MjLink Cannabis Business News and Press

Four years ago, Maine voters approved a ballot initiative legalizing recreational marijuana. Yet, there are still no marijuana retailers in the state.

The industry's roll-out since since 2016 has been impeded by a number of legislative and regulatory twists and turns, including a gubernatorial veto. 

But few, if any, in this emerging sector anticipated the latest obstacle.

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Ed Morin ~ Maine Public Radio ~ 

In most medical use states, minors can get medical marijuana if they have an adult willing to act as their caregiver or designated provider and are also entered into the state medical marijuana database.

If you’re 21 years or older and live in one of the 33 states with legalized medical marijuana laws, you can access marijuana for medical reasons if you have a qualifying health condition.

And in 11 of these states, including Washington, recreational adult use is also legal, so you don’t even need to visit a doctor in order to purchase and consume cannabis products.

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Allison Hall ~ Spokesman.com ~ 

Coronavirus hasn’t kept some cannabis companies down: They’re staffing up even as unemployment in many other sectors soars.

Weed businesses around the country that were in strong financial shape heading into the pandemic are hiring additional workers in response to robust demand for marijuana products.

Almost all states have allowed pot shops to remain open, even though vast swaths of the retail economy have been shuttered for weeks.

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Paul Demko, Mona Zhang and Arek Sarkissian ~ Politico.com ~ 

As the demand for cannabis soars, so too does the need for clear guidelines governing its use. Cannabis is potent medicine, and as a medicine, requires a framework that minimizes harm.

Last year, my father was diagnosed with cancer that caused severe visceral pain. We knew weed could help. What we didn’t know was how much to give him.

The months that followed were shaped by trial and error -- sometimes we nailed it, and he experienced a few lucid, pain-free hours of relief, and other times, we got it horribly wrong, leaving him lethargic or anxious and confused. 

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Emma Stone ~ Leafly.com ~ 

Sundries to stock in one’s cupboard during the coronavirus pandemic: canned tuna, honey, rice, and weed gummies.

Cannabis sales skyrocketed in the days leading up to stay-at-home orders to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the US.

Now, cannabis analysts have found that an unusually high proportion of those sales can be attributed to edibles.

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Jenni Avins ~ QZ.com ~

Natural materials builders seeking to grow a market for industrial hemp in the United States are moving forward after successful testing for building safety codes and recognition by a national architecture and design program at a U.S. university.

Hemp advocates have identified lime-hemp building material, called "hempcrete," as an opportunity to build a market for hemp grown for fiber.

Challenges have been a lack of supply, building code regulations and a lack of education among architects and designers, builders say.

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Jean Lotus ~ UPI.com ~ 

Due to the stay-at-home advisory, a local software company is shifting its focus to front door medical marijuana deliveries.

Medical marijuana delivery has been legal in Massachusetts for quite some time but, Meredith Mahoney, president of the new marijuana delivery service, Lantern, said they are looking at ways to expand that amenity for people dependent on deliveries.

“People love convenience, they love privacy, they love having access to products that they don’t have to leave their homes to get,” she explained.

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Justin Dougherty ~ WHDH.com ~ 

With the extract market burgeoning, there’s an increased focus on how those products are produced.

Solvent extraction methods have advanced quickly over the past few years, with popular solvents including ethanol, CO2, and hydrocarbons -- organic compounds containing only hydrogen and carbon atoms -- which in cannabis are usually butane and propane.

If you’ve used vape oil, edibles, or any number of products that incorporate extracts, you could well have been sampling the fruit of hydrocarbon extraction. 

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Aimee O'Driscoll ~ Leafly.com ~ 

Regulators in the California Department of Food and Agriculture have unveiled their OCal program, which will label organically grown cannabis products in a market scorned by federal regulators.

The proposal, which was released last week, would “ensure that cannabis products bearing the OCal seal have been certified to consistent, uniform standards comparable to the National Organic Program,” according to a CDFA statement.

California regulators also announced they would be accepting public comment on the proposal until July 7.

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Graham Abbott ~ Ganjapreneur.com ~ 

Legalized cannabis represents a significant new business opportunity for the insurance industry, according to a report released Tuesday by New Dawn Risk Group Ltd., a London-based brokerage.

The insurance industry could issue more than 100,000 policies, were insurers to sell only a single policy to each active marijuana business in the United States, according to the report.

“The legal U.S. cannabis industry would pay about $1 billion in annual premiums were it insured to levels normal for other businesses,” the report said. 

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Matthew Lerner ~ BusinessInsurance.com ~ 

A Kansas City-area couple whose home was raided in a 2012 search for marijuana has settled for $150,000 their federal lawsuit against the Johnson County sheriff’s deputies who led the operation.

The amount of the settlement reached in April with Robert and Adlynn Harte, of Leawood, was unsealed Thursday after the parties redacted portions related to the couple’s children, KCUR-FM reported.

The agreement ends years of litigation that began in 2013 when the Hartes, retired CIA employees, sued the sheriff’s office and the deputies.

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Associated Press ~ 

Six years after the idea was germinated, the nation’s first state-authorized medical marijuana research program is being launched in Philadelphia, state officials said.

Medical marijuana is legal in some form in 33 states, but to date, there has been very little scientific evidence that it is an effective treatment for any ailment.

Pennsylvania’s medical schools are now gearing up to determine whether cannabis works.

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Sam Wood ~ Philadelphia Inquirer ~ 

Roll aside, toilet paper. Oklahomans rushed to purchase another product in record volume last month, as medical marijuana dispensaries logged enough sales to spike tax collections by more than 25%.

According to the Oklahoma Tax Commission, dispensaries remitted almost $9.8 million in state taxes during April.

That includes traditional sales taxes and the 7% medical marijuana levy.

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Dale Denwalt ~ The Oklahoman ~ 

The COVID-19 crisis has packed a big wallop to the legal cannabis industry that will likely unleash repercussions in the months and years to come.

Recently, six leading cannabis professionals shared their thoughts on how the pandemic has affected their industry and weighed in on where they would like to see their business moving forward.

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Iris Dorbian ~ Forbes.com ~ 

UCLA chemists have reported the key chemical discovery necessary for the creation of a small, electronic marijuana breathalyzer.

The research is published in Organic Letters, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society.

The legalization and decriminalization of marijuana in California and elsewhere have made marijuana detection especially important, said senior author Neil Garg, UCLA’s Kenneth N. Trueblood Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and chair of UCLA’s department of chemistry and biochemistry.

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Stuart Wolpert ~ Newsroom.UCLA.edu ~ 

As Illinois’ economy has come to a screeching halt in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, recreational weed has remained a hot commodity with sales topping $37 million last month.

April’s nearly $37.3 million in sales trails only the $39.2 million worth of adult-use cannabis sold by pot shops in January, the first month the drug was legalized for recreational use, according to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

Since the start of the year, Illinois dispensaries have sold over $147 million in recreational cannabis.

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Tom Schuba ~ Chicago Sun Times ~ 

Studies report marijuana can reduce headache and migraine severity, but exact doses currently remain unknown.

A headache or migraine can render patients defenseless. Symptoms can include pain, sensitivity to light and loud noises, as well as nausea.

When over-the-counter medications like Advil and Tylenol don’t treat headache disorders, what alternatives do patients have? Recent research indicates that marijuana could become a new option for patients. 

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Brendan Bures ~ TheFreshToast.com ~ 

Unlike many industries, the cannabis sector is still hiring during the pandemic. Yet the number of open positions has dwindled as layoffs become more common and many of the jobs that do exist are temporary.

Vangst, which runs the Gigs site for temporary pot jobs and recently launched a platform for full-time positions, is filling about 600 jobs a week.

That’s a slight decrease from pre-Covid 19 levels earlier this year, mostly because companies are employing fewer in-store staff as they switch to delivery or curbside pickup. 

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Kristine Owram ~ Bloomberg.com ~ 

New Zealand’s government has revealed the final details of a marijuana legalization proposal that will appear on the September general election ballot.

Voters will decide on the policy change through a referendum, where they will be asked “yes” or “no” to approving the “Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill.”

Early details about the measure were released in December.

And on Friday, the government shared the full proposal, which would make it legal for adults 20 and older to purchase and possess cannabis, cultivate two plants for personal use and visit marijuana “coffee shops” where on-site consumption would be allowed.

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Economic activity in Canada's legal pot industry tripled since legalization: StatsCan.

Canada's cannabis industry generates about $8.16 billion to the country's economy, according to latest data from Statistics Canada.

The legal cannabis industry contributed about $3.96 billion to Canada's gross domestic product as of February, StatsCan said.

That's up 215 per cent since recreational cannabis was legalized in Oct. 2018. 

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