MjLink Cannabis Business News and Press
Well, it's now clear how a lot of Oregonians got through their first month of quarantine: by smoking a lot of weed.
Sales data from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission show Oregonians bought $84.5 million worth of cannabis products in March —the most in a single month since the state legalized recreational use in 2015.
The previous record, set in July 2019, was just shy of $80 million.
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Matthew Singer ~ Willamette Week ~
The results of a world-first study at The University of Western Australia have shown that medicinal cannabis can be used as a novel treatment for adults suffering from chronic insomnia.
Around one in three Australians has regular difficulty getting to sleep and the sedation effect brought on by medicinal cannabis is believed to be an alternative treatment for those experiencing the condition.
The study was coordinated through the UWA Centre for Sleep Science using a cannabinoid extract provided by Zelira Therapeutics, an Australian medical research and development company.
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University of Western Australia ~
OKLAHOMA: Beginning July 1st, all marijuana product sold by a grower or processor will be required to be tested by an Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) licensed laboratory. The mandatory testing requirements were created by the Oklahoma Legislature and went into effect on Nov 1st, 2019. Since that time, the OMMA has been creating the Read the full article...
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the day-to-day operations of cannabis cultivators, dispensaries and industry suppliers, according to recent survey conducted by Cannabis Business Times at the end of March.
More than half of participants (54%) responded “a great deal” or “a lot” when asked “How much of an impact has the COVID-19 outbreak had on your operation?” Only 5% of participants said the outbreak did not have any effect on their businesses.
Participants included cultivators and vertically integrated cannabis companies (48%), medical and adult-use dispensary representatives (30%), processors (15%) and suppliers (10%).
Nearly three-fourths of cannabis companies surveyed reside in areas that are under a stay-at-home mandate. However, 76% indicated their companies are still providing normal services, and 64% live in areas where cannabis businesses are considered essential, which has boded well for many in the industry.
“So far in Oregon, there has been very little day-to-day change for our business as cannabis was deemed an essential business operation,” one participant wrote in a comment section. “However, we are paying close attention and taking this day by day. Folks are buying cannabis products now, but if many continue to be out of work, who knows what that will do to the market.”
When it comes to staffing changes, results are a mixed bag, as 52% reported no change, 29% have had to reduce employee hours and 13% have had to lay off employees. Another 5% have actually increased staff hours during the pandemic.
Our media team at Cannabis Business Times, Cannabis Dispensary, Hemp Grower and Cannabis Conference is pleased the announce the launch of the Risk Mitigation Virtual Conference—the first in a series of virtual events throughout 2020 that will bring the industry-leading education right to your home or office.
The Risk Mitigation Virtual Conference will be held April 23, 2020 from 1 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. EDT. The event will be free to registrants, who will hear from cultivation and dispensary operators and other industry experts on the following topics:
• How to Create a Disaster Preparedness Plan
• Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Outbreak
• Critical Finances - Protecting Your Cash Flow
The cannabis industry has not been immune to 2020’s unprecedented global challenges to human health and economies. In fact, it has proven to be an essential service in these trying times to provide cannabis medicine to those in need.
As the coronavirus continues to permeate every corner of daily life, it’s led to a crossroads for the newly developing cannabidiol (CBD) industry.
At a time when consumers are focusing on their health, searching for anxiety-easing solutions and ramping up their self-care routines in quarantine, CBD seems perfectly situated to fit the bill.
But some alternative forces are at play. As CBD slowly steps into the mainstream, it exposes itself to broader commercial disruptions of closing retailers and supply chain hang-ups amid new economic pressures.
Those who have an online presence have fared well so far, but smaller companies and those without online sales may have greater challenges ahead.
Consumer Interest and Trends
Of all the confusion revolving around COVID-19, at least one thing is certain: Consumers are stockpiling necessities.
After cannabis businesses were deemed essential in nearly every state in which vertically integrated multistate operator Curaleaf operates, VP of Retail Chris Melillo felt a greater responsibility to create a safe environment for the company’s patients, customers and employees.
“Everybody’s going through a lot right now,” Melillo tells Cannabis Business Times. “None of us have a roadmap or a game plan of how to address this. We’re all leaning on courageous leadership and … experience from crisis management in the past, and really just trying to absorb that responsibility, calm your team and be there for your patients.”
Curaleaf operates 54 dispensaries across 17 U.S. states and has maintained strict compliance with each jurisdiction’s sanitation and social distancing requirements. The company has set new SOPs to adjust to these uncertain times, but Melillo says making a standard, one-size-fits-all policy across all its operations has been difficult.
“You’re really over-indexing and getting pretty granular state by state to make sure that the changes that you make apply to all,” he says.
The company’s internal SOPs are designed to exceed each state’s minimum requirements, Melillo says, and Curaleaf’s management teams have been instructed to ensure that the company’s cleaning standards are followed in each of its facilities.
Effective immediately, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has descheduled GW Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex, an anti-epileptic drug that contains cannabidiol (CBD).
Initially, following approval from the DEA in 2018, Epidiolex was listed under Schedule V.
At the time, many industry stakeholders stressed that this move did not reschedule CBD alone as a Schedule-V substance. CBD, as a single compound, remained under Schedule I with the rest of the cannabis plant. (Shortly after Epidiolex was approved, the U.S. Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill and legalized hemp. CBD derived from hemp, then, was removed from the list of controlled substances. Still, CBD derived from cannabis plants that contain more than 0.3% THC remained Schedule-I.)
By then, though, the fact that CBD was listed as an active ingredient in an approved pharmaceutical drug prevented it from being added freely to food and beverages. It would be comparable to adding acetaminophen to a latte: not permitted under federal law.
Thus, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began its ongoing quest to understand and regulate CBD. This process continues to this day, leaving CBD product manufacturers in a sort of limbo as hemp producers and state-legal cannabis growers operate further up the supply chain.
In the meantime, the Schedule-V classification for Epidiolex began to change the way that regulators might conceive of a drug that contains CBD. Those drugs are seen as having a proven medical use and a low potential for abuse (like Robitussin-AC, for another example, which contains codeine and is listed under Schedule V).
In an unusual turn, NIDA will pay researchers up to $100K per year to find out if smoking weed impacts COVID-19 symptoms.
Earlier this week, Canadian doctors announced their interest in researching whether properties found in the cannabis plant, including cannabinoids and terpenes, could cure COVID-19 symptoms.
Now, the American government also wants scientists to study the relationship between marijuana and coronavirus, though not in the same way.
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Brendan Bures ~ TheFreshToast.com ~
Smart and Safe Arizona is one of four ballot initiative campaigns in the state that filed a petition April 2 to ask the Arizona Supreme Court to allow the campaigns to gather electronic signatures amid the COVID-19 crisis, according to Ballotpedia.
The petition asks the court to allow Smart and Safe Arizona, Arizonans for Second Chances, Invest in Education, and Save Our Schools Arizona to collect signatures digitally through E-Qual, the state’s online signature collection platform. E-Qual is currently available for federal, statewide and legislative candidates, but not for ballot initiatives, according to Ballotpedia.
No states currently allow ballot initiative campaigns to collect signatures electronically, and the Arizona campaigns are not the first to face obstacles due to the coronavirus outbreak; at least 15 campaigns in eight states have suspended their signatures drives as of April 2, Ballotpedia reported.
Smart and Safe Arizona had collected more than 320,000 of the 356,467 required signatures as of March 27, according to a Tuscon.com report, although only 237,645 were valid.
Physician-led online marketplace offers discount of 20-50% on select products for frontline workers, seniors and financially strained CANADA: In response to the closure of storefront retailers due to COVID-19, online marketplace Cannalogue announced today a new Compassionate Care Program that seeks to provide better access to medical cannabis for all Canadians. Qualified candidates including first responders, seniors, nurses, teachers, Read the full article...
The Ohio Board of Pharmacy issued guidance April 3 that allows the state’s medical cannabis dispensaries to offer curbside pickup to their customers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Under the new rules, retailers can conduct medical cannabis sales in their parking lots or on the sidewalks outside of their stores, so patients do not have to enter the dispensary or even leave their cars. Dispensaries can also offer sales at walk-up or drive-thru windows, but all transactions must occur on the dispensary’s property and must be under the coverage of the dispensary’s security cameras, according to the guidance.
Delivery is still prohibited under the new rules.
Last month, the Ohio Board of Pharmacy issued additional guidance to help the state’s patients maintain access to medical cannabis during the COVID-19 outbreak, including a temporary expansion of caregiver registration, new photo identification requirements, and rules that allow patients and caregivers to place phone orders with dispensaries.
Up until the April 3 rule change, however, all patients still had to enter a dispensary to pay for and pick up their medical cannabis products.
When Global Cannabinoids CEO Ryan Lewis saw increased demand for hand sanitizer in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, he immediately saw an opportunity to transition his CBD operations to hand sanitizer production to help address the supply shortage.
“In January, while we were analyzing search results online, we noticed a spike in hand sanitizer,” Lewis tells Cannabis Business Times. “We were looking at consumer products in certain categories that we could potentially add cannabinoids into, like animal health products, skincare products, personal care products [and] cosmetics. So, we see hand sanitizer. … Places are selling out. Prices are going up. [We said], ‘You know what? Let’s launch a CBD hand sanitizer.’”
Global Cannabinoids, a B2B producer, manufacturer and distributor of American-grown, hemp-derived cannabinoids, then formed a new entity, Global Sanitizers LLC, and directed its large supply of ethanol to hand sanitizer manufacturing.
While Global Sanitizers had no shortage of the ethanol used in its hemp extraction process, only certain types of ethanol, 40-B and 3-C denatured ethanol, are approved by the FDA for topical use, Lewis said. The company worked quickly with its partners to secure hundreds of thousands of gallons of these types of ethanol, and sent CBD to its manufacturing facilities to produce the infused sanitizer in bulk.
Global Sanitizers’ line of hand sanitizers is now being sold to big box retailers under the “Medically Minded” brand, and in the past week alone, the company has secured over $15 million in orders.
This week, a proposal to legalize adult-use cannabis was stripped from the New York state budget after Gov. Andrew Cuomo said there was “too little time” to fine-tune the plan ahead of an April 1 deadline to approve the sprawling budget. Elsewhere, in Mexico, Senators have asked the Supreme Court to extend an April 30 deadline for lawmakers to draft a cannabis legalization bill.
Here, we’ve rounded up the 10 headlines you need to know before this week is over.
Federal: The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) has released a request for information, inviting comments from “the scientific community and other interested parties,” to help establish a standard dose for THC to improve cannabis research. Responses to this request for information must be submitted electronically and received by May 1, 2020. Read moreOhio: As part of its coronavirus response, the Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program has issued new guidance to help patients maintain access to medical cannabis. Medical cannabis dispensaries are considered essential and can remain open under the state’s stay at home order, but the Board of Pharmacy has announced temporary guidelines to help keep patients and dispensary employees safe during the pandemic. Read moreMassachusetts: The Cannabis Control Commission has indicated that the state’s medical cannabis dispensaries will be able to provide curbside pickup to patients and caregivers during the coronavirus outbreak. Last week, Gov. Charlie Baker deemed medical cannabis businesses essential, allowing them to remain open as the state responds to the pandemic, but as of March 28, retailers must conduct sales electronically or over the phone and dispense medical cannabis products either in the facility’s parking lot or at the entrance of the dispensary. Read moreIllinois: Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed an executive order that extends the deadline for cannabis infuser, craft grower and transporter license applications from March 30 to April 30. All applications must now be submitted by certified mail by April 30, and licenses will ultimately be awarded by July 1. Read moreMissouri: Missourians for a New Approach is up against a May deadline to collect enough signatures for a petition to place an adult-use cannabis legalization initiative on Missouri’s November ballot, but the coronavirus pandemic could very easily spell doom for these efforts. Missouri law does not allow for the electronic collection of signatures, but Missourians for a New Approach is currently assessing other options to keep the campaign afloat. Read moreMinnesota: Gov. Tim Walz issued an executive order March 31 that extends medical cannabis enrollments for patients to limit the spread of COVID-19. Patient enrollments are extended until Aug. 1 or 60 days after Minnesota’s peacetime emergency ends, whichever is later. Read moreCalifornia: An audit of Los Angeles’ cannabis licensing process has determined that the city took “reasonable and appropriate” steps to ensure fairness. A city official is now recommending that the city’s Department of Cannabis Regulation move forward with awarding final licenses to cannabis retailers, who have been waiting since the licensing process was suspended last year. Read moreNew York: A proposal to legalize adult-use cannabis was stripped from the New York state budget after Gov. Andrew Cuomo said there was “too little time” to fine-tune the plan ahead of an April 1 deadline to approve the sprawling budget. As in many other areas of the country, the COVID-19 crisis has stolen the spotlight in New York, and Cuomo has been placing his attention on the virus since the state’s first confirmed case was reported March 1. Read moreOklahoma: Rep. Scott Fetgatter has announced plans to begin work on an adult-use cannabis legalization bill, saying a taxed and regulated market would provide a new source of revenue for the state in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several groups are competing to bring adult-use cannabis legalization initiatives to Oklahoma’s November 2020 ballot in the form of SQ 807, SQ 808 and SQ 811, but Fetgatter has indicated that the petitions will likely be unsuccessful, especially in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Read moreInternational: Senators in Mexico have asked the Supreme Court to extend an April 30 deadline for lawmakers to draft a bill to legalize and regulate cannabis for medical, adult and industrial uses. Both the Senate and the Supreme Court have suspended many legislative procedures until at least mid-April due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and many lawmakers have indicated that this will cause them to miss deadlines to pass certain bills, including the cannabis legislation, which has been stalled since three Senate committees approved the bill last month. Read moreNEW YORK, April 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PRESS RELEASE -- Acreage Holdings, Inc. has announced a series of operational updates and strategic business decisions related to the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other uncontrollable factors that have greatly shifted the cannabis landscape. The moves are intended to enable the company to maintain its business goals of profitability, conserve cash and to execute its strategic plan.
Acreage’s management executed the following initiatives:
Temporarily furloughed 122 employees across both the corporate office and field operations teamsTemporarily closed certain operations, including: one dispensary in each of Maryland and North Dakota; wholesale operations in Iowa; and Form Factory operations in California, Oregon, and WashingtonConverted its dispensary in Queens, New York, to a delivery hubTerminated the securities purchase agreement among Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center, Inc., GCCC Management, LLC (GCCCM), the equity holders of GCCCM and High Street Capital Partners, LLC relating to the proposed acquisition of a dispensary in Rhode IslandAdditionally, the merger agreement entered into with Deep Roots Medical, LLC, as described in the company’s April 18, 2019 press release, was terminated due to the ongoing moratorium imposed by the Nevada Department of Taxation. The delay prevented the parties from obtaining the consents, approvals and authorizations necessary to consummate the merger prior to the outside date provided in the merger agreement.
Acreage also announced the resignation of Steve Hardardt, the company’s Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer and Administration, effective immediately.
With the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in a virtual shutdown of significant parts of the United States that is expected to continue for at least the next month and possibly longer, continued construction and regulatory delays in Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Michigan and elsewhere, and in anticipation of a significant economic downturn that will have a yet-to-be-measured impact on the U.S. cannabis industry, the company re-evaluated its business plan and determined its most prudent path toward profitability.
We all need to make money to survive. Some ways of making money are more comfortable when compared to others. If you’re someone who wouldn’t like to work a nine-hour shift to bring home money, then this article is perfect for you. Allow us to apprise you of 4 plants you can grow in your Read the full article...
As a primary care doctor who has incorporated medical cannabis into his practice, it is notable how many silver-haired patients are coming in to discuss the pros and cons of a trial of medical cannabis.
These patients range from people in their 60s with kidney failure who can no longer take certain pain medications but still need to manage chronic pain, to patients in their 90s, who are looking for a good night’s sleep and are leery of the side effects of traditional sleep medications.
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Peter Grinspoon, MD ~ Health.Harvard.edu ~
Cannabis companies that were planning to host elaborate monthlong celebrations around 4/20 have been forced to change plans and are turning to virtual parties that include specials and giveaways.
Gone are large gatherings of people celebrating the unofficial April 20 cannabis holiday.
The pivot has proved costly and forced companies to scramble.
Some marijuana businesses, for example, have already forked over thousands of dollars for events and concerts that no longer will happen.
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As a medical cannabis patient and caregiver, Aaron “Roy” Scalia understands the power cannabis has to benefit those who are suffering.
After sustaining a brain injury in a motorcycle accident in 2002, Scalia turned to medical cannabis during his recovery, and in 2015, he founded AAA Pharmaceutical Alternatives as a licensed medical caregiver to serve patients in central Maine.
“Through the use of CBD and THC, I’ve been able to really cope with everything that I’ve been faced with and because of that, I’m able to help others,” Scalia tells Cannabis Business Times. “People can relate because they may have had an accident or they’ve been through trauma in their lives, [and] we can share our stories. … I can talk about things that helped me and a lot of times, it helps them.”
When Maine voters legalized adult-use cannabis in 2016, Scalia saw it as an opportunity to expand his reach beyond the state’s registered patient base.
“We’ve been servicing people in the medical marijuana care industry for the past five years, and it’s been great,” he says. “With the new market getting ready to explode in Maine, we want to be able to offer our products to everybody, not just the people who have medical marijuana cards.”
According to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, adult-use cannabis sales hit $35,902,543.22 in March.
The department said the numbers do not includes taxes collected.
In February, total sales were $34,805,072, and in January sales reached $39,247,840.83.
As for March, the IDFPR said most sales came from Illinois residents; $27,096,931.23. Out of state buyers spent $8,805,611.99.
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