MjLink Cannabis Business News and Press

The New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) is adding a new qualifying condition to its medical cannabis program for the first time since June 2019–bringing the total to 29.

The NMDOH announced at the Medical Cannabis Advisory Board meeting Dec. 6 that it is adding anxiety disorder to the list of qualifying conditions for enrollment starting Jan. 1, 2023.

A petition requesting for anxiety disorder to be added as a qualifying condition was submitted to the board in March for consideration and was approved in November by David R. Scrase, Ph.D., Acting Cabinet Secretary for the DOH, according to a press release from the NMDOH.

Scrase wrote in his decision that anxiety disorder is a debilitating condition and that “even though patients may access cannabis without a medical cannabis card through the adult use program, by including anxiety disorder in the list of qualifying conditions, patients would have increased opportunity to discuss with their medical provider how cannabis can be used to alleviate the symptoms of their anxiety disorder.”

A full list of the state’s qualifying conditions can be viewed here.

The Ohio House Finance Committee heard an adult-use cannabis legalization bill Dec. 6, despite time running out in the current legislative session, which is set to adjourn Dec. 21.

Ohio Reps. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson, and Terrence Upchurch, D-Cleveland, introduced House Bill 382 last year to allow adults 21 and older to purchase and consume cannabis, as well as grow a limited number of plants at home for personal use.

RELATED: Buckeye Duo Formally Files Adult-Use Cannabis Bill in Ohio

At Tuesday’s House Finance Committee hearing, Weinstein said legalizing adult-use cannabis in Ohio would increase public safety and boost the state’s economy, according to a local NBC 4 report.

“Our state is actively losing dollars to neighboring states with recreational programs and missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in potential tax revenue,” Weinstein said, according to the news outlet.

The Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act’s chances of clearing the U.S. Senate are again fading as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urges congressional leaders to remove the cannabis-related language from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The Kentucky Republican called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to forego the SAFE Banking provisions, which would allow federally regulated financial institutions to work with state-legal cannabis businesses.

McConnell dismissed the banking-related language Dec. 6 as reform “in name only,” according to The Hill.

“House and Senate Democrats are still obstructing efforts to close out the NDAA by trying to jam in unrelated items with no relationship whatsoever to defense,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday, according to the news outlet. “We’re talking about a grab bag of miscellaneous pet priorities, like making our financial system more sympathetic to illegal drugs or permitting reform in name only that’s already failed to pass the Senate earlier this year.”

McConnell suggested that Democrats could have brought the SAFE Banking Act to the Senate floor earlier this year, The Hill reported, and said stripping its provisions from the NDAA will give the defense bill a better chance of passing Congress before the end of the year.

“My colleagues across the aisle need to cut their unrelated hostage-taking and put a bipartisan NDAA on the floor,” he said.

WAKEFIELD, Massachusetts, Dec. 7, 2022 - PRESS RELEASE - Curaleaf Holdings, Inc., announced a first-of-its-kind cannabis education partnership for its Grassroots brand with Ganjier, the Cannabis Sommelier Certification Program.

Similar to the Sommelier's role in the wine industry, the Ganjier is trained in the art, science and appreciation of cannabis craft, consumption, and connoisseurship, possessing a multidisciplinary knowledge and astute professionalism serving to raise the standard of excellence throughout the cannabis industry. Following the overwhelming response to Ganjier's third year of record enrollments, the 2023 edition of this groundbreaking cannabis sommelier certification will feature the first-ever partnership for cannabis education and training sessions by one of the largest, leading teams in the cannabis industry today.

Founded in Chicago in 2014, Grassroots was originally created to perfect the art and science of cannabis cultivation–making the Curaleaf team members working on the brand ideal candidates for Ganjier training. Meticulous attention to detail and a commitment to cannabis cultivation are core components of the Grassroots brand and Curaleaf company culture. That tradition continues with this announcement of the new partnership with Ganjier.

"Analogous to the wine Sommelier, beer Cicerone or cigar Catador, the Ganjier is a trained and certified master of cannabis products, cannabis assessment, and cannabis service," said Managing Director of Ganjier Derek Gilman. "By training people like Grassroots' team members and partners to understand cannabis products more deeply, they become true leaders and advocates for quality within the modern cannabis industry."

"We're proud of each and every team member embarking on this one-of-a-kind training program supporting our mission to serve, advance and respect the cannabis movement," said Curaleaf Chief People Officer Tyneeha Rivers. "Cannabis education is paramount for all of us at Curaleaf and this pilot program takes cannabis professionalism to the highest level." 

The Grassroots and Ganjier partnership is officially underway, with 100 leadership-nominated team members across all Curaleaf departments, along with external partners, chosen due to their passion and dedication to cannabis education. An additional 79 participants, including Curaleaf's executive roundtable participants and other Curaleaf corporate social responsibility "Rooted in Good" partners, will receive access to an online cannabis curriculum as part of Green Flower's new Social Equity in Cannabis program. Most participants have enrolled via an online-only curriculum–built, led, and taught by the renowned Ganjier council. Every participant received a welcome kit, which included a strain journal, as well as a terpene palate training kit and jewelers' loupe. Regular group study sessions are underway to align the cohort on the self-paced online curriculum.

On Dec. 10, the Emerald Cup Harvest Ball will welcome its first Scratch n Sniff packaging.

Humboldt Seed Company (HSC) collaborated with Calaveras County, Calif.-based craft producers One Straw Farm and Burr’s Place to bring the technology to cannabis consumers, said Benjamin Lind, HSC owner and chief science officer.

HSC creates the Scratch n Sniff ink using the actual terpenes extracted from the same batch of cannabis contained in the package, Lind said, adding that it solves the issue of consumers being unable to smell product prior to purchase.

Creating Scratch n Sniff ink from its own genetics, HSC has put Scratch n Sniff advertisements in nationally distributed magazines and applied the ink to their cannabis seed packs since the inception of California’s adult-use cannabis market in January 2018. 

HSC aims to create a richer consumer experience with Scratch n Sniff ink, which Lind said does not include any controlled substances.

“The cost associated with dedicating a portion of a cannabis crop to terpene extraction seemed to scare some of our potential collaborators away, but now with California’s cannabis prices tanking it made perfect sense to our long-time seed customers One Straw Farm and Burr’s Place,” Lind said.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced plans Dec. 6 to clear the records of thousands of residents with low-level cannabis possession convictions.

The move represents a key component of Connecticut’s adult-use cannabis law, which Lamont signed in June 2021.

Records in roughly 44,000 cases will be fully or partially erased in January through an automatic erasure method, according to Lamont’s announcement.

“On Jan. 1, thousands of people in Connecticut will have low-level cannabis convictions automatically erased due to the cannabis legalization bill we enacted last year,” Lamont said in a public statement. “Especially as Connecticut employers seek to fill hundreds of thousands of job openings, an old conviction for low-level cannabis possession should not hold someone back from pursuing their career, housing, professional, and educational aspirations.”

How individuals are granted erasure of their records depends on when they received their conviction. According to Lamont’s announcement convictions will be handled in the following ways:

Hemp-derived THC edibles in Minnesota have been legal for adults 21 and older since July 1, but one manufacturer and two of its retail facilities may be going beyond what the law permits.

The Minnesota Board of Pharmacy filed a civil lawsuit Dec. 5 in Clay County District Court alleging that Moorhead-based Northland Vapor Co. and its dispensaries in Moorhead and Bemidji are in violation of potency limits. Under the law, an “edible cannabinoid product” cannot contain more than 5 milligrams of any hemp-derived THC in a single serving and no more than a total of 50 milligrams per package.

RELATED: Cannabis Edibles and Beverages Containing Hemp-Derived THC Now Legal in Minnesota

The lawsuit claims that officials from the Pharmacy Board and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found edibles from the manufacturer with 100 milligrams of THC per serving (20 times the legal dose) and packages containing 2,500 milligrams of THC (50 times what’s permitted) during a joint investigation Nov. 8. 

That investigation came after the FDA received complaints about “adverse events” associated with Northland Vapor’s “Death by Gummy Bears” delta-8 THC products, allegedly including one death, but the FDA has not determined that the products caused the adverse events, according to a news release from the Pharmacy Board.

“We’re working together with our state partners to protect the public from harmful products,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, FDA principal deputy commissioner, said about the joint investigation in the release.

The Massachusetts Department of Agriculture Resources (MDAR) changed its “Pesticide Use of Marijuana Policy” to allow the use of certain pesticides on cannabis plants if specific requirements are met.

When Massachusetts legalized adult-use cannabis in 2017 (following Question 4’s passage in the 2016 election), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “did not allow the use of a registered pesticide on cannabis or hemp because there were no products labeled for such use.” Therefore, Massachusetts prohibited the use of pesticides on cannabis or hemp, MDAR explained in a recent policy memo.

Following passage of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill), which legalized hemp at the federal level, pesticide manufacturers amended pesticide labels to include hemp, and there are now EPA-registered pesticide products that include hemp, according to the policy memo.

The MDAR wrote in the memo, “MDAR understands that the difference between hemp and marijuana is a legal one and that both originate from the same plant and in many cases are being produced, manufactured, and used for the same purposes (i.e., topical, edible, smokable). Because hemp and marijuana are both cannabis and only distinguished through law by the THC level, MDAR will allow the use on hemp to extend to marijuana as well,” if all of the following conditions are met:

The policy change went into effect Nov. 30.

A 16-member task force in Virginia has recommended stricter rules on hemp-derived delta-8 THC products, suggesting that businesses selling the products should be required to apply for a license to do so.

With convenience stores and smoke shops selling delta-8 in the absence of regulated adult-use cannabis sales, the General Assembly created a task force earlier this year to study the issue, according to a Virginia Mercury report.

The task force has now issued a report to lawmakers to recommend policy changes to better regulate delta-8 THC products in the state.

In addition to requiring businesses selling the products to have a state-issued license, the report recommends harsher penalties for businesses that violate the rules, Virginia Mercury reported.

The task force also recommends a new approach for how Virginia regulates all types of cannabis, according to the news outlet, rather than the current situation with numerous agencies overseeing the industry.

The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (CRC) approved proposed rules for cannabis consumption lounges in a Dec. 2 meeting.

According to the proposed framework, adult-use or medical operators looking to operate a consumption lounge would have to receive approval from its municipality and the CRC. The consumption lounges, limited to individuals aged 21 years and older, could be built indoors or outdoors but must be enclosed.

RELATED: UPDATED: Lotteries on Deck for Nevada’s Cannabis Consumption Lounges

Alcohol and tobacco and food sales would not be permitted onsite; however, consumers could bring in their food or deliver it to the consumption lounge.

The application fee would be $1,000 for all businesses, $1,000 for micro-businesses, and a standard licensing fee for other operators would be $5,000, according to the proposed rules.

According to NJBIZ, CRC Executive Director Jeff Brown said in the meeting, “I truly believe that this rule proposal–like everything else we’ve tried to do–adequately balances both equity and safety.”

WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Dec. 6, 2022 - PRESS RELEASE - Delta 9 Cannabis is pleased to announce the grand opening of its 39th retail store and 17th cannabis store in the Province of Manitoba. Delta 9's newest retail store is in the heart of the busiest shopping district in Dauphin.

"Delta 9 is Manitoba's cannabis store, and we're excited to further expand our retail footprint in rural MB. We will continue to expand our retail portfolio across Canada through organic growth and strategic acquisitions in the coming months," said John Arbuthnot, CEO of Delta 9. "We started 2020 with four retail stores and now have 39 cannabis retail stores across the Canadian Prairies. The company has an aggressive growth strategy to roll additional cannabis retail stores into the Delta 9 retail network over the next year."

Delta 9's welcoming retail cannabis concept, combined with a focus on convenient and high-traffic shopping destinations, has been a successful part of the company's overall vertical integration strategy. Within a 3 km range, the area tenants include Walmart, Shoppers Drug store Canadian Tire, Dollar Tree, and Liquor Mart, along with several restaurants.

The new store is located at 1351 Main St. in Dauphin and is part of a recently built mall. The location offers plenty of free parking spaces and easy access from the street. The new store offers customers a modern shopping décor, highly trained staff, and a wide range of products, including dried cannabis flower, cannabis oil, edibles, drinkables, vape pens, and concentrates. Store hours are 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Delta 9 is pleased to provide online and click-and-collect services for the Dauphin location, like most of our other cannabis stores in Manitoba. With the click of a mouse, customers can browse and sort through a complete inventory of cannabis products and reserve any product. Delta 9's online platform features allow an order to be ready in two hours or less. 

When Jason Sanders first started cultivating cannabis in Mendocino County, California, he thought outdoor, sun-grown cannabis was the industry’s future. But the intervening years triggered a significant shift in his thinking.

“What really caught me by surprise is how the market has gone toward quality, rather than field-grown quantity, and how much the controlled environment dictates quality,” Sanders says.

Now director of cultivation at Austin-based Texas Original, Sanders oversees the medical cannabis company’s controlled-environment cultivation facility and R&D, with an environmental focus that transcends seasons.

“It’s a lot more about the environment every day within the crop’s lifecycle and being able to try to control and optimize that environment in order to create a better quality product,” he says.

Advancing with Controlled Environments

Now approaching four years with Texas Original, Sanders has seen the push for quality drive quantum leaps in indoor and greenhouse environmental controls. “The big thing that’s really changed for us in the industry is data collection. We have a lot more data from control companies now,” he explains.

ROCKLAND, Maine, December 6, 2022 - PRESS RELEASE - Sweet Dirt, a Maine-based, vertically integrated cannabis company, today announced the opening of a new location at 305 Main Street, Rockland, Maine. The new recreational cannabis store opened its doors at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 3.

The Rockland location is the company’s fourth recreational cannabis store and its first store in Knox County. The company’s other adult-use stores can be found in Portland, Waterville, and Bridgton. The 1,800-square-foot Rockland retail store has undergone extensive renovations, transforming the space into a warm and beautiful showroom with nods to Rockland’s coastal surroundings.

Located in the heart of mid-coast Maine, Rockland is the gateway to Penobscot Bay and home to a vibrant downtown featuring unique shopping experiences, cafes, restaurants, and renown art museums and galleries.

“Rockland is quintessential coastal Maine,” says Jim Henry, chief executive officer of Sweet Dirt. “With its vibrant walkable downtown, reputation as an arts mecca, and community known for supporting locally and carefully crafted goods, Rockland has long been a dream destination for locals and visitors – and for Sweet Dirt.”

Sweet Dirt Rockland sits at the entrance to downtown and will feature a carefully curated selection of Maine-grown and Maine-made products including flower, prerolls, edibles, concentrates, hemp, CBD, and ancillary products. Sweet Dirt, known for its own line of products, will also offer its own family of brands highlighting their organically grown cannabis which is certified clean by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA).

Sweet Dirt Rockland will be open daily, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., for adults aged 21 and older. Online ordering is available at www.sweetdirt.com.

Cannabis cultivators growing under lights in controlled indoor or greenhouse environments traditionally have relied on top lighting to achieve their goals. But as cannabis lighting research has pushed those goals to new heights, interest in alternative lighting options has grown.

More than half of the participants in Cannabis Business Times’ 2022 “State of the Cannabis Lighting Market Report” research, made possible with support from Fluence, plan to investigate lighting options such as side, intercanopy and subcanopy lighting this coming year. So where’s a grower to start?

For insights and answers, we turned to Fluence principal scientist David Hawley, Ph.D., for more on these still-uncommon lighting types. “Very, very few growers are actually doing this at a commercial scale, although quite a few commercial growers are experimenting with these alternatives,” Hawley says. “So far, anecdotally, I’ve heard very promising things.”

Understanding Lighting Differences

When exploring supplemental lighting options, it’s important to understand their differences and intended roles. For starters, Hawley emphasizes that supplemental lighting alternatives are meant to augment top lighting—not replace it.

“Plants have evolved in a world where light is coming from the top, and the most active photosynthetic area of the canopy is the top,” he explains. That makes top lighting your priority across the board. But intercanopy, subcanopy or side lighting can be valuable additions when you understand their purpose.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Dec. 6, 2022 – PRESS RELEASE – Trulieve Cannabis Corp., a leading and top-performing cannabis company in the United States, announced the official launch of Khalifa Kush premium medical cannabis products statewide in all Trulieve branded Pennsylvania retail locations starting Dec. 12, 2022. This is an exclusive partnership with multiplatinum selling, GRAMMY and Golden Globe Award-nominated recording artist Wiz Khalifa.

To celebrate the product launch on 12/12, a date designated as "Wiz Khalifa Day" by the Pittsburgh City Council, Khalifa will be on-site at the Trulieve Pittsburgh-Squirrel Hill and Trulieve Washington locations to meet with medical cannabis patients.

Trulieve will also be hosting pop-up events on Dec. 12 from noon to 6 p.m., where customers will have a chance to receive Khalifa Kush branded swag and educational materials at the following dispensaries:

"It's super cool to be able to sell KK legally in Pittsburgh and because they know it's Wiz's, it's going to be bomb, of course it's gonna drive the city and the state crazy," Khalifa said. "Trulieve is the perfect partner for us because of its commitment to providing the highest quality products and best possible patient experiences." 

Khalifa Kush products are also available in Trulieve owned and operated locations in Florida and Arizona and will soon be available in Maryland.

"Trulieve is excited to expand our partnership with the iconic Wiz Khalifa as an exclusive partner to curate and promote his unique product line exclusively in his home state of Pennsylvania," Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers said. "As an artist, he has such a strong vision of how he wants to express himself. Together, we've created a line of products that offer best-in-class medical marijuana to Pennsylvania patients and represent the passion and creativity for which Wiz Khalifa is known."

A two-day hearing over the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency’s (CRA) decision to suspend a Flint-based cannabis retailer’s license has resulted in a judge upholding the suspension.

As previously reported by Cannabis Business Times, state regulators suspended the medical and adult-use licenses for GC Flint LLC, which does business as Green Culture, Nov. 15 after issuing a health and safety bulletin the same day to alert consumers about allegedly unregulated and contaminated cannabis products sold by the company between Feb. 10 and Sept. 30.

The affected products included prerolls labeled as “Moonrock Blunt” that did not have identifying tags through Metrc, Michigan’s seed-to-sale tracking system.

CRA investigators received a complaint Aug. 27 that claimed Green Culture sold caregiver product that did not have test results or Metrc tagging, and during a Sept. 28 visit, the Green Culture team told CRA investigators that the MoonRock prerolls were 100% hemp-extracted CBD containing less than 0.3% THC.

The following day, investigators conducted an audit of all untested product reported in Metrc to be at Green Culture’s Flint dispensary and allegedly discovered that roughly 58 pounds of caregiver product entered into Metrc could not be located at the facility.

RIJSWIJK, THE NETHERLANDS, December 1, 2022 - Today, global testing, inspection and certification (TIC) company Kiwa announced the merger with St. Louis-based ASI LLC to the Kiwa Group to strengthen Kiwa’s U.S. footprint significantly in providing Food, Feed & Farm certifications.

ASI, a leading food safety solutions company located in the Midwest region of the U.S., has provided farm-to-fork food safety solutions since the 1940s. Based in St. Louis, America’s epicenter for consumer packaged goods, ASI offers a full suite of safety and quality services to the food and beverage, dietary supplements and, most recently, cannabis industries.

“Kiwa and ASI share similar customer-first business values and follow the same business model when it comes to testing, inspection and certification. By joining the Kiwa family, we’re combining their wide portfolio of accreditations and services (BRC, IFS, FSSC, PrimusGFS, GLOBALG.A.P., Rainforest Alliance, MSC/ASC, Organic/USDA and many others), their global business network and expertise with our client network in farm-to-fork food safety to assist our growing client base in North America even better,” said Charray Williams, CEO of ASI.

“Not only is this merger increasing our notoriety as a historically family-owned operation, it also strengthens ASI being privy to the evolving certification needs of emerging industries. Our accredited CSQ (Cannabis Safety and Quality) standard for the legalized use of cannabis ingredients into (food) products in the US market is an example of us capturing evolving certification needs. We are excited to share these types of cutting-edge insights with the Kiwa team, as well as supporting them globally with our SQF expertise in various countries across the globe, especially in Australia,” said Tyler Williams, CTO of ASI. Tyler Williams will officially succeed Charray Williams as CEO Jan. 1, 2023, and will lead the expansion of Kiwa and ASI in the Food, Feed & Farm sector in North America.

From pre-harvest to retail, ASI offers inspections, accredited certifications, training, consulting, and standards development. Standards covered include various global schemes recognized by the GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) like SQF (the Safe Quality Food Program), and cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices), cGAP (current Good Agricultural Practices) complimented by custom second-party audits.

Kiwa is investing in ASI’s growth as a new member of the international Kiwa Group, and its global Food, Feed & Farm network. Together, the companies will collaboratively expand their reach and strengthen services both regionally and globally.

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission revoked a medical cannabis cultivation license last week following a Nov. 3 court ruling, but the state’s Supreme Court weighed in Dec. 1, blocking regulators from acting on the initial court orders.

Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission Director Doralee Chandler revoked the license, which was issued to Fort Smith-based River Valley Relief in July 2020, in a procedural action Nov. 28. The move came after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright ruled Nov. 3 to uphold a claim by 2600 Holdings that regulators granted the license in error.

2600 Holdings filed the lawsuit in January 2021, asking the court to disqualify River Valley Relief based on claims that the license was issued to the company’s owner, Storm Nolan, in error during the state’s second round of cultivation licensing.

The plaintiff alleged that the incorporation in Nolan’s first application was no longer valid and that the proposed cultivation site was too close to Sebastian County Juvenile Detention Center, violating a provision in Arkansas’ medical cannabis law that requires the operations to be at least 3,000 feet away from a school, church or daycare.

While Wright blocked Nolan from participating in the case, the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, which houses the Medical Marijuana Commission, filed a 36-page rebuttal. At the Nov. 28 hearing where Chandler revoked River Valley Relief’s license, Nolan and his attorney, Matthew Horan, claimed that there is no evidence to suggest that the juvenile detention facility is operated by a public school.

The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) has issued a mandatory recall for cannabis extracts that potentially contain pesticides.

The products were manufactured by OLCC-licensed businesses operating under the names Bobsled and Quantum Alchemy, and the contamination stems from the companies’ failure to follow OLCC and Oregon Health Authority (OHA) regulations for tracking and isolating cannabis products that tested positive for the presence of pesticides, according to an OLCC news release.

The recall impacts 13,600 products that were sold to consumers, as well as 9,300 products that were still on dispensary shelves. The recalled products are concentrates ranging from jars of THC extract and vape cartridges to Rick Simpson Oil, according to the release.

Regulators issued the recall to ensure that dispensaries do not sell—and consumers do not consume—the affected products, as OLCC investigators have been unable to determine whether the potential contamination is isolated or widespread through the product lines.

The OLCC has notified cannabis retailers about the recall and provided instructions on how the affected products must be destroyed or returned to a licensed supplier for proper disposal. Regulators plan to follow up with the licensees in possession of the recalled products to ensure they are removed from the market, isolated from other inventory and ultimately destroyed in accordance with OLCC rules.

DENVER, Dec. 5, 2022 /CNW/ - PRESS RELEASE - Schwazze, a vertically integrated, multi-state operating cannabis company with assets in Colorado and New Mexico, announces the grand opening of its adult-use dispensary, R.Greenleaf, located in Los Lunas, N.M. The new store, located at 2245 Main Street in Los Lunas, officially opened its doors for business on Dec. 1. Store operating hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday.

The Los Lunas R.Greenleaf store opening continues the deliberate expansion throughout the state of New Mexico and comes on the heels of the store opening just one week ago in Sunland Park which followed two store openings in Ruidoso and Clovis in the last 60 days. This brings R.Greenleaf's total number of New Mexico retail dispensaries to 14. All locations serve the needs of medical patients as well as recreational adult-use consumers.

RELATED: Schwazze Opens an Additional Cannabis Dispensary in New Mexico Located in Sunland Park, Brings Total R. Greenleaf Store Count to 13

"We are thrilled to be opening up the second R.Greenleaf dispensary in New Mexico within one week's time. The team has been incredibly hard at work to make this happen," said Steve Pear, New Mexico Division President for Schwazze. "R.Greenleaf, offering a wide variety of quality products serviced by top-notch, knowledgeable staff, has grown from 10 locations to now 14 in New Mexico since Schwazze purchased the retail banner earlier this year."

A grand opening celebration of Los Lunas R.Greenleaf will be held on Saturday, Dec. 17, beginning at 10 a.m. and running until 3 p.m. Swag bags will be available to the first 50 shoppers featuring a tote bag, branded rolling papers and other R.Greenleaf gear. DJ Sonya G will be on site during the event to provide tunes for all in attendance, and Ribs Hickory Pit BBQ will provide free pulled pork sandwiches for the first 50 customers making a purchase.

R.Greenleaf Los Lunas will also offer introductory pricing on flower, edibles, and vapes beginning on the 17th and continuing through Dec. 24. Enrollment in the Gratify Rewards loyalty program is already open. Gratify Rewards members that make a purchase of any amount on Dec. 17 will automatically be entered to win a $100 R.Greenleaf gift card.