MjLink Cannabis Business News and Press

Understanding the nuances of various customer journeys in the cannabis space has become increasingly pivotal among companies trying to gain a bigger share of a burgeoning market through brand recognition, exclusive partnerships and product offerings.

But understanding trends and habits of potential customers is one thing. Launching a marketing strategy to acquire those customers is another.

Since Valda Coryat took the reins in December 2019 as chief marketing officer at Florida-based Trulieve—one of the fastest-growing and most profitable multistate operators in the U.S., with an 11-state footprint and more than 160 dispensaries—the company has continued to thrive in ways big and small.

Specifically, Trulieve acquired Harvest Health & Recreation in a deal that had a $2.1-billion all-stock price tag when the agreement was first announced in May 2021. In addition, the company has launched brands like the Cultivar Collection, Muse, Sweet Talk, and Momenta, and struck exclusive partnerships with celebrities like Wiz Khalifa and Survivor: Africa winner Ethan Zohn as part of its strategic expansion.  

Trulieve also set in motion a nationwide Supplier Diversity Initiative earlier this month that focuses on providing education and professional development resources while creating mutually beneficial business partnerships with a supplier base reflective of the customers and communities the company serves.

Those moves and more have been driven, in part, by key company insights that have helped shaped marketing plans that resonate with targeted demographics, Coryat told Cannabis Business Times.

Vermont won’t officially open its cannabis business licensing process until April 1, but the state has already received more than 400 prequalification applications from entrepreneurs looking to participate in the adult-use market, which is slated to launch this fall.

As of midday on March 29, 427 business hopefuls had submitted applications for prequalification, according to an Associated Press report.

The official application process opens April 1 for small growers and testing facilities, May 1 for all cultivators, July 1 for product manufacturers and wholesalers, and Sept. 1 for retailers, the news outlet reported.

In January 2018, Vermont became the first state in the U.S. to legalize cannabis through legislation, rather than through a voter-approved ballot initiative.

It wasn’t until October 2020, however, that the state legalized commercial adult-use cannabis sales, promising to get the market up and running by spring of 2022.

Planet 13, the Las Vegas-based, vertically integrated powerhouse that recently began offering cannabis-themed weddings and is branching out in markets such as California and Florida, has announced fourth-quarter (Q4) and full-year financial results for 2021.

Those numbers include the Q4 2021 revenue of $29.9 million, a 48% increase from Q4 2020, and $119.5 million in full-year revenue, up 70% compared to all of 2020, according to a press release.

Meanwhile, in 2021, Planet 13 established $66 million in gross profit, a net loss of $19.5 million, and an adjusted EBITDA of $16.9 million.

"During a quarter that is seasonally slower and marked by significantly less tourist traffic, Planet 13 was able to maintain a market share above 10 percent in the Las Vegas cannabis market. In addition to the competitive performance demonstrated by our SuperStore and neighborhood store, our brands grew 21 percent in a market that was down 5 percent in Q4," Larry Scheffler, co-CEO of Planet 13, stated in the release. "Similarly, while the California market was down sequentially in Q4 , our Orange County store grew 7.2 percent in the quarter on the back of increased brand awareness."

"Over the last couple months, the Planet 13 team has been working hard to operationalize all of the exciting new assets we've acquired over the past year. We are making strong progress on our Florida roadmap working in dual tracks to bring cultivation and retail online," added Bob Groesbeck, co-CEO of Planet 13. "In California, we closed the acquisition of Next Green Wave in March allowing us to become vertically integrated in the state and bring our award-winning brands to Planet 13's California fans."

Bermuda’s House of Assembly has passed a cannabis legalization bill for the second time, sending it to the governor for Royal Assent.

The Cannabis Licensing Act of 2022, passed in an 18-6 vote, would establish a regulatory framework for the cultivation and sale of cannabis in Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory.

The legislation, introduced by Home Affairs Minister Walter Roban, creates a series of cannabis licenses that will be issued through a licensing authority, according to a Caribbean National Weekly report.

Smoking cannabis in public will be prohibited except in designated shops, the news outlet reported. Selling cannabis to anyone under the age of 21 will also remain illegal.

The House of Assembly approved the legislation last year, only to have the Senate block its passage, Caribbean National Weekly reported.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act is still scheduled for a March 30 hearing in the House Rules Committee, but lawmakers have a growing array of amendments to consider.

The legislation, House Bill 3617, received 10 additional proposals (15 amendments total) as of mid-afternoon March 29. The new offerings range from topics of deporting illegal immigrants to cannabis product additives, packaging, funding and more.

One of the amendments was offered by Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., whose name has become infamously tied to Washington, D.C.’s, current ban on commercial cannabis sales. Despite district voters approving adult-use cannabis via Initiative 71 in the November 2014 election, a rider, commonly referred to the “Harris rider,” was introduced by Harris the following year, which stripped the district’s elected officials of the power to regulate a retail industry.

RELATED: D.C. Remains on Cannabis Sales Sideline in New Omnibus Bill

Harris, who voted against a previous version of the MORE Act that U.S. House members passed in 2020, now wants to prohibit any portion of the current MORE Act from being carried out until the Comptroller, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Secretary of Transportation “have studied the societal, public health and public safety implications” of enactment of the bill, and until the director of the National Institute of on Drug Abuse has certified that “the societal, public health and public safety benefits of enactment of this bill outweigh the societal, public health and public safety risks.”

That change and others come on the heels of the House Rules Committee announcing March 24 that it plans to take up the MORE Act this week with the legislation calendared for possible floor debate in the full lower chamber thereafter.

DENVER—March 29, 2022—PRESS RELEASE—The 420 Hotels Inc. has obtained a provisional license from the city of Denver, clearing a major cannabis licensing hurdle to operate a cannabis consumption lounge as an amenity to the adjacent hotel. The owner of the historic Patterson Inn is transforming the carriage house of the property into a first in the nation, in-hotel licensed legal cannabis consumption lounge.

Denver has become a popular destination in recent years for tourists who want to incorporate legal cannabis into their vacation plans. And yet with sufficient options within the neighborhood to purchase, public consumption of cannabis was banned in the city. 

Chris Chiari, CEO and founder of The 420 Hotels, is changing that by incorporating a sophisticated cannabis consumption space into the century-old National Landmark in Denver’s storied Capitol Hill neighborhood.

“The 420 Hotels sees cannabis hospitality as the most unique and exciting amenity in the hotel industry today,” Chiari said. “We are excited to be the first cannabis lounge to be licensed as an amenity to overnight hospitality, and to provide a welcoming space for legal cannabis consumption.”

With the provisional license in hand, The 420 Hotels Inc. is moving forward on renovating the carriage house of the Victorian era inn with a lounge that adheres to recently passed state laws for commercial cannabis consumption spaces. The goal is to have the updates, funded by an equity crowdfunding campaign through Republic.com, complete by the end of 2022.

After introducing a bill that aims to end federal cannabis prohibition, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., is now the target of a new political action committee (PAC) backed by a notorious prohibitionist group’s executive.

Mace’s States Reform Act (SRA) offers a path to reform that includes a 3% federal cannabis excise tax and provides state governments the power to regulate cannabis products through the health-and-safety oversights of their choosing, while authorizing the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) to oversee cannabis products in interstate commerce.

Although Mace’s proposed legislation is one of three high-profile bills aimed at broad federal cannabis reform introduced this Congress, it was a little too ambitious for a PAC called Protect Our Kids, which prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) Executive Vice President Luke Niforatos filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in January.

The PAC announced March 28 it would be running digital advertising “educating Republican primary voters on Rep. Mace’s destructive policy positions,” The Post and Courier reported.

While Protect Our Kids will operate separately from SAM, the ties remain. 

Formed in 2013, after Colorado and Washington voters approved adult-use legalization measures in the November 2012 election, SAM was co-founded by Kevin Sabet, a former three-time adviser for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. The organization aims to create policies that decrease cannabis use.

The fate of South Carolina’s medical cannabis legalization measure is in the hands of a House panel this week after the bill passed the Senate last month.

The six-member Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs subcommittee will hold a hearing on S. 150, the SC Compassionate Care Act, on March 31, according to The State.

The legislation, sponsored by South Carolina Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, outlines 13 qualifying conditions, including cancer, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic medical conditions causing serious muscle spasms, and any chronic or debilitating condition for which an opioid is prescribed.

The bill would allow patients to access a two-week supply of medical cannabis in the form of oils, vaporizers, salves, topicals and patches.

The legislation would levy a 6% sales tax on medical cannabis products, and would grant South Carolina’s cities and counties the power to opt out of hosting the industry within their jurisdictions.

Grenco Science, the company behind the G Pen, is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year since the company's founding in 2012.

Not only is Grenco Science celebrating its decade milestone, but company founder and CEO Chris Folkerts also recently celebrated his 40th birthday earlier this month. As he reaches new milestones both professionally and personally, Folkerts sat down with Cannabis Business Times to reflect on his company’s history, his career in cannabis, the California market, and more.

Zach Mentz: How did you get your start in this industry and how did you end up here as founder and CEO of Grenco Science?

Chris Folkerts: Not only did my company turn 10 [in February], but I turned 40 [in March], so it's kind of an interesting moment … I think it's a nice intersection of where I expected I would be in life and where I thought the company (Grenco Science) would be.

There was this ‘it’ moment in a dispensary called LA Confidential in Los Angeles that was very known as an epicenter for a lot of the culture and lifestyle that happened. They had a hash bar, and they did jazz and comedy nights, things like that, and so this became very much of a hangout for me and a lot of people. The (California) market was still medicinal, shops were plentiful, it was pretty easy to get yourself into a space and it was pretty easy to get yourself set up. That was the landscape for the industry. You had growers and you had shops and you had middlemen in between.

As I was hanging out and being there, I saw the very first product where somebody figured out how to utilize e-cig technology that was currently available. I saw somebody that figured it out, a guy out of the Bay Area with a product called the “Vape Pen,” literally. It came with little prefilled cotton cartomizer that had been filled with some sort of a tincture which has some sort of either an ethanol or a glycerin mix and could be vaporized. So I screwed that in, I hit the device, vapor came out, and there was an ever-so-faint taste of cannabis. And I thought that was a lightbulb going off over my head.

Legislation on Capitol Hill would allow for research on cannabis as a treatment for veterans with chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—if it can first pass out of committee.

Senate Bill 1467 and House Resolution 2916, known as the “VA Cannabis Research Act of 2021,” would require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to conduct a series of clinical trials on the effects of cannabis on patients with these conditions.

The Senate version of the legislation was introduced in April 2021 by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and has not seen any movement since a June 2021 hearing by the Committee on Veterans Affairs. S.B. 1467 has picked up one cosponsor, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska.

The House version of the legislation, also introduced in April 2021, is sponsored by Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., and has four co-sponsors: Reps. Peter Meijer, R-Mich.; Elaine Luria, D-Va.; Andy Kim, D-N.J.; and Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who just recently signed on to the legislation earlier this month.

Disabled American Veterans (DAV), a nonprofit organization that, in part, helps fight for veterans’ interests on Capitol Hill, backs both bills.

Cannabis Amnesty, a Canadian non-profit advocacy group, and TOQi Technologies have partnered to launch the TOQi Fellowship for Cannabis Amnesty program.

The fellowship program will support two salaried internship positions during the summer of 2022, with support from Aurora Cannabis. The internships were designed to create economic opportunities for those from communities most impacted by decades of cannabis prohibition.

Throughout the program, fellows will gain experience in advocacy and communications through mentorship, networking opportunities, and additional perspective on the cannabis industry and Cannabis Amnesty's mission. 

"Historically, cannabis laws were unequally enforced by law enforcement in Canada, disproportionately impacting Black, Indigenous and under-resourced communities," said Annamaria Enenajor, executive director of Cannabis Amnesty. "Cannabis convictions limit economic opportunities for people from these communities, thus further entrenching systemic racism through poverty and disenfranchisement. We are grateful to TOQi and Aurora Cannabis for their leadership in supporting our efforts to dismantle these economic barriers, and look forward to welcoming more cannabis brands to our shared vision of justice and equality in the cannabis industry."

The program will run from May through August, and prospective applicants can apply here. Applications will be accepted through April 19.

In October 2021, Canadian LP Canopy Growth Corporation announced its plan to acquire cannabis-infused edibles company Wana Brands for $297.5 million cash upfront, though the deal hinges upon federal permissibility of cannabis. But Wana is not waiting in the wings. The Colorado-based company, co-founded by CEO Nancy Whiteman, remains independent, has continued to launch new products and has intentions to expand beyond its footprint of 13 state markets.

In addition, Wana announced two pivotal hires on its executive team in March, most recently naming Sandy Li, who previously served as vice president of finance for multistate cannabis operator Parallel, as CFO. Earlier this month, the company announced Kelly Flores’ appointment as chief operating officer, a leadership role she previously had at the cannabis brand dosist.

Three women are now at the helm of one of the largest cannabis companies in an industry where men occupy a vast majority of leadership roles, and the C-suite announcements happened to be made during Women’s History Month. Cannabis Business Times caught up with Whiteman to get an update on what’s happened since the Canopy deal and how she has navigated more than a decade in the cannabis industry.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. An except of this interview also will appear in the April issue of CBT. 

Michelle Simakis: It has been more than six months since the Canopy Growth deal was announced. Though it’s not final, have there been changes at the company relative to that agreement?

Nancy Whiteman: Yes and no. I’m still running the company. I don’t think things feel especially different here than they did. On the other hand, one of the reasons we signed the deal with Canopy is that we really saw them as a valuable partner to us. They’re much larger than we are so they have a lot of resources that we don’t have. There are a number of things that we can do legally with them still as two separate companies where we can learn what it’s like to work with each other as partners before we’re working with each other as one entity.

MS: What does that look like?

NW: There are things that we can do now to think about how we are going to align for the future. Those are the kinds of discussions we are having now. How do we each continue to add value to each other in ways that make sense now, and how [do we] set up for the future? I can’t be super specific about that.

Capital raise activity exploded out of the blocks in the first half of 2021, buoyed by hopes that the new Democratic presidency and Senate majority would finally produce a legalization breakthrough.

Investors bid up cannabis stocks in Q1 2021 to levels that hadn’t been seen since early 2019, and equity issuance followed with Q1 becoming the highest equity raise quarter in cannabis history. COVID fears had started to dissipate as growing vaccination rates began to reduce hospitalizations and deaths. It seemed like economic life would return to some semblance of normality.

In cannabis land, however, the legalization buzz wore off and stocks began a steep 10-month decline that would leave them 51% below their peaks by year end, and equity issuance followed downward. The saving grace for cannabis capital was a newly invigorated debt market, fostered by the entrance of new institutional capital and riding on the improved profitability of the industry—at least in the U.S.

Capital Raise Activity

Capital Raise Transactions and Invested Capital Declines

We tracked 455 capital raises totaling $12.8 billion in 2021 representing an increase in the number of deals of 50.7% and a 195.4% increase in the dollar volume of deals vs. 2020.  The second half of 2021 was softer with declines of 29.6% in transaction numbers and 30.3% in capital raised vs. the first half of 2021.

Shift in Capital Allocation by Industry Sector

President Joe Biden is maintaining a ban on commercial adult-use cannabis sales in Washington, D.C., including what is known as the Harris Rider in his $5.8-billion budget proposal for 2023, according to the DCist.

District voters approved an adult-use cannabis legalization measure in the November 2014 election, but U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Maryland, introduced a provision in the following year’s federal budget that has since blocked Washington officials from implementing commercial cannabis sales.

Biden included the Harris Rider in his proposed budget for 2022, DCist reported, and is now following suit this year.

The news comes after Congress passed a spending bill earlier this month that maintains the Harris Rider until at least September.

RELATED: D.C. Remains on Cannabis Sales Sideline in New Omnibus Bill

New Mexico’s governor has signed two intergovernmental agreements with the Pueblo of Pojoaque and the Pueblo of Picuris to support the tribes’ participation in the state’s legal cannabis industry.

The agreements, signed March 25 by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Pueblo of Picuris Gov. Craig Quanchello and Pueblo of Pojoaque Gov. Jenelle Roybal, will “support the Pueblos taking part in the recreational cannabis industry, driving economic development and setting guidelines for the safe production and sale of cannabis while preventing federal enforcement on their tribal lands,” according to a press release from Lujan Grisham’s office.

The Cannabis Regulation Act, which Lujan Grisham signed into law in April 2021 to legalize adult-use cannabis in New Mexico, authorized intergovernmental agreements to enable the state’s tribal communities to participate in the market.

“The economic opportunities provided by the recreational and medical cannabis industries are truly game-changing, and sovereign tribal nations should benefit alongside the state,” Lujan Grisham said in a public statement. “With these agreements, the Pueblo of Pojoaque and the Pueblo of Picuris will benefit from this exciting new industry, which is projected to bring $300 million in sales annually and create 11,000 jobs in New Mexico.”

The intergovernmental agreements aim to support public health and safety while maximizing cross-jurisdiction market opportunities, according to the press release.

New Mexico regulators have issued a medical cannabis product recall after investigating a patient complaint.

The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) issued the recall March 24 upon discovering that Sacred Garden, a licensed medical cannabis operator in the state, has been distributing products containing levels of mold above regulatory levels, according to a press release.

The contaminated products tested at 35,000 Colony Forming Units (CFUs) per gram, according to the press release, and 1,000 CFU is the maximum allowable level under state law.

Regulators have ordered Sacred Garden to cease and desist operations at its production and manufacturing site. The company also operates medical cannabis dispensaries in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Ruidoso and Santa Fe.

The recalled products, including cannabis flower, pre-rolls and food products, are from cannabis cultivars named “Snow Cone” and “Protégé ’78” and were sold to patients at Sacred Garden’s dispensary locations over the past several weeks.

The market for hemp-derived delta-8 THC products has exploded over the past year. And while the legality of this cannabinoid (or lack thereof) continues to be a point of significant controversy, another issue creating waves recently is the reporting of several studies showing numerous delta-8 products on the market contain surprising and illegal levels of delta-9 THC.

A little background concerning the legal landscape of delta-8 is helpful. Passage of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill), which legalized hemp at the federal level, opened the door for a variety of new consumer products to hit the market.

The definition of hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill was clearly intended to prohibit the development of hemp products that were intoxicating. In the final rule issued by USDA to implement the farm bill, USDA notes that delta-9 levels in hemp were regulated because delta-9 “is the primary intoxicating component of cannabis.”

Despite the farm bill’s attempt to precisely define what constitutes a “legal” hemp product, the plain language of the statute created ambiguities that appear to have undermined the purpose of the bill in the hands of the hemp marketplace.

For instance, commentators have noted that the farm bill’s use of a dry-weight basis limit of 0.3% delta-9 THC in hemp and hemp-derived products leads to puzzling results. For example, applying the 0.3% dry-weight standard on an edible gummy product could lead to a gummy that contains 10 mg of delta-9, but yet still remains under the 0.3% dry-weight threshold.

RELATED: Delta-9 in Edible Hemp Products: What’s a ‘Dry Weight Basis’ Anyway?

The House Rules Committee has postponed a hearing on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act until March 30, which could delay the possibility of a floor vote in the full chamber.

In addition, the legislation, House Bill 3617, has received five proposed amendments, ranging from topics of testing impaired drivers to penalizing individuals who sell cannabis to minors and funding studies related to the impacts of legalization. Three of those amendments were offered by Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., who voted against a previous version of the bill in 2020.

The Rules Committee had originally scheduled a March 28 hearing for the legislation, which aims to remove cannabis from the U.S. Controlled Substance Act, before moving it back two days.

RELATED: MORE Act Vote on Deck in U.S. House, Again

Sponsored by U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the bill was first introduced in July 2019 and was passed by the full lower chamber via a 228-164 vote in December 2020. That marked the first time a full body of Congress voted on a broad cannabis decriminalization measure.

When House lawmakers announced their intentions last week to move forward with further consideration of the current form of the bill, NORML Political Director Morgan Fox thanked political leaders who’ve advocated for and worked toward cannabis reform.

The Colorado House Business Affairs and Labor Committee rewrote—and then ultimately killed—legislation that would have prohibited employers from firing or refusing to hire an employee based on cannabis use.

As originally introduced by Reps. Edie Hooton and Brianna Titone, House Bill 1152 would have also required employers to let their workers consume medical cannabis on the job, except in dangerous fields or jobs that require the use of heavy machinery.

RELATED: New Legislation in Colorado Would Bar Employers From Firing Employees for Cannabis Use

The House Business Affairs and Labor Committee unanimously decided to rewrite the legislation March 24, replacing it with a proposal to create a task force that would study the use of medical cannabis in employment, according to a 9 News report.

The committee then voted, 12-1, to indefinitely postpone the bill, the news outlet reported.

Tim James, a leading Republican gubernatorial candidate in Alabama, has expressed opposition to the state’s medical cannabis program, claiming that state officials want to create a “drug cartel,” according to an AL.com report.

“This is nothing but a bait and switch to desensitize and get recreational use started,” James said during a recent town hall forum, according to the news outlet. “Their dream is recreational pot and that is where they are going.”

James went on to also criticize the state’s medical cannabis program for not requiring stringent enough training for the doctors who will ultimately be able to recommend cannabis to their patients, AL.com reported.

James, a businessman and the son of former Alabama Gov. Fob James, is currently polling second behind incumbent Gov. Kay Ivey, according to the news outlet.

Ivey signed Alabama’s medical cannabis legislation into law in May 2021, and John McMillan, director of the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission, and Sen. Tim Melson (R-Florence), who championed the state’s legalization bill, told AL.com that James’ claims are inaccurate.