Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s top nominee for Attorney General Eric Holder’s replacement, announced yesterday that she disagreed with the President in regards to the relative safety of marijuana use.
The revelation came during her first day of confirmation hearings for the esteemed law enforcement position. Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alaska Republican, asked whether she supported the legalization of marijuana — Lynch’s response: “Senator, I do not.”
Sen. Sessions read aloud a quote taken from President Obama’s interview with the New Yorker last January. According to the president, “I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”
Lynch responded, “Well, senator, I certainly don’t hold that view, and don’t agree with that view of marijuana as a substance. I certainly think that the president was speaking from his personal experience and personal opinion — neither of which I am able to share.”
“Not only do I not support legalization of marijuana — it is not the position of the Department of Justice currently, to support the legalization, nor would it be the position should I become confirmed as attorney general,” she added.
In the past, Lynch has made statements regarding the failure of the Drug War that gave marijuana activists hope. “I do think that there were a lot of issues that went on with the war on drugs — its inception and the way it was carried out,” she said a 2001 interview with PBS. In 2013, she explained, “Arresting more people or building more jails is not the ultimate solution to crime in our society. If there’s one thing we’ve learned it is that there is no one solution.”
Meanwhile, Obama recently admitted in a YouTube interview that he expects more states will legalize recreational cannabis, and that his government’s stance on marijuana enforcement will be one of restraint and respect for states’ rights to pass legalization legislation.
Though Lynch’s recent admission is a major letdown for many Americans, it would be hard to expect Obama’s nominee for the top law enforcement position to openly call for cannabis legalization in the face of heavy opposition still from many Republican leaders. What she and the officials involved in her confirmation hearings failed to address is her stance, if any, on the decriminalization or rescheduling of marijuana — which will likely be the first step to nationwide legalization.
Last week, Oregon-based MBank announced an unprecedented commitment to the cannabis industry that would cross state borders and give banking opportunities to ganjapreneurs in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. Shortly following the announcement, however, bank officials dialed back their enthusiasm for the plan and formally scrapped bank accounts for Colorado cannabusinessesn, the Denver Post reports.
Oregon and Washington marijuana MBank accounts are safe, for now.
“Following national press, the volume of inquiries in Oregon, Washington and Colorado has been so overwhelming that we don’t currently have the infrastructure to adequately support all these customers,” said CEO Jef Baker on Monday. “Colorado is the farthest from our market area and the most difficult to provide… quality customer service to.”
In addition to the sheer quantity of interested businesses, another issue was MBank’s lack of a Colorado branch. The workaround for this would have been to run the potential millions of marijuana dollars from Colorado through a Federal Reserve Bank wire transfer, opening a lot of room for federal scrutiny.
Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder (ADHD) can be a debilitating condition for many people, including children. ADHD can interfere heavily in a patient’s life. It is also one of the most misunderstood conditions in our society. Individuals suffering from ADHD often have problems at school and work. Although there are studies showing cannabis as an effective treatment for this debilitating condition, the science is not completely in.
Adrian Columb is seeking to add to the evidence that cannabis can be used as a treatment for ADHD. From Melbourne, Australia, Columb has started an Indie Go Go campaign to fund a Blue Ribbon clinical trial on cannabis as an effective treatment for ADHD — the same treatment he chose for himself. Columb believes that the trial will cost $1.5 million.
“The problem right now in getting such a study funded is cannabis’s classification as a Schedule 1 narcotic in the United States. This is a big problem, because most of the researchers interested in this type of study live in the States,” Columb said. If funded, Dr. Kirsten Meuller-Vahl, the Medical Director of the Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry, and Psychotherapy at Hannover Medical School in Germany, has agreed to do the study. However, he hopes to find a university interested in his research questions. He is quick to point out, “If we could get a university lab to do the study we could do it for a lower price tag”.
Columb feels strongly that until a Blue Ribbon Clinical Trial is done, science will continue to ignore cannabis as an effective treatment for ADHD. He is also concerned for parents who are getting arrested for treating their children with ADHD using cannabis. At the moment the funding campaign has had little monetary support, but, “At the least, this campaign has sparked a discussion on three continents about using cannabis to treat a condition that affects so many people around the world.”
With new research coming out everyday on conditions cannabis can treat, this would be study could lead to advances in treating a very common ailment, ADHD. Check out more information on the study here.
A new report from The Arcview Group, a premium investment and research firm based in Oakland, California, has found that the legal marijuana industry is currently the fastest growing industry in the U.S. In fact, from 2013 to 2014, the legal weed market grew from $1.5 billion to $2.7 billion — an increase of 74 percent.
Arcview researchers surveyed hundreds of retailers in the medical and recreational industries across the country. The group also looked at ancillary businesses to judge their economic involvement, in addition to data recorded by state agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private corporations about the marijuana sector for a more complete picture.
“In the last year, the rise of the cannabis industry went from an interesting cocktail conversation to being taken seriously as the fastest growing industry in America,” said Troy Dayton, CEO of The ArcView Group. “At this point, it’s hard to imagine that any serious businessperson who is paying attention hasn’t spent some time thinking about the possibilities in this market.”
The report predicts that in the next five years, two more states will likely legalize medical marijuana and up to 14 could pass recreational legislation. By 2019, all state-legal cannabis markets combined could surpass a whopping $11 billion.
The Cannabis market is “off to a dull start” in 2015, says Alan Brochstein, founder and CFO of the marijuana investment group 420 Investor.
This time last year there was tremendous excitement and optimism around Colorado unveiling its recreational marijuana market, and as the first quarter of 2014 advanced, “the stocks went crazy,” says Brochstein. “On average they went up six or seven fold, some of them twenty times.”
Yet despite several states reforming their marijuana policy in the recent elections, 2015 is not progressing with nearly the same economic vigor as 2014. “There was a slight pop in the beginning of 2015, but then prices sunk back down to where they started.” Brochstein believes a lot of this had to do with poor management of companies that rose too quickly too fast. Similar to the .com and solar industries, money was being poured into companies that weren’t equipped to operate on that level. Which lead to more scrutiny from the federal government.
“Last year the SEC started to clamp-down on this sector, and singled out around eleven stocks that started small and then got huge, some of them that were really significant and put a big damper on the market.”
Brochstein says that this frightened some investors away from marijuana stocks and triggered a plunge in prices. Many stocks were traded at far more than they were worth, Brochstein argues, and what you were getting was often not a great deal for what you were paying. He believes that while there are competent, honest, legitimately funded businessmen in the marijuana industry, the market is loaded with companies that do not meet the standards of a safe investment.
Though as the industry grows, the market has begun to cleanse itself of some of the more dead-end stocks, which will potentially reinstate investor confidence in marijuana. Brochstein is optimistic about the market impact of Oregon’s recreational industry in 2016, as well as California’s potential legalization in 2016. Yet those are still a ways down the line, and he knows that we’re most likely not going to see another year for marijuana stocks like 2014 for a while.
“You can’t always tell people, ‘you have to invest in this sector, things are gonna be great!’” Brochstein admits. “I think 2015 will be a year of stability.”
Last year New York State became the 23rd state to pass medical marijuana laws and this year even more progress could be made in the marijuana prohibition fight if two bills by Sen. Daniel Squadron (D) are passed in the state.
The bills, S.137 and S.172, are not as revolutionary as the act proposed by Sen. Liz Krueger (D) that would legalize pot in the state for recreational purposes but they would likely keep what are now considered low-level offenders out of jail entirely.
S.137 would decriminalize possession of “personal amounts” of marijuana, defined in the bill as “25 grams or less,” which is roughly one ounce. It would also close the so-called “sharing loophole” that allows police to arrest and charge someone for dealing if they are caught sharing, or “passing a joint,” according to a representative from Squadron’s office. If passed and enacted, a person could only be arrested for dealing if they were compensated for providing the drug.
The bill also gives judges flexibility when hearing marijuana cases. When an individual is arrested and charged with possession they face a host of collateral consequences in addition to fines and possible jail time. If the offender is a college student they could lose their financial aid, an immigrant could be deported and a public housing resident could be evicted from their home. Squadron’s bill allows the judge to allow for an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal in these cases.
A 2008 report from the New York Civil Liberties Union showed that 97 percent of pot arrests in New York are for simple possession. The New York City Police Department is oft criticized for their “stop and frisk” procedures that net pot arrests. Stop and frisk allows an officer to approach an individual and force them to remove the items from their pockets. If marijuana is removed the person can be charged with “in plain view” possession.
Additionally S.137 creates a vacating process that would help people convicted of in plain view charges. Individuals would have the option to have those convictions stricken from their record. The bill would also eliminate the three-year waiting period for the sealing of marijuana related criminal records.
Squadron’s other marijuana-related bill, S.172, would reduce the penalty for in plain (or public) view from a misdemeanor to a violation. If passed and signed into law, the bill would allow that type of possession, often the result of stop and frisk, to result in an appearance ticket rather than an arrest. Under the law, however, public burning of marijuana would remain a Class B misdemeanor offense.
Both bills have been moved to the Senate Codes Committee. Once moved from that committee, which is chaired by Republican Sen. Michael Nozzolio, they could be moved to the floor for a vote. They would need to be supported with a “same-as” proposal by an Assembly member in order to be moved to and voted on in that house.
President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union speech was met with disappointment from the cannabis industry when he failed to address recent state referendums to legalize marijuana and acknowledge the growing majority of Americans who are coming out in favor of such laws. However, Obama broke his silence on the subject the next day in a series of interviews streamed live via YouTube. The interviews were performed by popular YouTubers who collected questions from their viewer base and then posed them to the president live in the White House.
Interviewer Hank Green, an online entrepreneur, described marijuana’s unique legal situation: multiple states have passed regulatory laws that remove criminal penalties and introduce infrastructure for the distribution of recreational cannabis, and even more have passed legislation for medical access to the drug. Green explains that while he doesn’t use cannabis, he supports its legalization nonetheless, and asks the President Obama for his opinion on the legal grey area that’s a result of changes in state laws.
“The position of my administration has been that we still have federal laws that classify marijuana as an illegal substance, but we’re not going to spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue,” the president said. “My suspicion is that you’re gonna see other states start looking at this.”
“What we have done is instead of focusing on treatment — the same way we focused, say, with tobacco or drunk driving or other problems where we treat it as public health problem — we’ve treated this exclusively as a criminal problem,” Obama said. “I think that it’s been counterproductive, and it’s been devastating in a lot of minority communities. It presents the possibility at least of unequal application of the law, and that has to be changed.”
According to Obama, he’s instructed the Department of Justice to “examine generally how we are treating nonviolent drug offenders.” He noted that last year was the first time in 40 years where the country’s crime rate and incarceration rate dropped at the same time, attributing these numbers to the slow but steady criminal justice reform that he and Attorney General Eric Holder have so publicly discussed in recent years.
“I hope we can continue with those trends because they’re just a smarter way of dealing with these issues,” the president said.
Medical Marijuana Inc. — a San Diego company that’s been acquiring startups in the hemp and CBD industries — has announced its intention of buying a startup hemp products company called Kannaway.Medical Marijuana Inc. intends to purchase Kannaway from General Hemp LLC, the company that invested seed money into Kannaway last year to help it get off the ground.
Kannaway was recently valued at somewhere between $120 and $242 million by Houlihan Capital, a respected voice in the valuation of such companies, but the final sale’s amount remains unannounced.
In an interview with Marijuana Business Daily, Kannaway’s CEO Jeff Rogers explained that the deal offers “enormous” opportunities for expansion. Kannaway already distributes products in all 50 states and U.S. territories (including Puerto Rico), and could expand next into Mexico, Brazil, Spain, the Philippines, or Korea.
This could soon become the largest M&A in the cannabis industry to date. The deal may take up to 90 days to close.
MBank, an Oregon bank based outside of Portland, has publicly announced that it will be serving businesses in the legal cannabis industries of Colorado and Washington, the Denver Post reports.
There has recently been an uptick in the number of Washington-based credit unions that accept marijuana money, meaning MBank is not the first bank to openly admit to serving marijuana businesses, but it is the first to offer its services across state lines and specifically to ganjapreneurs in Colorado.
“We looked to regulators, both state and federal, to help us come to the conclusion that we can do banking in this sector,” said MBank President and CEO Jef Baker. Already, five marijuana businesses have landed accounts with the bank, and about 30 more applications are pending, Baker said.
MBank was founded in 1995 and its current assets are valued at approximately $165 million.
With two legal recreational markets in the United States and several more on the way, much of the debate has focused on what sort of industry model works best. As anyone involved in the industry knows, the politics of legalization are complicated and cannabis policy activists are passionate, as many peoples’ livelihoods are at stake. Though it has seen a few bumps, Colorado’s experimental cannabis model is generally considered the most successful to date.
In the next segment of our interview with Matt Brown from My 420 Tours, he discusses how he became involved in the debate that shaped the future of Colorado’s industry, well before the passage of Amendment 64. Drawing on his high school debate experience and general knowledge of official processes, he was able to help medical marijuana professionals organize and contribute to the discussion that wound up leading to a blueprint for the state’s recreational industry. Listen to the interview on our website, or read the transcript below!
Matt Brown Interview: Part 4
First time here? Go to Part 1 by clicking here. Part 5 is coming soon: stay tuned!
Transcript:
Matt Brown: So, I had this unique talent and I knew: I’m really good at this. My real event in high school that I focused most of my time on was student senate, which, or student congress–I focused at nationals on the senate. Where, it was just like ours, you’d get up and give three minute speeches for or against bills or authoring a bill, which is like a special kind of foray.
Ganjapreneur: And these were actual bills that will be debated? Or they’re mock bills or…?
Matt Brown: Mock bills. Shortened versions of…
Ganjapreneur: Of real topics.
Matt Brown: Written in the same, you know, I learned Robert’s rules of order from a very early age and I was a parliamentarian from, like, sophomore year on.
Ganjapreneur: So, procedure was, which is very intimidating I think to a lot of activists, was not–never a problem for you?
Matt Brown: And it was a very comfortable part for me. It was like a coming back to what I know. When you…
Ganjapreneur: Oh, it’s almost like you’re on your own turf.
Matt Brown: I was back in high school debate again and I’d…
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: It’d been years since I’d gotten to debate like this…
Ganjapreneur: Yeah yeah yeah.
Matt Brown: …and like, it was on such an elevated level of… I don’t just get a judge to give me the most points and say I’m the number one speaker in the round and I win, but I get to affect social policy here, and we had a very clear consciousness that this was the marijuana industry’s shot at being the example the world would follow. And I laid that argument carefully and early before it was certain that that was going to happen to start building that inevitability in the minds of everybody. Whether it was the legislature, the public that doesn’t smoke pot and don’t care, or the, the activist, was… one way or another we were at an inevitable point where you will have for-profit businesses because your hands are tied by the constitution. You can embrace this and years from now… this was an exact quote, I actually am in the Westword quoted on this one, “Years from now you will hear states and countries around the world saying ‘We’re going to follow the Colorado model.’” And, you know, somebody like Tom Massey who is a Western slope real estate agent in ranch country. Republican– wasn’t a Nancy Reagan republican. He wasn’t coming at, and there was very few of that, “What about the children, what about the children?” argument at that, that time. And 2009 was a shitty year. Like, the legislature was coming into the beginning of 2010 after two of the worst years since the great depression.
Ganjapreneur: And that’s, you know, that’s one thing that I think often gets glossed over and is highly relevant for this argument is, you did have this nascent industry that was, especially before additional fees and…
Matt Brown: Mmhmm
Ganjapreneur: …and taxes.
Matt Brown: 2009? This was the American dream success story in a way that has not been played out since our grandparents’ age.
Ganjapreneur: And-
Matt Brown: You know, this is what you hear about post-World War II look like. Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and saying, “We’re gonna fucking do this.”
Ganjapreneur: It was the point where every time you went into Home Depot you saw five growers you knew. Every time you went out to eat it was industry people eating because no one else had that. No one was doing home improvement and no one else needed to buy that much shit.
Matt Brown: Yup.
Ganjapreneur: And, no one else was making money.
Matt Brown: And, and we merged it with a period of such incredible growth where all the money immediately got plowed back into the operation. You didn’t have an opportunity for the sort of, visible wealth…
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: …to spill. You know, we didn’t see guys driving around in Ferraris the way you do in California.
Ganjapreneur: Right, right, right.
Matt Brown: And there was probably some of that cash flow being generated but it, everybody was just trying to keep up because we saw this gold mine coming of…
Ganjapreneur: Absolutely.
Matt Brown: I’m gonna stay in the business long enough and this is gonna be worth it.
Ganjapreneur: But you had people sustaining, entrepreneurs sustaining a middle class lifestyle…
Matt Brown: Yes.
Ganjapreneur: …in one year.
Matt Brown: And we had a four or five to one, at least, ratio of people who were not waking up in the morning worried that they were, they could get their door kicked in for a controlled substances violation.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: We had real estate agents and landlords and electricians and….
Ganjapreneur: Contractors.
Matt Brown: HVAC utilities and general contractors and anybody. Trimmers. Like…
Ganjapreneur: Grow stores.
Matt Brown: If you’re gonna work in a shitty job somewhere making minimum wage or basically minimum wage…
Ganjapreneur: Would you rather be sewing or trimming pot?
Matt Brown: Exactly. Would you rather be working at 7-11 or trimming pot and listening to music and, you know…
Ganjapreneur: And that was pre-badge, anyone could do it.
Matt Brown: You got paid a lot more then, too.
Ganjapreneur: And for the people who started early, those people quickly became growers or hash makers or whatever.
Matt Brown: We apprenticed our, our own industry.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: And there was one of my clients early on who, I love the way you said this, was, what we were doing in Colorado, he was from Texas, was unlocking the tribal knowledge that for decades had been locked away under the surfaces of illegality and bringing it above board so quickly that we took… it required people who had real-world non-pot business experience to join the people who had real grow experience and weren’t bullshit artists. To combine with somebody who knew how to run a retail operation, cause that’s what this is. This is a retail store.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: No matter how hot your fire. No matter what your what. And, and that’s what we had all of that come together.
Ganjapreneur: And so fast. Perfect timing.
Matt Brown: And it was, in 2009, the, the other thing I’d like to point to was, during the same time in 2009-2010, uh, Chris Gregor, Gregoire or however you pronounce her name of Washington, the governor.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: Washington had a very similar early-on upswell because they already had a medical marijuana law similar to ours – Patients and caregivers.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: But what they saw was state government push back and authorized tacitly or, you know, off the books or whatever, a lot of the rates, the federal prosecutors became very emboldened and shut down a lot of dispensaries. And so until the November 2012 ballot, you saw a California system existing there where places like Seattle would turn the other cheek and just say, “We’re not going to shut you down. We don’t wanna figure this out yet.”
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: And you still had people in Tacoma getting their doors kicked in and hauled away to long jail sentences. And when you compare the numbers, you know, Washington State is about a five percent, plus or minus, more liberal state across the board than Colorado.
Ganjapreneur: In their general politics?
Matt Brown: Just, yeah. In any, you know, like the generic question… kinda business.
Ganjapreneur: And that’s obvious… Highly educated state, techy state, West Coast.
Matt Brown: And, and the population is heavily weighted on the West Coast, which is also significantly more liberal and tech-savvy and wealthy and affluent than the rest. But you have a huge part of the state that plays in politics that’s farm country and is… Idaho, basically.
Ganjapreneur: Right. Yeah.
Matt Brown: They kicked in doors. Their voters voted to tell their government, “Seriously guys. We’re sick of it.” And they legalized pot almost in retaliation to this continued problem. Whereas here, our voters should not have voted as overwhelmingly as they did by any sort of, again, generic analysis of our voter base.
Ganjapreneur: Right. Well I usually just look at the Obama vote. We exceeded the Obama vote in the same election.
Matt Brown: The big key margin was in… assuming every pot smoker voted for Amendment 64, which we know isn’t the case, even factoring out that 18 percent or so of the adult population. There was a majority support for amendment 64 among the non-pot-smokers.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: And that was a function of the fact that in 2010 the legislature was handed, almost on a platter, an industry that had already self-regulated, had coalesced, had come together and at least begged for the first round of regulations.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: There’s all sorts of very valid debate to be had on the details of that. And individual decisions that kind of flowed from it, but… The most important thing was, we came into the middle of 2010 with clarity, to a degree, and in the next year and a half we had a billion dollars of hard currency invested in Color-, in the Denver 50-mile radius range. And a 60% drop in the retail price to the consumer. Both of which in an economics point of view are grand slams to the government’s interests.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: Um, we proved in the same time period… thankfully the media got on board and didn’t exaggerate things, didn’t do a whole lot of investigative digging on crime rates, but there was not the perception that, and the perception was almost that there was no crime in dispensaraies. The reality was statistically we were no more significantly so than most other businesses of a high value inventory. There’s…
Ganjapreneur: Exactly. Compared to like a bank or a pharmacy, yeah.
Matt Brown: …a robbery a day. There’s a lot of grows getting robbed and a lot of it goes unreported to, you know, police and official statistics. Which is also a sign of, you know, Denver P. D. especially working with City Council, working with all the stakeholders to say, “We don’t want to sensationalize anything.” There was a willingness for a long time to turn the other way and not file reports because they knew we all needed to get to a point where the industry was viewed as safe, and…
Ganjapreneur: So they played ball to whatever degree.
Matt Brown: They did. You know, and…
Ganjapreneur: Credit to them for that. I mean that’s, it’s visionary whether they can take the public stance or not if they, if, in, in a policy sense, like, you know I never knew that. I’ll give them more credit now.
Matt Brown: And I would say the other big factor that played into this was, and you’ll see this in all sorts of other issues. The other interesting facet about how Colorado politics work. A. We’re a western state which has home rule cities.
Ganjapreneur: Right, so local rule can supercede state rule? Is that how that works?
Matt Brown: Right. The idea in all the Eastern states…
Ganjapreneur: And that’s super Western, frontiersy, like…
Matt Brown: It’s a function of the fact that Denver existed before Colorado existed.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: And so when Colorado came into being, the cities that were here were all given the option, basically, to retain this home rule status which was common throughout most of the Western territories that were purchased. And it, it gives them limited trump card on the state over things that would traditionally be city’s. So, you know, and the biggest thing that makes all lawyers scratch their head and throw up their hands on marijuana law is the, the day one, week one law school: Federal law trumps state law trumps local law and each one has a division of powers and this is the way it works.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: And clearly now we have this inversion of state and federal law that is, you know, there’s clearly detente from the federal government. There’s an allowance of this to happen, um, you know, condoning directly, and, but, from a, a truly legal point of view that situation cannot last forever. That is a, a legal bubble that needs to be fixed. The supremacy clause is proven. The Angel Raich case made very clear, a very clear test case for California, that there is no state-based ability to supercede the Controlled Substances Act under, uh, the tenth amendment for medical, no matter how desperate the medical need. And it was, you know, a dying cancer patient. Like, a very specific test case. I use that quite a bit, actually, to talk to our politicians. You know like, Federal law, this is figured out. Like, there is zero legal authority for the state to do so, however… So home-rule gives another little check against state power, um, just to those cities. So there’s regular cities here that don’t have home rule.
Ganjapreneur: So not all Colorado cities are home rule.
Matt Brown: Correct.
Ganjapreneur: I see.
Matt Brown: Uh, Wheat Ridge is a regular, statutory city.
Ganjapreneur: And it’s in new, one of the newer cities. You can tell by where it is.
Matt Brown: Yeah. Um, you know, I think Aurora is home-rule, Colorado Springs is home-rule, Denver, you know. And not all the cities that were here chose to be but I think any of them that were smart pretty much did. But what it’s done is create this, this relationship between the state legislature and particularly the Denver city council, which is also viewed as that perfect middle between Boulder and Colorado Springs. That Denver could be the proxy, and then nobody has to talk about either two ends, and… it’s this beautiful tap dance. It’s very well choreographed across all other issues in the state and marijuana took part in it. Denver city council meets year-round.
Ganjapreneur: And I guess I should editorialize as a bit for my own notes that, you know, Boulder being liberal and Colorado Springs being the military stronghold of…
Matt Brown: Right.
Ganjapreneur: …the nation.
Matt Brown: Right. And the evangelical Jerusalem.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah, evangelical Jerusalem, true.
Matt Brown: For a number of people. Uh…
Ganjapreneur: And Fort Collins being a weird mix of the two.
Matt Brown: Yes. It’s, it’s half-Greeley half-Boulder.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: Uh, which is another strange. And we have… we have a really cool state. We’re also one-third democrat, one-third republican, one-third independent. Um…
Ganjapreneur: One-third independent’s a crazy… you know, like, that doesn’t exist.
Matt Brown: And that mix does not, that, that shade of purple is very unique across the United States.
Ganjapreneur: Light purple, it’s pur- it’s a pink, we’re a pink state.
Matt Brown: No, we’re a dark purple.
Ganjapreneur: Dark purple?
Matt Brown: Perfectly between red and blue. Exactly. Uh, so Denver city council could act. The state will also… and like Romer I knew was going back and forth with, uh, uh, Charlie Brown.
Ganjapreneur: Mm.
Matt Brown: Who was our best friend, in retrospect. He says boneheaded things. He gets quoted, but the fact that Charlie Brown was the one who led that through Denver city council had as much to do with everything where we came.”
Six months following the uncertain launch of Washington state’s recreational marijuana market, industry professionals now face an unprecedented problem: licensed growers are sitting on a huge crop of outdoor product harvested in the fall, and there currently aren’t enough retailers to see all of it distributed.
An article from the Associated Press explains that the 85 licensed retailers in Washington are failing to keep pace with the state’s approximately 270 licensed growers. Last week, growers had reportedly harvested upwards of 31,000 pounds of cannabis since the market launched, but stores have only been able to distribute one fifth of that amount.
During the early days of Washington’s legal weed, it was product shortages that dominated industry-related headlines. Initial retail prices doubled and in some cases tripled those of the black market and the lesser-regulated medical industry, and there were reports of price-gouging by some of the first licensed growers as retailers struggled to find supply to satisfy legal consumers.
The tides have turned, however, and now growers are the ones feeling the sting of an unbalanced market. “Every grower I know has got surplus inventory and they’re concerned about it,” said Scott Masengill, a pot farmer in central Washington who’s thus far only managed to sell half of his 280 pound crop. “I don’t know anybody getting rich,” he said. One Seattle-based grower reportedly sold his first 22 pound crop at just under $21 per gram — his second crop, however, is expected to earn about $4 per gram as a result of the growing surplus.
The solution, many people argue, is to license more retailers to move the product. This process, however, is chock-full of bureaucratic requirements, and local moratoriums on the legal marijuana industry can create even more roadblocks for aspiring ganjapreneurs.
And while the market faces steep competition from the black market across the board, one of the biggest threats to the recreational industry is medical marijuana. Currently, dispensaries grossly outnumber recreational retail distributors. There isn’t a known total of medical dispensaries operating in the state, but there are significantly more dispensaries than the 334 reserved spots for licensed retailers (Seattle alone has hundreds of dispensaries on file). Recreational retailers have even started hiring lobbyists in Olympia to fight for a more-regulated medical market, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek report.
Officials with the Washington State Liquor Control Board, like project manager Randy Simmons, say they are unconcerned by the current situation and are expecting up to 100 more retailer locations to open in the coming months. Randy Simmons, project manager for Washington’s legal marijuana market, addressed the industry’s current problems with a simple explanation: “It’s the volatility of a new marketplace.”
Until the federal government changes its marijuana policies, ganjapreneurs face particular challenges when it comes to branding and promoting their business. How does one balance caution with advertising? How do you promote your service or product without running the risk of possible legal actions?
Some entrepreneurs are turning to blogging as a more passive means of advertising their business. A blog is often more passive than direct marketing, but it can still be an effective tool if done right.
A good blog:
— Becomes a wealth of information for your customers about the product or service you offer — Helps build trust and strengthens customer relations — Establishes your business as the “go to” authority on the topic
Blogs are sometimes misunderstood. Since anyone can put one up and start posting content, their quality varies wildly. Some personal blogs may share more information than you really want to know. But blogs serve many purposes. Some of cannabis’ best social commentary comes from blogs like The Weed Blog or the NORML Blog.
A business blog, however, fits into a different category. A good business blog is first and foremost about the client, and that’s one of the main things that differentiate it from personal blogs or blogs that support a cause. Jordan Person, founder of Primal Therapeutics LLC in Denver said she began her Cannabis Education blog about massage and topical therapies because of demand. She said, “I had so many patients asking me if I had a website. It’s a way to bring awareness to my patients.” Since Person’s clients are interested in alternative health, she includes posts with recipes for tonics and health tips as well as updates on cannabis legislation and medical breakthroughs. By tapping into her clients’ needs and providing them with valuable and free resources, she is subtly courting them into becoming long term and loyal customers.
Don’t be deceived: a blog is a lot of work. To build one that draws customers you should:
— Know your audience, their problem and how you will solve it — Make an editorial calendar and commit to following it — Have at least a basic understand of SEO (search engine optimization) and key words — Commit to the long haul. It can take several months before you begin to build traffic and subscribers
Part of the beauty of blogging is it’s easy and relatively inexpensive. If you already have a website, adding a blog is simply a matter of adding a page where all your posts will go. Platforms like WordPress and Blogspot offer free blogs that can be set up in a matter of minutes.
Some entrepreneurs take on the project themselves, while others may hire a professional blogger or marketer. If you do choose to blog, it could become one of the most powerful tools you have to build a following and engage customers.
Michigan voters are following the nationwide trend toward the legalization of recreational marijuana, a survey put on by NORML’s Michigan chapter has discovered.
Poll results indicate that 50 percent of Michigan voters would vote for an initiative to legalize marijuana and regulate the substance for adult consumption in a system similar to either Washington or Colorado’s current programs. 46 percent of respondents indicated they would be against such a move.
A similar poll in 2013 found that only 47 percent of voters agreed with legalization. These changes over the last two years represent in Michigan the nationwide trend that’s steadily growing against cannabis prohibition.
“This latest poll shows an evolution of thought among Michigan voters toward marijuana legalization over the last year. It is not a major shift, but a continuation of the slow but steady shift toward the end of prohibition. Legislators, take note: Michigan is ready for this,” said Matthew Abel, attorney and executive director of NORML’s Michigan branch.
Ganjapreneur.com, a website dedicated to helping cannabis industry professionals grow their business, has published a summary of their accomplishments in 2014 and a wide-cast “thank you” to their readers, supporters, and contributors.
“From our official launch in July through the end of December, we have seen major growth in all of our metrics,” writes Ganjapreneur’s CTO, Noel Abbott.
Ganjapreneur is an online resource dedicated to the business of legalized marijuana, that featuring a live aggregated job feed, a crowd-sourced dictionary of marijuana slang terms, and original content news updates on recent business and political developments in the industry. Ganjapreneur also publishes exclusive interviews with successful “ganjapreneurs” and cannabis investors about their experience in the industry.
The website has an active social media presence, offers a weekly newsletter service, and distributes all of its content — in addition to on Ganjapreneur.com — via a free Android app currently available on the Google Play marketplace. They have announced that the app will also be available in the Apple App Store soon.
Most recently, Ganjapreneur launched a domain name marketplace featuring hundreds of industry-related domains that can range in price from less than $1,000 to $50,000 or more. Domains available for purchase include SourDiesel.com, HinduKush.com, MyCannabis.com, and other premium brands.
“Ganjapreneur has grown rapidly, but we have many more announcements coming in the near future and we will be expanding our services in a major way over the next several months,” Abbott writes. “Here’s to another year of growth for all the ganjapreneurs out there.”
A bill to legalize hemp cultivation and production nationwide has been filed in the U.S. Senate by Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). The bill is co-sponsored by fellow Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley — also a Democrat — Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Oregon and Kentucky are two of twenty states that have officially recognized a difference between hemp and cannabis and passed legislation to ease governmental blocking of hemp production. These state-wide alterations to federal law were validated by Congress when it passed the 2014 Farm Bill, which allowed states who had legalized hemp production to move forward with experimental pilot crops.
Now, the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015″ would remove hemp from its Schedule 1 status under the Controlled Substances Act on a national level. Hemp, so long as it contains less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), would no longer be considered an illegal, intoxicating or dangerous substance.
“The U.S. ban on hemp farming is an outrageous restriction on free enterprise and does nothing but hurt economic growth and job creation,” Sen. Wyden said. “Our bipartisan, common-sense bill is pro-environment, pro-business, and pro-farmer. Congress must act to empower farmers and boost economic activity across the country.”
“Allowing farmers throughout our nation to cultivate industrial hemp and benefit from its many uses will boost our economy and bring much-needed jobs to the agriculture industry,” said Sen. Paul.
This year’s bill bears many similarities to one filed by Sen. Wyden in 2013 — also co-sponsored by Sens. Merkley, Paul, and McConnell — which ultimately failed. 2014, however, was a banner year for cannabis and hemp policy reform, and many experts predict that the political climate surrounding the controversial plant species will continue to relax.
Research indicates that industrial hemp has huge potential to affect many consumer and industrial products, from food and clothing to plastics and bio-fuel. Currently, it is legal to purchase products made from hemp in the U.S., but not to grow the plant itself. At least thirty other developed countries do allow hemp cultivation, and the world’s current leader in industrial hemp is China.
Some rules changed in Washington last week when Pierce County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Martin overruled a previous law, which banned medical marijuana advertisements by health care providers.
The ruling stemmed from the case of Dr. Scott Havsy, who was sued by the Department of Health in 2012 for publishing advertisements that contained information about medical marijuana and steps to find out if one would qualify for the program. The ads appeared on his website and in certain phone books, and depicted a marijuana leaf with a prescription symbol.
Judge Martin ruled last week that the current ban was a violation of the First Amendment, the right to free speech. “I believe an argument can be made that the speech in question is not purely commercial, but has an informational component for the benefit of the recipient,” Martin explained.
Now, it may be easier for patients in Washington to connect with doctors familiar with and who are friendly towards cannabis therapy, which remains a contested topic in some medical communities.
Meanwhile, the Washington state medical marijuana market remains in a state of limbo as lawmakers in Olympia begin the next legislative session looking for ways to introduce regulations to the currently largely unregulated system.
A recent report published on Inc.com estimates that business investments in the cannabis industry have increased 941.5% in recent years, particularly in 2014. Experts predict that those numbers will only continue to grow this year, and that the industry will have spent close to $2 billion within the next 18-24 months as more medical and recreational markets come online.
Privateer Holdings — the private equity company behind Leafly, Tilray, and the Marley Natural brand — received by far the most investments, with $75 million raised. Recently, Privateer Holdings made international headlines as Founders Fund, one of the top venture capital investment firms from Silicon Valley, announced an investment of millions in the current industry leader.
Other noteworthy investments will go to PharmaCann, a Chicago-based group who raised $20 million towards their marijuana cultivation centers, and Leafline Labs, one of Minnesota’s only licensed medical marijuana producers, who successfully raised $12.4 million.
In November, Oregon voters passed Measure 91 to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana. Now, the new state legislature — legislators were sworn into office on Monday — has a hefty project to tackle.
At least 16 marijuana-related bills were introduced to the Oregon state legislature on Monday, and more are expected. They cover a wide variety of issues in the political spheres of both recreational and medical marijuana, reports the Oregonian.
Faced with the task of implementing Measure 91 — which legalizes the home possession of up to eight ounces of cannabis and calls for a regulated market to be in place by 2016 for the adult distribution of the drug for recreational purposes — lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are now scrambling to have a say in the development process.
Clearly, some bills here are meant to inhibit marijuana’s progress toward mainstream acceptance. There are some, however, which aim to foster the industry’s growth and improve society’s understanding of cannabis and all the social, economic, and political implications it carries.
Democratic Sen. Chris Edwards is sponsoring two proposals, Senate Bills 479 and 480, which would designate further research into the benefits of medical marijuana and spark an investigation into how the medical industry can best serve its patients.
Rep. Peter Buckley, a Democrat from Ashland, has a hemp-focused approach: he introduced a measure that would remove the requirement for industrial hemp farmers to get a permit from the state government. Oregon is one of several U.S. states that have legalized industrial hemp, which was recently recognized as a legitimate industry of the future by the federal government.
“You can’t see the passage of something major like that and not think that you need to figure out how to manage it,” said Rep. Julie Parrish, a Republican from West Linn. Parrish proposed two bills herself, both of which address the issue of marijuana use by daycare providers. One bill would prohibit state funds from going to daycare providers that hold medical marijuana cards, the other would issue mandatory drug tests for certain daycare providers.
Two other bills — House Bills 2040 and 2041, proposed by Republican Rep. Greg Smith — would, respectively, prevent any marijuana sales within one mile of schools and allow for a one-mile marijuana exclusion zone around any school grounds. Geoff Sugerman, who lobbies for the marijuana industry, said that a one-mile zoning law “would certainly serve as a moratorium in some cities,” and that Measure 91 already addresses this issue by giving localities the right to opt out of recreational cannabis if local voters support the move.
There is also a proposal to address the dangers of home hash oil production, and another to put pregnancy warning labels on cannabis products, among many others.
Ganjapreneur is proud to say that we had a great year in 2014, and we immensely appreciate all of the enthusiasm that our audience has shown. From our official launch in July through the end of December, we have seen major growth in all of our metrics: from website traffic, to social media outreach, to email subscriptions and engagement, to downloads of our mobile app, submissions to our business directory, and many more. Virtually every facet of our business has grown by many factors over the past six months. Thank you, everybody: we couldn’t have done it without all of you!
We especially want to thank all of the ganjapreneurs and investors who contributed their knowledge and wisdom via interviews, so that our audience of aspiring ganjapreneurs could learn from their experience and be inspired to pursue their own dreams. We have found that there is truly a spirit of cooperation and community among the cannabis industry pioneers we have interacted with, and we believe that it comes from the understanding that beyond the incredible business opportunities that this industry has made possible, it is crucial to recognize that cannabis prohibition is a moral issue as well as an economic one.
There are still lives being ruined by the senseless, politically-motivated drug policy enforced by the US Federal Government. People who have committed nonviolent “crimes,” many of whom need medical cannabis to treat severe ailments and disabilities, are still rotting in jail cells alongside murderers and rapists. Although significant progress has been made to repeal cannabis prohibition in some states, its effects will be long-lasting and severe for many of the most vulnerable citizens of our planet. While there is cause to celebrate that the legalization movement seems to be gaining momentum, newcomers to the industry need to remember that today’s economic opportunities were made possible by decades of activism and sacrifice by those entrenched in the cause.
2015 will bring many more opportunities, as the recreational industries in Colorado and Washington have made it clear to the general public that a legalized recreational market will not cause social harm, and will in fact bring many benefits to society. As Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. implement their own markets and the benefits of legalization become undeniable, other states will follow in their footsteps. In today’s political climate, representatives on either side of the aisle can reasonably discuss cannabis policy reform without being ridiculed by their colleagues. Thus, we believe it is only a matter of time before prohibition is repealed at the federal level and the industry comes into its own as a contributor to the world’s legitimate economy. As we have stated in our manifesto, when you take profits away from violent cartels and corporate prisons and put them into the hands of the people, good things will happen.
This is just the beginning. Ganjapreneur has grown rapidly, but we have many more announcements coming in the near future and we will be expanding our services in a major way over the next several months. Check back often to see what we have added recently, and please share our site with your friends. Here’s to another year of growth for all the ganjapreneurs out there. Thank you again for all of your support!
Medical marijuana dispensaries in Nevada’s Clark county could start to open this month, following a recent ruling by Judge Kathleen Delaney that stated that the process used by the State Division of Public and Behavioral Health to determine which businesses may operate medical marijuana dispensaries in Clark county followed all rules and protocols correctly.
As we’ve seen happen in other states, legalizing medical marijuana could bring Nevada a step closer to legalizing it for recreational use. This puts Las Vegas, already a major tourist beacon, in a great spot to potentially rake in millions of tourist dollars if the current petition to legalize recreational marijuana by 2016 passes.
But first, Nevada lawmakers at the state and county levels have to work out how they choose which dispensary applicants get approval to operate.
Who Gets Approved?
The issue stemmed from the conflict between the state’s approval process and the county’s approval process. When applications for dispensary licenses opened up, 79 applicants filed to fill the 18 available spots to legally sell medical marijuana in the unincorporated parts of Clark county. An unincorporated area is a parcel of land with no municipal government that is instead governed by a higher level of administration such as its county or state.
Initially, ten of these applications were approved by both the state and the county. This left eight spots available for other hopeful prospective dispensary operators.
Of the remaining hopefuls, Nevada approved eight applications and Clark county approved another eight. In this latter group, five filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that the state gave its chosen applicants preferential treatment and calling for an injunction to reexamine the state’s authorization process.
Clark County Strikes Back
But the attempt to re-open the state licensing process failed. On December 29th, 2014, 58 applications were denied by the Clark County Commission. Some of these applications had already been approved by the state. This was done in an attempt to force the state to re-open its licensing process.
Currently, only ten dispensaries are clear to launch: the original ten who received approval from both the county and the state.
County vs. State
When the lawsuit for the injunction failed, many Nevada residents felt it was a huge blow to the county’s autonomy to govern itself within the larger context of the state.
But it’s more than just that. On a national scale, this is a precedent for all the states that will legalize medical and recreational marijuana in the coming years. We’ve already seen and heard stories about the federal government prosecuting individuals who legally grow and use medical marijuana in their home states. This ongoing battle between Clark county and the state of Nevada isn’t much different from that – it’s a manifestation of the ongoing struggle between big and small government in the United States. And just like in benchmark cases like Gonzales vs. Raich, the bigger government prevailed in Nevada.
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal made headlines last week for supporting a ‘new bill to legalize medical marijuana.’ This new bill would kill Georgians’ chances at being able to develop a localized medical marijuana industry, and offers zero opportunities to purchase medicine within state lines.
Patients and their families that had been awaiting the opportunity to access medical marijuana legally were disappointed to learn that the new bill, the result of a closed-door discussion between Deal and State Rep. Allen Peake (R-Macon), would merely offer prosecutorial “immunity” for “certain citizens” who brought legally-purchased marijuana into Georgia from other states. This would amount to forcing people to break federal law in order to take advantage of the program, a fact that Deal and Peake have not acknowledged, choosing instead to repeat the line that the bill will “be bringing Georgia families back home.”
James Bell, director of Georgia’s Campaign for Access Reform and Education (C.A.R.E.) Project, condemned the move: “They have pulled the wool over our eyes and pulled the rug out from under the citizens of Georgia that support medical marijuana. They have betrayed the will and desire of the people of Georgia with their political shenanigans.”
Rep. Peake, meanwhile, argued that “we need to conduct more research on setting an in-state growing scenario in order to provide the best and most effective infrastructure for our citizens.” The bill does provide for the creation of a council charged with performing research in order to establish a regulatory model for a Georgian medical marijuana growth and distribution system in the future.
While Peake called the HB 1 “a huge step forward,” Blaine and Shannon Cloud, whose daughter Alaina suffers from seizures, expressed dismay in an interview with WSB-TV Atlanta. Shannon Cloud said that it was “a disappointing day for all of the families because we had high hopes this was going to be the year and Georgia was actually going to do it the right way.”
Medical marijuana advocates in Georgia had received some unexpected help last year when Rep. Peake adopted the issue and filed a house bill that focused on making CBD oil (Cannabidiol) available for patients with epilepsy. The bill failed to pass, but in November Peake pre-filed House Bill 1 for the 2015 legislative session, promising constituents that it would allow them to obtain cannabis oil in the state.
Peake acknowledged this in a statement made Friday:
“Last year, I made a promise to bring our families home and to give Georgians a chance to obtain cannabis oil in our state without fear of prosecution, and this has remained a priority. The changes that we have agreed upon for HB 1 vary slightly from the original version, but the bottom line is that we will be bringing Georgia families back home.”
Meanwhile, the Georgia C.A.R.E. project has encouraged the public to abandon HB 1 and to focus attention instead on Senator Curt Thompson’s (D) Senate Bill 7, which would allow Georgian physicians to recommend certain patients up to two ounces of medical marijuana.
The cannabis industry has received a lot of hype since Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana’s recreational use in 2012. Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. followed suit in 2014, and a swath of medical marijuana legislation continues to sweep the nation in the meantime. Despite countless ganjapreneurs and pot-enthusiast investors stepping forward to stake claim in this exciting new industry, mainstream investors have pointedly refrained from the potentially volatile industry, which is still a federally-illegal pursuit.
However, last week marked a major change for legal marijuana. Founders Fund, the San Francisco-based venture capitalist firm headed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, has announced a multi-million dollar investment in Privateer Holdings, an emerging leader in the cannabis sector.
Historically, Founders Fund have thrown their weight behind major players in the technology sector. For example, the investment firm’s impressive portfolio boasts partnerships with Facebook, Spotify, Airbnb, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX — a company that’s working to commercialize space travel for private citizens.
According to the Founders Fund manifesto, “The best companies create their own sectors.” The manifesto describes in detail the downfall of venture capitalism in recent decades, and explains that Founders Fund strives to break the boring investment formulas that defined the end of the 20th century. “Investing in companies doing things that are breathtakingly new and ambitious is provocative…. Simply doing what everyone else does is not enough,” they advise.
Founders Fund have clearly taken a good look at the cannabis industry and recognized the wealth of entrepreneurial talent that’s brewing here. The latest addition to the Founders Fund portfolio, Privateer Holdings, has already established itself as an industry leader via Leafly, a popular dispensary and cannabis strain index for medical and recreational consumers; Tilray, a Canada-based provider of premium medical marijuana products; and Marley Natural, a product line launching later in 2015 which is destined to be the world’s first international marijuana brand.
“Founders Fund is known for making some of the most lucrative and radically transformational investments of the past decade,” said Privateer Holdings CEO Brendan Kennedy in last week’s press release regarding the deal. “With this investment they are signaling that they, like us, believe that the end of prohibition and the social harms it causes is inevitable.”
While some investors may see Founders Fund’s decision as risky, many would argue that the timing is more perfect now than it has been since prohibition began. With public support for drug policy reform at an all-time-high and a majority of Americans in favor of decriminalizing cannabis, the political momentum is clear. Elected officials from both liberal and conservative camps can openly discuss cannabis policy reform without being ridiculed. When coupled with the likely impact that legalized cannabis and hemp will have on the pharmaceutical, textile, plastics, and energy industries, the potential for growth is truly mind-blowing. And with a prominent example to follow, now the question becomes: which high-profile mainstream investment firm will be the next to bet big on the cannabis boom?
Since the July opening of Washington’s legal marijuana shops, the market has been plagued with steep prices and product shortages. Now, six months and many more production licenses later, the market’s notoriously high prices have dropped on average 40 percent, according to a recent Bloomberg News article.
Prices now average $15 per gram, which, compared to the $25 grams widely reported during the market’s launch, is a drastic reduction. Black market prices, however, continue to undercut the legal market.
In total, the Washington recreational cannabis industry generated $65.3 million in legal marijuana sales and $16.3 million in tax revenue for the state in 2014.
The industry saw significant spikes in sales for the holidays during November and December. On December 31, retail pot shops reported a record-breaking day of sales: for New Years, Washington residents purchased $1.2 million worth of retail marijuana, which was significantly more than the previous record of $1 million, set on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
To many everyday onlookers, the world of domain names can be a mysterious pursuit: the concept of an online fixer-upper may seem absurd to some, while others may undoubtedly balk at the enormous price tags of high-traffic web domains. In today’s business world, however, a company’s online presence can be the ultimate tool for driving up revenues and expanding the business — and a good domain name is an excellent starting point.
The marijuana industry is no different. In 2011, Marijuana.com was bought for $4.20 million by General Cannabis Inc., the company behind WeedMaps.com. At the time, Marijuana.com generated about 3.5 million unique visits. In its expansion, the company went on to hire Al Olson, former senior editor for CNBC, NBC News, and TODAY, as managing editor for the website; and then, more recently, the website was completely revamped to become first and foremost a sharing-based, social media community. The site today has grown into one of the leading cannabis-focused destinations around the web.
That formula, of course, is utilized in every industry. For another vice-dedicated site, check out Whisky.com: this premium domain name was purchased for $3.1 million on the first day of 2015. The site itself is ripe with activity — original content articles catch the homepage viewer’s eye, and there’s also a host of video blogs, forums and subforums, an extensive database of whiskies, and even a virtual tour of a whisky distillery. $3.1 million may seem like an overwhelming asking price, but the amount of direct-match Google searches, organically generated website traffic, and the existence of an already-successful franchise on the domain nearly guaranteed the investment’s worth.
Our next story is an odd one, but it demonstrates both the sticking power behind a premium brand domain and the devilish intricacies of corporate competition. The domain in question is VacationRentals.com, which is the most expensive domain name ever bought at $35 million. The website looks flashy and undoubtedly hosts a lot of tourists surfing through the site’s many vacation rental listings, but the real reason behind the domain’s absurd price? Competition. “The only reason we bought it was so Expedia couldn’t have that URL,” explained HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples. It may take some time to pay off that massive investment, but tourist lodging is a lucrative industry, and if HomeAway had earned enough to front the $35 million price tag, it can probably do it again and more.
Some domain-related transactions aren’t solely about the URL. For example, check out Amazon’s 2010 acquisition of Quidsi, the original company behind Diapers.com and Soap.com. Quidsi started the websites, built a healthy franchise, and eventually attracted the attention of some serious corporate players. Amazon purchased the company and its premium domain franchises for $500 million (and also assumed some $45 million in debt and other obligations), which was a hefty investment but justified by the amount of brand-building Quidsi had accomplished already for both websites. The Quidsi leadership staff was even left in charge of the websites, presumably because Amazon recognized and respected the talent behind the existing franchises.
The business of legal marijuana may be in its infancy, but as the industry gains mainstream respect and the country leans further and further toward full legalization, these surreal tales of corporate entrepreneurship will someday soon find themselves replicated in the marijuana business. Until then, ganjapreneurs can keep their eye out for unique brand-building opportunities, because you never know what might be your next million-dollar idea.
