30-hour certificate program on indoor plant products that would include cannabis. Federal law prohibits the school from cultivating cannabis on campus but the program could use hemp plants, which are already being cultivated by the university

End

CDC Not Ready to Blame Illicit Market Cartridges for Vape-Linked Lung Disease

9/11/2019

by

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are not ready to definitively link the vape-linked pulmonary illness to illicit cannabis cartridges as a “large number” in the agency’s data report using both THC and nicotine vape cartridges, Reuters reports.

Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, who is leading the CDC efforts to find the cause of the illness, said that 60 percent of the patients affected by the illness used both THC and nicotine vape devices, while 20 percent only used nicotine.

“There is no one product, device or substance that we can point to that is common among all these different patients.” – Meaney-Delman, to Reuters

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration warned against using cannabis vaping devices bought on the illicit market or adding THC oil to vape cartridges bought in stores. The CDC is recommending people stop using vaping devices entirely until the cause can be determined.

On Friday, the New York Health Department said they had found vitamin E acetate – which has been linked to the pulmonary illness – in nearly all of the illegal vape cartridges they tested. IN New York, at least one vitamin E acetate product has been linked to each patient who fell ill. Many of the affected products in the state were based on counterfeit cannabis vape products from states with legalized sales.

In all, there have been five confirmed deaths across the U.S. related to the illness and 450 reported cases of lung illness associated with the use of vape devices.

End

Federal Judge Allows Cannabis Racketeering Lawsuit to Move Forward

9/10/2019

by

An Oregon U.S. District Court judge is allowing a racketeering lawsuit by a wine vineyard against a neighboring cannabis company to move forward, ruling that there is enough evidence that the vineyard suffered a financial loss due to its neighbors’ operations, the Associated Press reports.  

Momtazi Vineyard, located in Yamhill County, opposed the cannabis farm’s business license in 2017 saying that the “skunk” stench is “not acceptable in wine” and the farm would “put the vines and wine at great risk.” They sued Yamhill Natural in April claiming they had lost six tons of grapes, said Jessie Mondry, an Oregon cannabis attorney with Harris Bricken who is not involved in the case. The court had ordered the plaintiffs to show a specific loss in order to proceed. 

Mondry said that at least two other racketeering lawsuits against cannabusinesses had been filed in the state but had been dismissed. In those cases, plaintiffs argued that cannabis legalization had caused “diminished use or enjoyment” of their property or increased security costs.

“It changes the playing field in that the court has shown a pathway to bring racketeering claims against marijuana farms. I don’t know that this is going to open the floodgates. At least they know now what they need to do so survive a motion to dismiss.” — Mondry, to the AP

The defendants argue that the vineyard can not actually prove any financial losses and that the lawsuit’s primary claim — that there is a commercial grow on the property — is a lie and the grow is a small, personal, medical cannabis crop. They have asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit on those grounds is pending.

End

World’s Largest Psilocybin Research Center Launches at Johns Hopkins

9/10/2019

by

Psilocybin researcher Roland Griffiths formally announced the new Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University last week, VICE reports.

According to Griffiths, it will be “completely new and more of the same,” meaning he and his research team will continue to lead investigations into the potential benefits of psychedelics like psilocybin in the treatment of many conditions such as addiction, including alcoholism and nicotine dependence; post-traumatic stress disorder; anorexia; Alzheimer’s; Lyme disease; and more. What’s new, however, is that the FDA is beginning to warm up to the idea of psychedelics having medicinal potential, despite being categorized as Schedule 1 substances with supposedly zero medicinal value.

Psilocybin, in particular, has undergone something of a political transformation over the last year. Last October, the FDA granted psilocybin “breakthrough therapy” status. Denver voters, meanwhile, opted to decriminalize the substance in May, while activists in Oregon are gearing up for a 2020 initiative that could potentially legalize the banned mushrooms for medical purposes.

“This is clearly becoming more mainstream. There are many inadequate mental-health and addiction treatments today, and we need new medications to come down the pipe. This is how it’s done. It’s a well overdue initiative.” — Mark Haden, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Canada, via VICE

Because of its Schedule 1 categorization, funding for psilocybin research has been historically sparse — the new Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, however, is born out of $17 million worth of private donations to Johns Hopkins.

“The center’s establishment reflects a new era of research in therapeutics and the mind through studying this unique and remarkable class of pharmacological compounds,” said Griffiths in a press release. “In addition to studies on new therapeutics, [they] plan to investigate creativity and the well-being in healthy volunteers that [they] hope will open up new ways to support human thriving.”

End

Just 44 Canadians Have Had Cannabis Records Expunged Since Legalization

9/10/2019

by

Only 77 people have applied to have their cannabis charges expunged in Canada and just 44 have been successfully pardoned, according to a Global News report. Some 250,000 Canadians are believed to have a low-level possession charge in the nation but some were charged under a generic drug possession charge and it’s unknown whether the offense is specific to cannabis.

The government has launched a website to help people streamline the expungement process which outlines four or five steps to getting rid of a record; military veterans have the added step of obtaining their conduct sheet. Everyone who applies must also get a copy of the record, which often must be obtained in person and might be hard to find if the case is several years old. Applicants must also have their fingerprints taken and send them to Ottawa, which Toronto lawyer Caryma Sa’d said could cost “at least a couple hundred dollars.”

“Assuming their situation transpired before records are as digitized as they are now, it’s possible that a pardon could actually put them on the electronic map so when they’re crossing the border, this thing that otherwise would have been buried in the back of a file cabinet somewhere is now present, and it’s evident that there was a pardon for something, where otherwise it may not have had consequences.” – Sa’d, to Global News

Parole Board spokesperson Iulia Pescarus Popa indicated that the rest of the applications “are either under investigation” or were filed “incomplete or ineligible.” Individuals with a criminal record for other offenses are not eligible under the program. 

Canada’s federal legalization of cannabis did not include broad expungement provisions.

End

Alabama Cannabis Commissioner Decries “Medical Cannabis” Term

9/10/2019

by

Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission member Stephen Taylor, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and addiction psychiatrist, said that the state should not be calling cannabis “medical” during a meeting of the commission on Monday, according to a report from Al.com. Taylor argued that “if it hasn’t been validated as medicine, we shouldn’t be calling it medical marijuana or medical cannabis.”

“And the idea that we would just put something out there and call it medicine for the people of our state to use when it really isn’t a legitimate medicine, that concerns me. That means that we are taking the chance at causing more harm than good. And that’s the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing.” – Taylor, during an Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission Meeting, via Al.com 

Taylor pointed to an advisory by U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams late last month about the dangers of cannabis use by teenagers and pregnant women. Adams, who made the advisory while announcing a cannabis-focused public health campaign, said that cannabis use “carries more risk than ever”; although last year he indicated he supported reclassification of cannabis on the federal drug schedule. 

Medical Cannabis Commission Chairman Sen. Tem Melson (R), who is also an anesthesiologist and medical researcher, said that some studies show medical cannabis helps some patients whether it’s called medicine or not, while responding to Taylor, and asked him what he would rather call it.

“Because I can show you studies where it helps, so let’s come up with a name that makes everybody happy because a name is a name. It doesn’t really matter. It’s the results and the studies that show that it’s been effective,” he said following Taylor’s comments, according to the report. “So, I don’t care what we call it. But I’m going to tell you that I want to find a way to get it to the people who need it and do it in a responsible way.”

The committee was created by the legislature in June after lawmakers failed to pass a bill sponsored by Melson. The 15-person commission includes doctors, lawmakers, and other governor appointees to study medical cannabis legalization in the state. Under the law, the commission is expected to present potential legislation by the start of the 2020 session. The state does have a limited CBD program on the books which allows the University of Alabama at Birmingham to study high CBD oil and intractable seizure disorders.

The commission will meet again next month.

End

Idaho Police Agencies Take Different Approaches to Hemp

9/09/2019

by

The two Idaho criminal cases where police seized hemp being transported through the state have had strikingly different results – one company has had their hemp returned by authorities, while the other’s remains impounded.

In February, Idaho State Police seized a 6,700-pound shipment of legal hemp from Boones Ferry Berry Farms in transit between Oregon and Colorado and jailed the driver and have refused to return the cargo, which is worth about $1 million. The trucker faces a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for drug trafficking, the Idaho Press reports.

In an unrelated case in May, Boise Police officers intercepted a 69-pound package from Ontario, Canada as it was making its way through a United Postal Service distribution center in Boise to Treasure Valley Extraction in Oregon.

After testing by a Kentucky laboratory – which found THC levels of zero throughout the 17-box shipment – it was returned to sender.

Jim Hutchens, a former law enforcement officer who is now president and CEO of Treasure Valley Extraction, said he doesn’t blame police for confiscating the shipment but, at the time, the company was concerned about mold and mildew affecting the product.

“Basically, I want people to understand the separation between hemp and marijuana. They are two completely different plants even though they look alike, and they smell alike. They do different things.” – Hutchens, to CBS2

A spokesperson for BPD declined to comment on the case, calling it “a legislative issue … that is currently being worked on.”

A third case involving ISP seizing a shipment from Montana’s Big Sky Scientific and arresting the driver is still making its way through the courts. The company’s driver still has pending charges, the hemp has not been returned; ISP Director Kendrick Wills and Ada County Prosecutor Jan Bennets say that until the U.S. Department of Agriculture releases rules governing hemp, “[it’s] not legal in Idaho.”

In May, the agency did release a memo explicitly allowing interstate hemp transport.

End

Poll: 47% of Scotland Residents Support Cannabis Legalization

9/09/2019

by

A new survey by the Times has found that 47 percent of people living in Scotland support legalizing cannabis for adults with 37 percent opposed and 17 percent unsure.

Support for legalization is split among political affiliation in the poll with 59 percent of Scottish National Party voters supported the reforms, followed by 45 percent of Labour voters, 44 percent of Liberal Democrat voters, and 34 percent of Conservative supporters.

A June social media survey by substance abuse prevention organization Addaction found cannabis to be the most widely used illicit substance in Scotland, with 78 percent of respondents in the poll admitting to using it over the last year, Sky News reports. Among those that admitted to using cannabis, 19 percent said it was the only illegal drug they consumed over the last 12 months, while 54 percent said they used at least two others, 23 percent said they used at least five others. The survey also suggested that cannabis users were the least likely to develop substance abuse problems from cannabis use.

A July poll of the United Kingdom found 48 percent of adults supported legalizing cannabis for adults – a 5 percent increase compared to a survey the previous year. That poll found 77 percent support for medical cannabis legalization.

In the broad UK poll, which was commissioned by the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group, one in three of the 1,690 respondents admitted to trying cannabis.

In 2017, the Liberal Democrats added legalization to their party platform. While at least two members of Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration have expressed support for reforming cannabis laws in the U.K.

End

Patient Advocate Removed From Ohio Marijuana Committee

9/09/2019

by

The patient advocate on Ohio’s Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee, Bob Bridges, has been removed and he believed his ouster is due to outspoken beliefs, according to a WOSU report. Bridges was removed by House Speaker Larry Householder and said he received an email about the move “randomly out of the blue.”

Bridges told WOSU that he “ruffled feathers” on the 16-person committee asking about whether the medical cannabis program would launch on time. In public, committee members said the program was on schedule; however, the state missed the Sept. 2018 deadline and dispensaries didn’t start to open until January 2019.

Bridges, who has helped write the state’s failed cannabis legalization bills, said many people on the committee “still believe in the D.A.R.E. mentality that marijuana is bad.”

“A lot of my focus was on patient protections. Like if a patient goes to the hospital and they have their medication on them, is their medication going to be taken away by law enforcement? That’s happened here in Ohio.” – Bridges, to WOSU

Householder said that Bridges’ removal stemmed from a belief that “it was time to go in another direction” and indicated there would be another appointment to fill the vacancy “in the near future.”

“We believe constructive, collaborative engagement is important on any board,” he said in a statement to WOSU.

A June report by the Alliance Review found that only about half of the state’s registered medical cannabis patients have purchased products from the state-approved dispensaries. Many patients said the high costs were keeping them out and forcing them to buy cannabis on the illicit market or go to Michigan whose program allows reciprocity. The Ohio Board of Pharmacy said that the state had sold $5.8 million worth of cannabis from January to June, equaling more than 750 pounds of flower. As of June, 17 of the 29 licensed cultivators were operational but just two of the 39 producers have started making products.

End

Massachusetts Mayor Arrested for Extorting Cannabis Companies

9/06/2019

by

Mayor Jasiel Correia of Fall River, Massachusetts was arrested Friday morning for allegedly attempting to extort cannabis companies for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, according to a CBS Boston report.

Specifically, Correia — who is 27 years old — is accused of extorting at least four cannabis business operators by soliciting $250,000 each from them in exchange for “non-opposition” letters from his office. He is said to have illegally generated some $600,000 doing so, as well as alleged arrangements for a future cut in some of the companies’ cannabis sales.

It’s the embattled mayor’s second arrest in less than a year: Correia was arrested in October on 13 federal fraud charges, which ultimately led to his recall — though the young Democratic mayor was re-elected shortly thereafter.

Four other individuals have been charged as the mayor’s co-conspirators, authorities said.

“Despite Mayor Correia’s public assurances to the city of Fall River, based on today’s indictment, he has essentially run that town as a pay-to-play institution. If the allegations in today’s indictment are true, Mayor Correia has engaged in a outrageous, brazen campaign of corruption which turned his job into a personal ATM.” — U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, during a press conference

Correia appeared in federal court today where he pleaded not guilty; he was released in the afternoon after posting bail. “I’m not guilty of these charges,” he told reporters after leaving the federal court in Boston. “I’ve done nothing but good for the city of Fall River.”

Correia is up for re-election this fall and intends to run. The primary vote is scheduled for September 17.

Last month, the FBI announced it was seeking information about bribery in the cannabis industry.

End

Windsor, Ontario Cannabis Cruise Sells Out In 2 Days

9/06/2019

by

Windsor River Cruises and Border City Entertainment are holding their first annual cannabis cruise which will set sail along the Detroit River, according to a CBC report. The three-hour cruise is the first of its kind in Windsor, Ontario – and likely anywhere else.

Attendees must bring their own cannabis and be aged 19 years or older, as required to consume cannabis under Ontario law. The boat will stay in Canadian waters and people who are smoking cannabis will have to remain on the lower, outdoor, deck. The company will not be selling any cannabis products.

Jessilin Deschamps, promotional manager for Windsor River Cruises, said the event is “a big celebration of legalization.”

“You know people who have lived under prohibition laws for marijuana for decades but have still been using in private. You know and I’ve almost been made to feel ashamed of what they’re doing.” – Deschamps, in a CBC interview.

The tickets cost CAD$50 and were sold out within two days. Due to popular demand, the company is considering another event and has already started a waiting list for those interested in securing a spot on the next cruise, or in case tickets become available for the maiden voyage. Deschamps suggested that the popularity of the cruise could lead the event to become an international one.

The cruise will set sail on September 20.

End

Clear plastic garbage bags that have been stuffed with commercial-grade cannabis nugs.

Washington Grower Robbed of $250,000 Worth of Cannabis

9/06/2019

by

Thieves carried out an elaborate heist at the Cascade Mountain Cannabis cultivation facility in Kelso, Washington early Sunday morning, making off with roughly $250,000 worth of cured cannabis flower, according to a TDN report.

Cascade’s owner Courtney Roberts called the plot “sickening” and has offered a $5,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest.

The alleged thieves — five men and one woman — cut through the facility’s steel walls early Sunday morning and were able to clean out the drying room of some 130 to 150 pounds of freshly cured cannabis. The alleged thieves also destroyed some security cameras in the unmarked facility but surviving cameras were able to capture images of the suspects, including a tattoo on one person’s arm and another’s whole face. Three of the alleged thieves wore “Oregunian” brand sweatshirts, another wore a Nickelback t-shirt.

Mark Michaelson, manager at the cultivation facility, told FOX 12, “They literally cut a hole through the heavy steel siding, sheetrock and all the insulation – cut a hole in and literally crawled like rats through that hole.”

“They come in literally the day before this stuff was ready to be trimmed and sold – and literally took everything. Do I believe they were tipped off that there was dry product in this facility? 100 percent. There’s no question. The timing was too good.” — Michaelson, via FOX 12

Anyone with information about the incident should contact the Kelso police department, which confirmed that it is investigating the robbery.

 

End

Pulmonary Illness-Linked Compound Found In New York Cannabis Vapes

9/06/2019

by

Nearly all of the cannabis vape products tested by the New York State Health Department were found to have “very high” levels of vitamin E acetate, a compound linked to vape-related pulmonary illness in 25 states.

Vitamin E acetate is not an approved additive for medical cannabis vape products; although the agency did not indicate whether any of the vape products available under the state’s medical cannabis program were found to have the compound.

“We urge the public to be vigilant about any vaping products that they or any family members may be using and to immediately contact their health care provider if they develop any unusual symptoms. In general, vaping of unknown substances is dangerous, and we continue to explore all options to combat this public health issue.” – Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, in a statement.

At least one vitamin E acetate-containing product has been linked to each patient who fell ill and submitted a product for testing; it was not, however, found in nicotine-based products that were tested. Many of the affected products are believed to be counterfeits based on products from states with legalized sales, including knockoffs of Chronic Carts and Dank Vapes.

As of Thursday, the Health Department had received 34 reports from around the state about the pulmonary illness with patients ranging from 15 to 46-years-old. Vitamin E acetate is a commonly available nutrition supplement that is not known to cause harm when applied to the skin or ingested as a pill.

The investigation is ongoing.

End

A cannabis worker in Washington state handles a recently harvested marijuana plant.

Canada’s University of Guelph Launches Cannabis Cultivation Program

9/06/2019

by

The University of Guelph, based in Ontario, Canada, is now offering an online cannabis production course as part of the university’s existing horticulture certificate program.

The course, which is aimed at professionals and home growers, is already fully enrolled with 60 students.

Marjory Gaouette, manager for program development with Open Learning and Educational Support, said the university had a “significant increase” in people contacting the university looking for cultivation courses following cannabis legalization in the nation in 2018.

The course will include cultivation basics: lighting, irrigation systems, growing media, and managing pests and disease. Brandon Yep, a master’s student in the School of Environmental Sciences who designed and will teach the course, said the program “will clarify fact from myth and provide scientifically backed information on cannabis production.”

School of Environmental Sciences professors Youbin Zheng and Mike Dixon have published several recent groundbreaking studies on cannabis plant production that Yep will utilize for the course. Yep’s graduate degree is supervised by Zheng and he is studying ways to improve aquaponics for indoor cultivation. The system collects waste from fish grown in aquaculture and provides that waste to bacteria. Those bugs then break down the material and make its nutrients available to plants grown hydroponically.

About a dozen Canadian colleges and universities have launched cannabis-centric degree and certificate programs.

End

10 Sacramento, California Dispensaries Robbed In Last Month

9/05/2019

by

Sacramento, California authorities are investigating at least 10 break-ins at legal cannabis businesses in the city over the last month, according to a CBS Local (Sacramento) report. It’s not yet clear whether or not the break-ins are linked.

Management at Twelve Hour Care told CBS Local that thieves stole “everything … from product to cash” during a break-in last week. Twelve Hour Care is located in an industrial zone, which Sacramento Cannabis Industry Association spokesman Rob Baca said was at a greater risk for theft than dispensaries in commercial areas — paired with the fact that cannabusinesses operate in cash. 

“These retail locations belong in commercial corridors, they belong in shopping centers, they belong downtown. They belong in Midtown. There’s lighting, there’s people.” — Baca, to CBS Local

Paul Clemons, who handles compliance and licensing for Twelve Hour Care indicated that during one of the Sacramento break-ins, thieves drove a car through the dispensary. He added that without banking access and being forced to operate with cash dispensaries are “always going to be a target.” Clemons said Twelve Hour Care saves their camera data for 90 days and that it runs 24 hours a day.

The Sacramento Police Department told CBS Local that they have implemented certain crime prevention measures to address the issue but declined to offer details on those steps.

Last month the National Credit Union Administration announced that credit unions could serve cannabis businesses; however most state-approved industry operators still relay on cash due to cannabis’ federal Schedule I status.

End

Nevada Nets Over $100M From Cannabis Taxes and Fees

9/05/2019

by

Nevada collected more than $100 million in cannabis-derived revenues over the last fiscal year, the Nevada Independent reports. The revenues include $99.18 million in tax contributions and another $10 million in fees.

The revenues are a 33 percent increase year-over-year in Nevada, which collected $74.7 million in cannabis-derived taxes and fees in the 2018 fiscal year. The state imposes a 10 percent excise tax and 15 percent wholesale tax along with sales taxes and licensing fees. The 2018 revenues were 40 percent higher than government estimates; the state anticipates cannabis-derived revenues to reach more than $100 million per year over the next two years.

Cannabis taxes are earmarked for education spending in the state after costs for regulation and enforcement; however, in 2018 just about $27 million was deposited into education accounts and the rest was deposited into the state’s Rainy Day Fund. In May, the legislature passed a bill to deposit cannabis excise tax revenue directly into the education accounts, which is expected to add $120 million to education accounts over the next two years.

Riana Durrett, director of the Nevada Dispensary Association told the Independent that regulators need to do a better job on cracking down on the illegal market as it “continues to deprive the state of funds that could be going to education.”

Last fiscal year, the Rainy Day Fund received $42.5 million from cannabis industry taxes and fees, $27.5 million was deposited into the school account, $5.5 million was used for regulatory administration, and $5 million was dispersed to local governments.

End

Missouri Receives 2,100 Medical Cannabis Applications

9/05/2019

by

Missouri has received more than 2,100 medical cannabis industry applications, according to Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services officials. The Associated Press reports that 1,163 of those applications are for dispensary operation and 554 are for cultivation licenses.

Missouri officials plan to issue 192 dispensary licenses and 60 cultivation licenses in the first round of licensing. The agency also received 415 manufacturer applications, 17 testing laboratory applications, and 14 transporter applications; under the voter-approved constitutional amendment the state must approve 86 manufacturers. 

According to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, at least 25 applicants represent out-of-state businesses, including Massachusetts-based Curaleaf, which applied to run eight shops. Other applicants are from Kansas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Tennessee. In all, applicants want to open 175 cannabusinesses across the St. Louis metro area.

Entrepreneur Jimmy Koch, who wants to turn part of a Springfield bar and music venue into a medical cannabis dispensary, told the Springfield News-Leader that he was excited to see all the interest.

“It’s great to see how many people want to be involved. And even though everyone knew the risks going in, it will be a bummer to see so many people heartbroken after investing all that time and money it takes to just build a plan, secure a location and turn in the application.” — Jimmy Koch, via the News-Leader

Regulators have until Jan. 1, 2020 to approve or deny dispensary applications. Officials began accepting patient applications in July but sales are not expected until April or March of next year.

Officials anticipate about $20 million annually from medical cannabis-derived sales taxes and fees.

End

Morris Beegle: The Robust Future of Industrial Hemp

9/04/2019

by

Morris Beegle is the president and co-founder of We Are For Better Alternatives (WAFBA), an umbrella of pro-hemp brands that includes hemp industry networking extravaganza The NoCo Hemp Expo.

Morris recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt for a discussion covering all things industrial hemp. In this interview, Morris talks about NoCo Hemp Expo’s founding and rapid success and the myriad industrial applications of the hemp plant, which include biodegradable plastics, eco-friendly construction materials, and even hemp-based carbon nanosheets for use in supercapacitors. Morris also shares the stories and inspiration behind some of his other hemp companies, including an upcoming line of hemp guitars, and more!

Tune in via the media player below, or scroll further down to read a full transcript of this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.

Listen to the podcast:

Read the transcript:

Commercial: This episode of The Ganjapreneur Podcast is made possible by 420-friendly service providers in the Ganjapreneur Business Directory. If you need professional help with your business from accounting to legal services to consulting, marketing, payment processing or insurance, visit ganjapreneur.com/businesses to find service providers who specialize in helping cannabis entrepreneurs like you. Visit the Ganjapreneur Business Directory today at ganjapreneur.com/businesses.

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 you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders.

Today I’m joined by Morris Beegle. He’s a hemp industry entrepreneur, co-founder and president of WAFBA, We Are For Better Alternatives, family of companies, which includes the annual hemp expo, NoCo Hemp Expo. Since 2012 Beegle has developed global brands in the hemp space with eight companies from NoCo to Colorado Hemp Company to Let’s Talk Hemp to Silver Mountain Hemp Guitars. How are you doing this afternoon, Morris?

Morris Beegle: Doing good, TG. Thanks for having me on.

TG Branfalt: I’m delighted to have you on. I really like having the hemp guys on. You guys are always an interesting breed. So before we get into everything that we want to cover today, tell you about yourself, man. How’d you end up in the space?

Morris Beegle: Well, I was in the music industry for 25 years or so, basically from the late ’80s, 1987, ’88, up in through 2010, 2011. I had a music production company, one-stop shop called Happy Scratch Records that I had started in ’95 when I moved back to Colorado. When I moved back to Colorado in ’95 and started this, I was inspired by the Seattle scene and how Seattle blew up. I got to spend a bunch of time there. You had Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. Coming back to Colorado, I wanted to see the same thing happen here. There’s a great local music scene, pretty diverse, and not as focused as the Seattle scene was. But when I moved back here, I got dialed in to Fort Collins.

I grew up in Loveland, but Fort Collins had a store there called The Hemperor Wears No Clothes and it was based off the Jack Herer book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. I read that book and Jack’s kind of the prophet of the industry, the entire cannabis industry, but brought light to a lot of what hemp can do and the difference between hemp and marijuana, but yet it’s all cannabis. So that’s really when I got introduced to it. I didn’t really become a hempster at that point. I’ve always been an overall cannabis supporter and a partaker for quite some time. As I did my music business stuff, I did run some hemp merchandise, I did some hemp shirts and hemp hats, but really never got into the hemp thing in the cannabis space until the music business thing kind of crashed for me. I was really dialed into the physical media side of things with CDs and DVDs and manufacturing and packaging and physical product distribution into retail stores and through wholesale accounts.

And here comes the Internet and the digital age and Napster and mp3.Com, followed by iTunes and Amazon and all these other digital platforms that really pretty much eliminated the record store market except for a handful of cool stores that still do vinyl and merchandise. But the CD market got decimated and my business dried up. I was looking for something else to channel my skillset into and the cannabis thing was happening in Colorado with medical being pretty strong. As of 2009, a lot of dispensaries started opening up and then in 2012 we ran Amendment 64 which legalized recreational marijuana and taxed and regulated it just like alcohol. Within that legislation there was an opportunity for farmers here in Colorado to start growing industrial hemp.

At that point in time I thought it would be a great transition to move from the music space and into the hemp and cannabis space and start a merchandise company. That’s what happened in 2012. We started Colorado Hemp Company as a merchandise company, doing T-shirts and hats and working with some other textile brands that did apparel and wallets and bags and shoes. That’s really how we got started. The following year we started a paper printing business using hemp paper. I had found a hemp paper company that I started buying paper from. The following year we started doing events, which were a needed thing to educate people about industrial hemp, not only the industry itself as we were getting to be brand-new, but consumers as well.

So that’s basically laid the platform for what is WAFBA and where we’ve gone with this. That was with merchandise and printing and paper, and then the event side of things with bringing people together and the education and the advocacy and really just trying to figure out how to facilitate an industry and help move the thing forward by bringing people together.

TG Branfalt: Can you tell me about any parallels between the early music industry and the early … When you decided to get into the hemp industry, it was pretty early.

Morris Beegle: Yeah. I think that there’s really a lot of parallels when you look at there’s a supply chain and in the music industry, that would be musicians going into the studio and making music. From there, that it would have producers and editors and then marketers and selling product to the public. The hemp industry is similar, where you’ve got farmers and you’ve got processors and you’ve got manufacturers and you’ve got marketers and you’ve got events. What you have in both spaces is a lot of creative people. So I’ve seen a real parallel in just the creative element and people thinking outside of the box in this space. It’s just a different mindset in people with a slightly different intention and maybe kind of a counterculture approach.

TG Branfalt: You mentioned the counterculture. I want to go back to earlier when you were talking about the early grunge scene. I’m a huge grunge guy. I love Mudhoney and Jesus Lizard.

Morris Beegle: Mudhoney.

TG Branfalt: Love Mudhoney.

Morris Beegle: I saw Mudhoney at The Off Ramp in Seattle back in, I think, ’91 or ’92. It was great.

TG Branfalt: Be still my heart. Is that something that you think drew you to the hemp industry was this sort of counterculture? I mean it seems like you were pretty entrenched in it before you entered the space.

Morris Beegle: Well, when I was really trying to figure out what was going to be the next step of my life after spending so much time in the music industry and I wanted to do something that, A, is fun, B, that I’m passionate about and I really care about that could make a difference. And then I just feel good about what I’m doing and putting out into the world and that my kids would be proud of me about. So it was just one of these things. I just I felt compelled to do it because I think that our world needs to wake up socially and consciously and just become more aware of what we’re doing in our everyday lives and to our planet and to our environment.

I really just think that hemp can be a game changer in changing the way people think about our world, our planet, and our environment and how we should grow crops and how we should produce finished goods and how we should recycle and replenish all of that. I just think that’s what drew me to it. It’s kind of what drew me to music. There was just this art and this presence that drew me into music that’s really … I don’t know what the exact word is. I’ve tried to figure it out before, but it’s that something else that’s out there that just draws you. The invisible spirit, the invisible energy.

TG Branfalt: When did you decide that you were going to go all-in with hemp? I mean it’s a risk. You deal with the banking issues and being ancillarily associated with cannabis. And then you said you had kids, so I mean, and you do so many different things. When was it that you were like, “All right, this is what I’m doing?”

Morris Beegle: It was really in 2012 and 2013. When we started the company, I felt really passionate about that cannabis was on the way to becoming legalized and becoming socially acceptable. It was funny that marijuana was leading the way when hemp should have never been illegal in the first place. You don’t utilize hemp to get high or to get intoxicated. I felt good about being on this side of the plant and really not being a big activist for the medical and the recreational sides. Not that I’m not an advocate and I don’t support it, because I do. I don’t think anybody should go to jail for the plant, period. I think anybody should be able to utilize this plant for medicinal purposes and get themselves off of some of these prescription drugs that cannabis absolutely can replace.

It’s being shown over and over and over, not only in peer review science studies, but the anecdotal evidence is just it’s mountains and mountains and mountains of it. Anecdotal evidence does matter. When you look at the industrial side of it, the food side of it, nutrition, health and wellness and therapeutic side with all the hemp and the cannabinoids and CBD, the protein, the amino acids, all of it, it’s all good. There’s nothing, there’s no cons about this plant in my eyes. So I just felt really good about jumping into this space and I’m all in till the end.

TG Branfalt: The only negative thing about smoking a joint is that you can go to jail for it. Isn’t that some adage?

Morris Beegle: Well yeah. That is a negative thing and nobody should go to jail for this. I absolutely will stand up and fight till this thing is fully legal. People that have gone to jail for it should all be expunged. All that should be off their record.

TG Branfalt: So I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk you about the NoCo Hemp Expo. It’s often referred to as the most important hemp industry event. It’s won that distinction twice by the Hemp Industries Association. Can you tell me about how it started and how it evolved into this award-winning industry venture?

Morris Beegle: Well, we started in 2014 because there was a need to have hemp-centric events, which weren’t really going on. There were a handful of small little gatherings at libraries and universities in a conference room with very little as far as product display or networking or true education. That’s what really was the catalyst is, “Hey, we got to have conferences and trade shows.” So we put on this first trade show and a buddy of mine that I’d worked with in the music industry and a good friend of mine was booking this place called Ricky B’s in Windsor, which is a club that’s got a multitude of rooms. It’s got a big open room with a stage and a bar and a kitchen and another room where you could put some exhibitors. So it had this setup where we could throw an event and have speakers. We could have live music. We could have food. We could make a hemp beer, which we did. We could have a full-on event.

We launched NoCo in April of 2014 and pretty much sold it out. There was 330 people at the event and the place was full all day. We had a really good response. A lot of great people threw in to participate right at the get-go of this industry. So we moved it to a bigger venue the next year out at the Ranch Events Complex in Loveland and had about 1250 people. And then we increased our space again and had 3000 people. Then it went to 6000, and this year we had over 10,000 people. It’s just continued to grow and grow and grow as far as the amount of companies and industry people participating and the amount of general public that has become really interested in in the plant and the different products that are made from it.

So it’s just one of these things that’s just continued to grow over and over and over. It’s kind of like a band. You know how you start your garage band and you play a small dingy club and you got 10 people there. Then you go to the next place and you got 50 people. Then the next thing you know you’re playing stadiums like U2 and Metallica.

TG Branfalt: That wasn’t my experience in a band.

Morris Beegle: Well, it wasn’t mine either. But that’s the road. U2 started off in shitty little clubs just like Metallica did.

TG Branfalt: How important is in-person networking in the Internet age? I mean everyone has an Instagram. Everyone has a Facebook. Why are events like these so important?

Morris Beegle: I don’t think that there’s any way to replace face-to-face networking time and gatherings with entertainment and just the ability to network and socialize and get to know people, as well as go to conferences and hear experts speak on a variety of topics and be able to interact with those people, ask questions and learn. To me, there’s no equating having the live situation and being part of that or just participating online in social media and little conference rooms and virtual this and virtual that. There’s a of business that can be done that way. I mean I do business that way too, but I would say the appearing at events and trade shows just goes a long way to building real relationships.

TG Branfalt: The NoCo Hemp Event happened, the expo happened pretty recently. Can you tell me about what people were talking about at that event? What was the buzz during the show?

Morris Beegle: Well, a big buzz is the Farm Bill passed at the end of 2018. Trump signed it on December 20th. So the Farm Bill passing is now we’re federally legal. It’s no longer associated with the Controlled Substances Act. The DEA has no jurisdiction over hemp. It now falls under the USDA, and it also has the FDA in the mix. The big buzz is, A, now it’s federally illegal, B, how are we going to regulate it and, C, how is the FDA going to come in here with their recommendations for regulation of this plant. So that’s really the hot topic and that’s going on right now. What are these federal regulations coming down from the USDA and the FDA going to look like in the end? And how restrictive is that going to be for parts of our industry to really be able to grow? Is it going to block out some of the smaller, more boutique entrepreneur craft type producers? So there’s a lot of questions that remain.

TG Branfalt: We’ll get into more of the new federal regulations a little bit later. We’ve sort of been dancing around the music issue throughout this episode. Tell me about the guitar company, man, Silver Mountain Guitars. How do you use hemp in the production? Give me the rundown. What I want to know is how it sounds compared to a traditional guitar.

Morris Beegle: Okay. So have you listened to my podcast at all?

TG Branfalt: I have.

Morris Beegle: Okay, so that intro guitar piece is hemp guitar that I play.

TG Branfalt: Okay.

Morris Beegle: The sound is great. You can load whatever pickups in there, whatever hardware you want. But it’s the body of the guitar is a bass fiber composite shell that’s molded around a wood core. So it’s not a solid body hemp guitar. There’s a bass fiber composite molded shell that wraps around a wood core. They’re fairly light. They’re lighter than a wood guitar. And again, they sound really good. I’ve done SG. I’ve done two tellies, got a Les Paul Jr. I’ve got another SG on the way and I’m going to be creating a Strat model for a buddy of mine. He’s going to be the first guy that we actually do a custom one for.

But I’ve been really just dialing in with these guys who’ve been making these for the last five or six years in Canada. It’s still in somewhat prototype mode as far as it’s been hard being able to scale up and be able to produce these on a larger scale. So I think that we’re finally getting ready to clear that hurdle. It seems that way. We’re also making ukuleles with these guys. I think that that production, there’s just been a few technical tweaks with some of the finishing and some of this material that’s got certain nuances in the production side of things. But I think that we’re about to the point where it’s a done deal. Now it’s about scaling up and being able to produce these in some type of quantity rather than one a month.

TG Branfalt: I hear a lot that people who are trying to do these sort of unique projects with hemp have a very hard time finding processors. Is that something that you are experiencing? Are people at the trade shows recognizing that that exists? Could we see that market filled pretty soon?

Morris Beegle: Yes. There is definitely a lack of processing here in the United States outside of extraction for cannabinoids, oil extracts, all of that. That’s really the processing that’s pretty available in the US. But there’s still not enough processing for as much material that’s going to be grown this year, I can tell you that. There’s going to be big issues with that. We definitely have a lack of fiber processing, which is what I’m really excited about. I really got into the industry based on the fiber side of things for composites and plastics and building materials and textiles. That’s what drew me into it. I like the food part of it too with the hemp seeds and the pressed oil and the protein powder. But there’s a long ways to go with the processing for that here in the United States and in North America overall for the fiber side, not the food side. Canada’s been doing the food grain hemp parts thing for 20 years.

But there’s definitely a lack of the processing, but that is going to change now since the Farm Bill was signed. There’s more confidence in the investors market. People realize that there is value in the fiber, the stock side of it. Implementing that processing is going to take the next two or three years to really start building stuff out and being able to utilize that material to get it into a paper or building materials and bio-plastics in some of these industrial processes where it will make it easier for guys like me that want to make more guitars or guitar cabinets or plastic guitar picks that are biodegradable with hemp plastic. So right now there’s a handful of us out there that are doing these novelty things, at least here in the United States.

There’s people that are doing a lot more than that over in Europe, because Europe’s been doing this fiber side of thing. They’re the most advanced when it comes to utilizing fiber for a variety of different industries. China does a variety of that too. They’re more geared on the textiles, apparel side of thing. But we need to get a lot of this European technology over here, as well as some of the Chinese technology, and build out this fiber side of things because that’s where we’re going to be able to have a tremendous impact in this country.

TG Branfalt: It sounds like you focus a lot on industrial issues, or industrial uses rather. Whenever we talk about hemp, we always end up on CBD. I’ve been covering this since 2014, and even just five years ago, CBD wasn’t the hot hemp issue. How has the industry changed with the rise in CBD interest?

Morris Beegle: Well, when I started in 2012 nobody was even talking about CBD that was in my circle. There was people talking about CBD and other cannabinoids in the marijuana side of things and things just started to shift. There’s a couple of companies, I guess, HempMeds, Cannabest which has turned into CV Sciences, or was that group of guys based out of San Diego that really started making this CBD from hemp thing a real business. These guys forged a brand-new industry and a lot of people really don’t know that story. It would be a good story for you to investigate is this San Diego underground group that really developed the beginnings of the CBD market. As you look where it is today, it’s the vast, vast majority of what the market is. It’s driving all the economics of it.

I think it’s great. I think that once it gets settled, it should be regulated just like a dietary supplement, just like a food ingredient. That’s exactly what it is. Hopefully we get the FDA there and we don’t have to overregulate the producers to get this product on the market. But that stuff should be in apothecary sections across the country. Consumers should have the choice as to where they’re going to get their cannabinoids. If they want to take them and they don’t want to get high, they should be able to go to Whole Foods or Vitamin Cottage. If they want to go get them at their dispensary and have THC. They should be able to do that.

If they want to go to their doctor and to their pharmacist because that’s who they trust and they want medications from whatever pharmaceutical company with CBD or other cannabinoids, then the consumer should have that option too. It’s interesting to see how these channels are developing. Hopefully here in the next couple years, they’ll be pretty defined and we’ll have a clear path for hemp-derived CBD and cannabinoid products. You’ll have your adult use side of the market, and you’ll have your pharmaceutical side.

TG Branfalt: What are a couple industrial applications that many people might not think about? You’re obviously really tuned into this industrial side.

Morris Beegle: Well, let’s start with just what can be done on the fiber side. So you can make textiles. You can make clothing and carpet and upholstery. You can make composites. There’s a lot of car manufacturers in Europe. This is a market that they created as making the inside door paneling and trim pieces using a hemp flax based plastic composite that’s lighter and way more eco-friendly and environmentally less impactful on the earth. Building materials they’ve been utilizing in Europe for a long time and other parts of the world. You can make way greener, more sustainable homes using hemp-based building materials. A new development in the last three or four years is the ability to take this hemp fiber and create carbon nano sheets that could be utilized in super capacitors and battery storage. So I think that-

TG Branfalt: Seriously?

Morris Beegle: Yeah. That’s a pretty exciting technology that’s out there that people are going to be developing. I think you’re going to see stuff for the oil and gas industry, loss prevention materials. There’s different materials that have been created or attempted to be created in the last decade that could go into, whether that’s in the fracking situations or oil cleanup and being able to absorb all this stuff. Texas now coming on board, there’s a whole bunch of people from the oil and gas industry that are looking to start growing hemp and utilizing industrial materials for the oil and gas industry to help clean up some of this shit that they’ve been doing for the last 50 to 100 years. So that’s interesting. It’s how can hemp clean up the stuff that’s been poisoning our earth.

TG Branfalt: You’ve mentioned the Farm Bill a couple of times, and I mean we’re standing on a precipice right now. We’re awaiting the FDA regulations. As I’m sure you’re aware, they’ve pointed to Epidiolex saying that there’s a patent on CBD, which sort of muddies the CBD waters. Despite the passage of the Farm Bill, we have no clear direction from the FDA. But it was only a few months ago seemingly that, I guess, almost a year ago that the Farm Bill was passed. How has the industry changed since the passage of that Farm Bill for companies on the ground?

Morris Beegle: I would say that a lot of smart companies are getting all of their operations in place. They’re using GMP-compliant facilities, making products in a way that are going to stand up to the scrutiny of the dietary supplement industry. That’s the direction that these companies are going. People are not backing off. People are moving forward like nothing’s going to happen. A lot of people are. They’re just rolling the dice and throwing a lot of money at it. There is going to be stuff coming down the pipe and people are going to have crop failures. There is going to be some serious chaos that happens in this industry in the next couple years. But I do think when the regulatory process is done that these products will be regulated like dietary supplements and like another food ingredient.

TG Branfalt: Is the lack of FDA clarifications, is that the biggest issue facing the industry right now? Or is it something that we don’t think about, people who aren’t in the industry don’t think about?

Morris Beegle: That’s a really good question. I would say that the FDA thing is really the biggest unknown at this point. But I would say that there’s so much money involved in this now and there’s a lot of political clout that’s pushing for what seems to be a properly regulated industry so we can create these products and a lot of people can compete in the marketplace. But the crystal ball is a little bit fuzzy. I’m in it every day and I’m not exactly sure. I am hopeful that things, in the end, that we’re going to have an industry that’s just like any other agricultural type of industry. That’s what this is. It’s an agricultural crop.

We know now with the passage of the Farm Bill that the stocks and the seeds are grass, generally recognized as safe. So we can do whatever we want with those parts of the plant. The only thing that is cloudy is this flower side, the extraction side, and how these cannabinoids are going to be dealt with when it comes to growing, processing, and the final product. Is any THC going to be allowed in these final products? Is isolate going to be able to be used from any of these compounds? Are all the isolates basically going to belong to the pharmaceutical industry and all we can use are these full spectrum broad spectrum whole plant extracts?

There’s clarification that’s going to be coming down the pipe. I’m not exactly sure where it’ll end up. A lot of people don’t think we’re going to be able to use isolates, that those will be deemed to the pharmaceutical industry.

TG Branfalt: You said the crystal balls a little fuzzy. Well, look into your crystal ball for me. What do you think? Taking CBD out of it, all right. Let’s say the FDA says you cannot isolate CBD, whatever. What do you think would be the next big hemp sort of thing?

Morris Beegle: The next big hemp thing,? I think-

TG Branfalt: Yeah, that’s industrial.

Morris Beegle: I would say animal feed and animal products, pet products. That stuff is happening to some degree now, although it’s not considered legal, the animal side of things domestically, they’re still the FDA has to allow that. They’re trying to fast track certain things, but there’s studies that have to be done. I think that the animal feed market’s going to be large, for sure. Livestock is a huge industry, which is another thing that we could discuss for a long time is industrial agriculture and the industrial livestock industry, which is terrible for our environment and the climate. So I think fiber, I think the grain, that’s where it has to go. Protein powder. People are becoming more organic, more regenerative, more plant-based foods.

Cannabinoids are going to be there. It’s a health and wellness product that’s a plant that can do all these things. So what’s the next big thing? I think that all the uses that … all the potential replacements that it can go into these various industries and replacing these different ingredients to green up products across the industrial spectrum. I mean that’s going to be huge. I don’t know if it’s necessarily one thing. I think it’s just a combination of all the things that we’ve been talking about for a long time, that hemp can do 25,000 different things or 50,000 different things. What is that number? We’re going to find out that number over the course of the next 10 or 20 years because there’s a significant interest to get this crop grown in large acreage and to get into the market.

TG Branfalt: Finally, what advice would you have for entrepreneurs looking to enter the industrial hemp space, not the CBD space, not the cannabis space, but the space that you are sort of entrenched in. What’s your advice for them?

Morris Beegle: Well, first advice is get into something that you really like and that you’re really passionate about. Don’t make it just because you think there’s going to be money in it. I think people are misdirected when it comes to that too often. I’ve been fortunate as an entrepreneur to follow my heart and follow my passions to the music industry and now into the hemp and cannabis space because this is what I want to do. I love what I do and me being a fiber guy, I’m going to do my part. I suggest this at anybody at this point in time. If you’re interested in the fiber side, now is the time because we have the opportunity as entrepreneurs, as innovators, to really create something that’s never been created here in the United States, and that is a hemp fiber side of the market.

There’s technology out there domestically and internationally that has yet to be implemented that, A, we need to come across and discover and connect and collaborate with people that are doing this and figure out how to have it funded and get this implemented. There’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs right now to really just create a future based on our own intention and our own purpose and our own vision.

TG Branfalt: You’re quite the visionary when it comes to this, man, and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. It’s not often that we get a pure industrial hemp perspective on things. I have for a long time been a huge proponent of hemp. I would prefer a very lush hemp industry as opposed to a very lush THC-rich industry. So, Where can people find out more about you, the WAFBA companies? How can they find you on the old Internet?

Morris Beegle: Well, you can go to wafba.org. That’s W-A-F-B-A dot org. That’s the launch page. All of our little entities are listed there. We actually have 12, that’s a half a dozen of those are events and then the other half dozen we’ve got Tree-Free Hemp, the paper side, Let’s Talk Hemp, the education media side, One Planet Hemp, our T-shirt and hat and merchandise store. I don’t know. I can’t even remember all the little brands that we’ve got now. But we’ve got quite a few and that’s where you can find it. You can also go to morrisbeegle.com and I’ve got a lot of links there as well. You can go to nocohempexpo.Com.

That’s what people, if you want to find out really what’s happening in the hemp industry, if you do get a chance you should come to NoCo Hemp Expo, especially NoCo Seven that’ll be in 2020. We’re moving to a brand-new space that’s three times where we were at last year where we packed it out with 10,000 people. Next year we hope to have 20,000-plus and we’ll have 400-plus exhibitors and great programming for the business side, the investor side, the farm side, the equipment side. We’re just really excited to do what we can to help facilitate this industry and bring people together and make it real and make a difference.

TG Branfalt: That’s Morris Beegle. He’s a hemp industry entrepreneur, co-founder and president of the WAFBA, We Are For Better Alternatives, family of companies, which includes that aforementioned NoCo Hemp Expo. Thank you so much for being on the show, Morris. It’s really been a pleasure.

Morris Beegle: Hey. Thanks, TG. I appreciate you having me on.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of The Ganjapreneur.com Podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com and in the Apple iTunes store. On the ganjapreneur.com website, you will 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 at Mediahouse. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

End

North American Cannabis Industry Projected at $47.3B by 2024

9/04/2019

by

According to a report by Prohibition Partners, the North American cannabis industry could reach $47.3 billion annually by 2024, with the U.S. comprising $44 billion of the market in the next five years, according to an outline of the report by Health Europa.

Daragh Anglim, managing director at Prohibition Partners, said that figure is likely an underestimation as it doesn’t include illegal sales.

“…The true value of the cannabis market is likely to be much larger than current estimates. This is because, contrary to the hopes of regulators, legalization is unlikely to eradicate black market sales, particularly in Canada.” – Anglim, in a statement, via Health Europa

Anglim added that the “legal disconnect” in the U.S. between federal and state laws “presents significant challenges for businesses looking to mature a market with significant potential.”

“Moreover, conflicting adult-use laws in the US are forcing businesses to move to neighboring states,” Anglim said in the report. “On a positive note this is fueling momentum behind legislation as state regulators look to generate and protect tax revenues.”

The research firm suggests that by 2024 medical cannabis sales in the U.S. will comprise just half of all legal sales, expecting more states to legalize cannabis for adult use.

In May, Prohibition Partners suggested that if hemp and medical cannabis were fully legalized in Asia, the market could be worth $5.8 billion by 2024, but noted that just three Asian nations – Thailand, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan – have legalized medical cannabis use and it’s unlikely that Hong Kong and China would move toward any legalization in the next decade.

End

Sonoma County Shuts Down 63,000 Cannabis Plant Grow Site

9/04/2019

by

California officials are continuing their crackdown on illegal cannabis cultivators as the Sonoma County Permit and Resource Management Department shut down a 63,241-plant grow – the county’s largest ever, according to a CBS Local (San Francisco) report. The illegal cultivation sites were located in a habitat for endangered California tiger salamanders.

About 26,650 plants were found on a 2.5-acre site, while another 36,385 plants were being grown on a 3.3-acre site and some were interspersed with corn.

Permit and Resource Management Department spokeswoman Maggie Fleming said that the largest previous cannabis cultivation site shut down by the county was 13,000 plants. In all, county officials have abated 161,000 this year.

In June, Siskiyou County officials said they had seized more than 19,000 illegally-grown cannabis plants in one month.

Since the launch of legal sales in California through July, the Bureau of Cannabis Control and law enforcement agencies reported they had confiscated about $30 million in illegal cannabis from grows and unlicensed shops.

Lindsay Robinson, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association, told the Los Angeles Times in July that the number of enforcement actions by the Bureau is “severely inadequate,” noting that there should be hundreds of enforcement actions on illegally operating shops. She said the state “has always struggled with enforcement of the illicit industry.”

In July, the California Finance Department found that just 15 of 68 BCC enforcement positions had been filled and the agency was experiencing a major cash shortage which prevented it from providing adequate enforcement.

End

Quebec Court Finds Home Growing Ban Unconstitutional

9/04/2019

by

A Quebec, Canada Superior Court judge has ruled that the provincial ban on home cannabis cultivation for personal use is unconstitutional, the CBC reports. Superior Court Justice Manon Lavoie said the ban equals criminal legislation, which is under federal jurisdiction.

Julien Fortier, the attorney who brought the case, told the CBC that while the ruling allows individuals to grown cannabis at home, the ruling is “very technical” and warned that the government can still appeal the ruling or try to rewrite the law in a constitutional way.

“No evidence was filed, except for the legislative debates. It was really a case that was strictly about the … constitutional law.” – Fortier, to the CBC

Under federal cannabis law, citizens are allowed to cultivate up to four plants for personal use, but Quebec’s law banned home-growing. A Quebec official said the government is studying the ruling.

Among Canadian provinces, Quebec has taken a conservative approach to cannabis policy and legalization. In July, the government announced a ban on THC-infused candies and confections and capped edible potency at 5 milligrams of THC per unit and 10 milligrams of THC per package; drinkable products are capped at 5 milligrams per container. Cannabis-infused topicals will also be banned temporarily.

Provincial officials are also considering setting THC limits of 30 percent on all cannabis products sold in the province but have not officially implemented the policy.

Under federal rules, edible products are limited to 10 milligrams of THC per package and 1,000 milligrams of THC per package for concentrates and topicals.

End