Tag: marijuana industry

Marijuana Theft Grows Rampant In Washington

The state’s attempt at keeping the industry transparent may be helping thieves stake out a “laundry list of targets.”

Marijuana theft is a problem in Washington state.

Recreational marijuana was approved in 2012 by Washington voters, and the legal marijuana industry was built on the promise of transparency.

Washington marijuana producers are required to report on every step of the process. “We plant a seed, we report it. You take a cutting, you report it. How long you dry. What the final weight was. How soon did it go out [the] door? What did you sell, who did you sell it to, for how much? What did they mark it up to? Easily 25% of our time is given over to tracking,” Regina Liszanckie, a producer-processor in Seattle, told Politico.

All of this information is posted online and available to the public.

The Targets

Some suspect that the state’s attempt at keeping the budding industry transparent may be leading thieves to businesses, by providing a “veritable laundry list of targets,” according to one Seattle cannabis grower who has lost $200,000 worth of marijuana to multiple burglaries last summer.

They came to suspect that the availability of the public record was causing the repeat burglaries, upon analyzing the pattern of burglaries among marijuana growers in the Seattle area.

They noticed a similar pattern in each case. The businesses tended to be smaller and less likely to afford the surveillance and security tools to protect against thefts. They would also somehow be hit at peak inventory and robbed of thousands—“even tens and hundreds of thousands”—of dollars worth of product.

Now faced with a burglary problem, marijuana businesses say they are suffering for the sake of industry transparency. What’s worse, the state does not properly track marijuana thefts.

“It’s a huge risk for us to have that out in the public domain,” said Spencer Shrote of Royal Tree Gardens in Tacoma. “It puts a target on our backs. It makes things less safe.”

Despite the state taking steps to clamp down on cannabis diversion to the illegal market, Shrote does not have much hope that the problem will be resolved any time soon. “We’ve just accepted it’s going to happen,” he told Politico, “because of the state of industry and the amount of public data that’s available.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 August 2019
Lead Found in Michigan Vape Cartridges

State officials noted that manufacturers outside of the U.S. may still use lead to create their e-cigarette and vape cartridge products.

Officials in Michigan are urging the state’s medicinal cannabis retailers to test their vape cartridges for heavy metals after several brands were found to have been contaminated with lead.

A safety bulletin issued by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) revealed that the Bureau of Marijuana Regulation (BMR) had identified and destroyed the contaminated cartridges, and encouraged retailers, as well as patients and caregivers, to have their products tested.

Studies have shown that lead and other heavy metals, which have been detected in vapors from e-cigarette products, pose significant health risks to users.

According to the LARA press release, the contaminated cartridges were discovered when the BMR entered the test results in the statewide monitoring system, per Michigan regulations that, as High Times noted, require samples from vape cartridges to be submitted for testing at state labs. The bulletin also noted that lead was not discovered in any ceramic vape products.

As a result of the test findings, the BMR requested that licensed provisioning centers have their cartridges tested. Medical marijuana patients and caregivers that dispense medical marijuana could also have their cartridges tested for a fee at a licensed safety compliance facility.

The bulletin also noted that while federal regulations have eliminated the need to add lead to brass or copper products as was done in the past, manufacturers outside of the United States may still use lead to create their e-cigarette and vape cartridge products. Lead and other metal contaminates can leak into the products’ e-liquids when they are exposed to the heating coils. The metals are present in the aerosols produced by heating the liquids, which are then inhaled by the user.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found lead and other metals, including chromium, manganese and nickel, in vapors produced by some e-cigarette products. High Times quoted an interview in Forbes with medical device marketing consultant Rich Able, who said that chronic exposure to these chemicals could have a serious and detrimental effect on users’ health.

“Neurotoxins such as lead are linked to increased risk of cardiovascular and kidney disease,” said Able. “The other metals listed are even more nefarious to human organs.”

Able also noted that federal regulation of such products is key to preventing similar incidents of exposure. “To continue manufacturing these devices to the smoking population without further diligence and clinical review is unethical and unconscionable,” he said.

View the original article at thefix.com

2 May 2019
Mexico May Legalize Marijuana by Fall of 2019

Polls currently show that 80% of the public in Mexico support legalization efforts.

Mexico may join a growing list of countries with full legalized access to marijuana when lawmakers convene in May to draft a regulation bill that may take effect in late 2019.

A key committee member of the country’s Senate Justice Committee, which has been tasked with reworking existing marijuana laws in the wake of the 2018 Supreme Court decision to strike down a ban on cannabis consumption, was quoted in a newsletter posted by the Senate that the committee will use an upcoming recess in May to finalize the bill prior to the Supreme Court’s deadline of October 2019.

Polls currently show that 80% of the public in Mexico support legalization efforts.

Senate Justice Committee chairman Ramon Menchaca Salazar said that his group will “take advantage of the recess period,” which takes place May 1 to May 30, to finalize legislation, and has already met with Mexico’s attorney general to discuss the proposed bill.

“Canada already decriminalized, and marijuana is decriminalized in several states of the United States,” said former senator Olga Sanchez Cordero, who now serves as Mexico’s interior minister. “What are we thinking? We are going to try to move forward.”

Mexico legalized medical marijuana in 2017, but broad legalization efforts were stymied until the Supreme Court decision, which was the fifth such ruling against the recreational pot ban since 2015. Five amparos, or federal injunctions, must be successfully filed before national law can be changed in Mexico, and the Supreme Court ruled on the fifth and final such effort on October 31, 2018, which declared the ban unconstitutional.

Marijuana Moment stated that the Senate Health Commission held a hearing on marijuana law reform earlier this month, where lawmakers testified about the realities of regulating such a market. Among the benefits cited were improvements to public health through improvements to production and distribution of cannabis. Regulation could also help curb the violence which, according to legalization supporters, claimed more than 230,000 lives in the country’s fight against drug cartels.

Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, who serves as executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, issued a press release which stated that “Mexico will demonstrate regional leadership and take an important step towards reforming the misguided policies that have caused such devastating harm in recent decades.”

As the Motley Fool noted, legalization in Mexico could make the country the largest marijuana market in the world. Population numbers currently hover around 132 million – more than triple that of Canada, which in 2018, reported that one in six adults used marijuana.

The Motley Fool also noted that if a similar number of adults in Mexico bought legal cannabis, the country could not only pass sales figures in Canada but also California, the fifth largest economy in the world.

View the original article at thefix.com

1 May 2019
Marijuana Licensing Issue May Lead To "Extinction Event" In California

As many as 10,000 growers will reportedly have their temporary licenses expire over the next new month, if a new bill is not passed.

Confusion and delays in the licensing process for legal cannabis growers in California could be an “extinction event” for the marijuana industry if the legislature does not act to correct it, experts say.

When recreational marijuana use was approved in California, growers were able to apply for temporary licensing, The Sacramento Bee reports. This was meant to act as a bridge, while growers applied for and met the criteria for a full annual license.

However, the state has been incredibly slow to give annual licenses, approving just 56 out of 6,900 applications. This has growers worried, since the deadline to apply for an extension of the temporary license expired at the end of 2018.

However, a new bill, SB67, would allow growers to apply for an extension until Dec. 31 of this year.

“We’ve named these ‘extinction events,’” said K Street Consulting’s Jackie McGowan. The consulting firm represents the marijuana industry in California. “This bill is a bill that the industry is very anxious to see passed.”

If it does not pass many growers will return to the black market and legal sellers may have to buy their product from the black market, said Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who sponsored the bill.

“The bottom line is this: This bill is going to protect thousands of cannabis farmers, in particular, who did the right thing and applied for a state license after the passage of Prop. 64 but their temporary license is about to expire,” he said.

McGuire said that as many as 10,000 growers will have their temporary licenses expire over the next new month if the bill is not passed. That could have detrimental effects on the industry, he said.

“This is the worst way to transition a multibillion-dollar agricultural crop, which employs thousands of Californians. Without legal licenses, there isn’t a legal, regulated market in California.”

Terra Carver, who directs a growers’ alliance in the state agreed.

“There will be dire consequences such as imminent market collapse of hundreds of businesses in the region and through the state,” Carver said.

McGuire said that having passed marijuana legalization, the state is responsible for ensuring the integrity of establishing the legal market.

“In a time where the Golden State is working overtime to bring the cannabis industry out of the black market and into the light of a legal regulatory environment we can’t afford to let good actors who want to comply with state law fall out of our regulated market just because timelines are too short and departments have been unable to process applications in time due to the sheer number of applications,” he said.

View the original article at thefix.com

13 March 2019
Marijuana Equity Programs Help People Of Color Access Growing Industry

“We’re not just budtenders, not just security guards anymore. We’re owners now,” said a marijuana dispensary owner.

It has been well-documented that the war on drugs has disproportionately affected communities of color. Now, as marijuana legalization becomes more common, some municipalities are helping people of color get into the legal marijuana business, saying it’s a matter of social justice.

“We actually do have to overcorrect. People from our communities, black and brown communities, were the one first ones to be criminalized. Why shouldn’t we be the first ones to benefit?” Kassandra Frederique, the New York state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told USA Today.

Initially, many licensing laws for legal marijuana businesses excluded anyone with a criminal record. However, policymakers and social justice advocates realized that that was continuing a cycle of discrimination.

“You make the industry super-hard to get into, that only people who are squeaky clean can get into it, because you know all eyes are on you. However, that is the approach always, always, that you take to whitewash things and make it clean. That’s literally what you say before you fire the black people and the minorities,” said Adam Powers, an African-American man who works in the cannabis industry in Washington state.

Now, policies are emerging around the country to make legal marijuana businesses more accessible to people of color, who are more likely to have marijuana-related offenses on their criminal records.

The California Cannabis Equity Act of 2018 called for “persons most harmed by cannabis criminalization and poverty be offered assistance to enter the multibillion-dollar industry as entrepreneurs or as employees with high-quality, well-paying jobs.”

In Massachusetts, equity programs run by the Cannabis Control Commission have a similar task.

Tucky Blunt, who was convicted for selling marijuana illegally years ago, now operates a legal dispensary thanks to the equity applicant program in Oakland, California, which prioritizes businesses operated by people who have criminal convictions for selling marijuana.

Blunt said that many in his community had their lives disrupted by marijuana convictions.

“It affected everybody in my circle because it was only targeted to us. I knew white people that was selling weed that never went to jail. The war on drugs was just about putting as many of us in jail in possible. It tore up a lot of families,” he said.

Now, he is happy to make his mark on the legal marijuana industry, which continues to be dominated by white men.

“We’re not just budtenders, not just security guards anymore. We’re owners now,” Blunt said. “To be able to sell this legally in my city, literally 10 blocks from where I caught my case, I’m fine—I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. I’m the new kid on the block, and I’m here to change the game.”

View the original article at thefix.com

26 February 2019
Confusing Law Led to Marijuana Arrests In California

A recent high-profile stop has led to a lawsuit by two former highway patrol officers who now operate a cannabis transportation business.

Recreational cannabis may be legal in California, but complex laws in the state mean officers are still regularly pulling people over and seizing marijuana. In fact, in 2018, California Highway Patrol officers seized more cannabis than they had any other year since 2014.

According to The Sacramento Bee, a recent high-profile stop has led to a lawsuit by two former highway patrol officers who now operate a cannabis transportation business, Wild Rivers Transport. Rick Barry, 48, and Brian Clemann, 47, were stopped and their car was searched after a canine indicated the scent of marijuana. Although the two didn’t have cannabis in the car, they did have $257,000 in cash, which officers took and turned over to the Department of Homeland Security.

Now Barry and Clemann are suing the highway patrol, hoping a judge will rule that local and state law enforcement can’t interfere in the legal transport of marijuana.

“It appears the [California Highway Patrol] will stop at nothing to disrupt the lawful and legal transport of items involved in the medicinal cannabis industry,” they said in a press release. “Although all our invoices, licenses, and required paperwork were in order, the [California Highway Patrol] spent several hours trying to come up with charges for our lawful activity.”

In California, the Bureau of Cannabis Control announced Jan. 16 that marijuana deliveries and transports can take cannabis anywhere in the state, “provided that such delivery is conducted in compliance with all delivery provisions of this division.”

The specifics of California’s marijuana laws — which have the potential to influence a massive industry — have taken time to work out.

“These approved regulations are the culmination of more than two years of hard work by California’s cannabis licensing authorities,” Bureau Chief Lori Ajax said in a press release. “Public feedback was invaluable in helping us develop clear regulations for cannabis businesses and ensuring public safety.”

Law enforcement was not pleased with the decision, according to David Swing, president of the California Police Chiefs Association.

“We are deeply concerned with the adoption of the new cannabis regulations, which allow for the delivery of cannabis anywhere in the state. We are already having trouble enforcing a new and complex industry, and this allowance will only make enforcement even more difficult,” he said.

A spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol said that agencies need to be able to stop black-market transports.

“In order to legally transport cannabis in California for commercial purposes, a person must possess the appropriate (Bureau of Cannabis Control) license and comply with the [Bureau of Cannabis Control] administrative regulations,” the spokesperson said.

View the original article at thefix.com

24 January 2019
Francis Ford Coppola Enters The Cannabis Business

Coppola is launching a “cannabis lifestyle brand” in partnership with a sustainable cannabis farm in the Emerald Triangle.

Francis Ford Coppola is best known as the director of the Godfather series and Apocalypse Now. But in recent years, Coppola has launched a lucrative wine business and also owns hotels in Italy, Guatemala, Belize and Argentina.

Now, Coppola is getting into the cannabis business, which is shaping up to be a big growth industry. As Forbes reports, Coppola’s new cannabis business is called Sána Company LLC, and it will be independent from his Family Coppola enterprises. Sana is a sanskrit term for marijuana.

In a statement, the company announced that it wants to “give life to a progressive vision for pioneering the highest-quality, sun-grown cannabis products through sustainable farming.”

Coppola is launching The Grower’s Series, which he’s calling a “cannabis lifestyle brand.” The company is working in conjunction with Humboldt Brothers, a cannabis farm located in the Emerald Triangle, “the Napa Valley of cannabis.”

As the famed director declared in a statement, “Wine and cannabis are two ancient and bounteous gifts of Mother Nature, linked by great care, terroir [a Northern California fog that gives cannabis a special flavor] and temperateness. Expertise making one applies to the other. As with growing grapes, location matters, and The Grower’s Series reflects California agricultural expertise creating a true blend of art and science.”

Coppola’s Grower’s Series will include sativa, indica and hybrid strains that will come in one-gram packages that are shaped like wine bottles. Each package will go for $99, complete with a pipe and rolling papers.

Corey Beck, an executive at Coppola Winery, told The Drinks Business, “This is another avenue we’ve created for a tasting experience. We need to be able to market to our consumers, wherever they may be. If they are in a dispensary, they can see that bottle and it may resonate with them the next time they see that bottle when they’re in a Safeway or Kroger.”

The Herb Somm, another cannabis lifestyle brand, will help promote The Grower’s Series. Like Coppola, Somm founder Jamie Evans worked in the wine industry.

Evans told Forbes, “I think it’s incredible to see such an iconic family get into the space. There are so many synergies that exist between the two industries, especially in Northern California. The more support we can get from leaders like Francis Ford Coppola, the closer we get to breaking the stigma of cannabis nationwide.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 November 2018
New Pot Regulations Force California Retailers To Unload Millions In Stock

After July 1st, cannabis retailers in the state are no longer allowed to sell untested cannabis goods.

New regulations for California’s legal cannabis industry went into effect on Sunday, July 1. The new rules require that all cannabis products sold in California be tested for chemicals, pesticides and foreign materials.

In addition, all cannabis products must be in child-proof packaging. Edibles may not exceed 10 mg of THC per serving or 100 mg per package. And non-edibles may not exceed 1,000 mg of THC per package for the adult-use market, or 2,000 mg per package for the medical-use market.

“These regulations are very necessary for consumer protections, environmental protection and public safety protections, so they are good and we support them,” said Kimberly Cargile, executive director of A Therapeutic Alternative medical cannabis dispensary in Sacramento.

“However,” she added, “it’s more difficult to operate within a regulated market and more difficult than we anticipated.”

The July 1st deadline meant that all “untested cannabis goods [can no longer] be sold by a retailer and must be destroyed,” according to the state Bureau of Cannabis Control—leaving some retailers left to wonder if their businesses could survive the “weed apocalypse.”

Some business owners estimated huge losses for California’s legal cannabis industry—about $90 million of product lost, according to a survey by the United Cannabis Business Association.

The association organized 128 cannabis businesses and advocacy groups to petition Governor Jerry Brown on Friday to “indefinitely extend” the period for selling untested cannabis products.

The group argued for the extension saying that without it, the new regulations will “financially cripple the majority of retailers,” by forcing them to “destroy everything in their inventory and repurchase new products.”

They also argue that there are not enough testing facilities approved by the state to handle the demand and volume of cannabis products that need to be tested.

However, the state maintains that retailers were given enough time to comply with the regulations.

“We issued our emergency regulations back in November, and at that time, we were pretty clear about the fact that there would be a six-month transition period for retailers to use up their existing supply,” said a spokesperson for the Bureau of Cannabis Control. “We felt that was a sufficient amount of time to deplete stock on hand and adapt to California’s new rules.”

View the original article at thefix.com

5 July 2018
Congresswoman On Mission To Increase Diversity In Marijuana Industry

Congresswoman Barbara Lee has introduced first-of-its-kind legislation to directly address diversity in the marijuana industry.

California Rep. Barbara Lee wants to add some diversity to the overwhelmingly white marijuana industry, a fact that was apparent after a Maryland dispensary named a strain “Strange Fruit.”

The name is a reference to a Billie Holiday song in which “strange fruit” referred to the bodies of black Americans who had been lynched and left to hang on the branches of trees.

The controversy came to light after a black woman visiting the dispensary was appalled that someone thought “Strange Fruit” was an appropriate name for a pot strain and called Shanita Penny, the president of the board of directors of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

“Do you think if a black person were in charge of marketing or at the table that ‘Strange Fruit’ would’ve gotten on the shelves?” asked Penny.

America’s pot industry is, indeed, largely white. A BuzzFeed analysis of storefront marijuana businesses across the country revealed that less than 1% of dispensaries are owned by black Americans. A different report found that only 19% of marijuana businesses have minority investors.

Lee told Rolling Stone that she is introducing the RESPECT Resolution, first-of-its-kind legislation to directly address diversity in the marijuana industry. It will likely not become a bill, but instead remain a resolution because the federal government will probably allow state and local governments to decide and enforce their own policies surrounding marijuana.

With RESPECT, Lee hopes to have states expunge the records of all those incarcerated for non-violent marijuana-related offenses. These people would also be allowed to participate in the new marijuana industry, a distinction that is important for states like Illinois where you can’t get a medical marijuana card if you have a felony—even if that felony was for having medical marijuana.

Lee also wants to do away with fees to get marijuana licenses, which can be as high as $10,000 in the state of New York.

Increasing support for the legalization of marijuana is bringing America’s decades-long war on pot to a close, but Lee believes there’s a long way to go to heal the damage caused by the racial disparity in the enforcement of such laws.

“[Marijuana] has really been a driving force for mass incarceration,” Lee explained. “So we’re looking at ways to begin to unravel this and bring some justice to these people who deserve justice. They’ve been unfairly incarcerated.”

View the original article at thefix.com

18 June 2018