MjLink Cannabis Business News and Press

As cannabis legalization continues to sweep the nation—and the world—those already immersed in traditional greenhouse agriculture may consider converting their facilities to support this new crop. However, growing cannabis or hemp might require more adjustments to existing operations than initially anticipated, and comes with its own unique crop needs, growing conditions and regulations.

Dr. Nadia Sabeh, president and founder of Dr. Greenhouse Inc., an agricultural and mechanical engineering firm that specializes in the design of HVAC systems for indoor plant environments, has dedicated her career to helping farmers control their environments to grow crops indoors, in greenhouses and in locations that would otherwise make it impossible or impractical to do so. Here, she shares advice on how to successfully make the switch from growing traditional crops to cannabis or hemp in a greenhouse environment.

Cannabis Business Times: What are some things that greenhouse growers should take into consideration when deciding whether to expand their operations into cannabis or hemp?

Nadia Sabeh: I think one of the main considerations is, what were you growing before? [Can] the setup and the design of that greenhouse serve cannabis or hemp? If you were growing vining crops before that were tall and required maybe a similar climate management system and lighting requirements, such as tomatoes, and wanted to convert that greenhouse to grow cannabis or hemp, a lot of the environmental requirements are similar to both of those crops. You need a certain temperature and humidity to have high quality and high yield for that crop. So, the conversion from tomatoes to cannabis is pretty simple, and you don’t have to make a bunch of major changes.

Now, if in that greenhouse, you were growing orchids or even lettuce, the setup is going to be very different. You might not have needed supplemental lighting. The plants might have liked it more humid. The growing system might be very different. Lettuce might have been grown in deep water culture and in rafts, and now you want to rip all that up so you can put benches down for cannabis. So, I think one of the biggest considerations is what was grown before, and is it an easy conversion to grow this new plant, cannabis or hemp?

In addition to that, I know a lot of people in California have purchased old ornamental greenhouses that had wood frames and old plastic coverings, and I think what a lot of growers discovered—too late maybe—[is that] a wood structure is a lot more susceptible to rot, mold and rain. If you’re converting that greenhouse from a crop that didn’t need a lot of light, you might want to replace that [plastic cover with a] cover that’s more transparent to the PAR spectrum that the hemp or cannabis plant will enjoy more.

One of the great problems facing hemp growers in early 2020 is the lack of processing facilities around the U.S., a supply chain bottleneck that puts farmers without a clear marketplace for their product at a distinct disadvantage. Whether you’re working in Virginia or elsewhere, the supply chain needs a boost.

To get things moving in Halifax County—a southern, inland stretch of land that shares a border with North Carolina—the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission approved a $250,000 grant on Tuesday, Jan. 7, to bring a hemp processing business to the area. The enterprise is code-named “Project Phoenix.”

Halifax County Industrial Development Authority Executive Director Brian Brown could not offer a comment, saying only that this remained an unannounced economic development project. But according to news reports from the area, the IDA will adapt a local building to be leased to a private hemp processing company. Further incentive packages continue to be negotiated. 

In the interim, the news brings a tentative sigh of relief to a corner of Virginia dominated by agricultural businesses. Virginia farmers were licensed to grow 135 acres of hemp in 2018, but interest in the crop quickly picked up. In 2019, farmers were licensed to grow 11,000 acres. Project Phoenix is seen as a way of galvanizing that interest in the coming years—and offering something of a landing pad to the regional supply chain. According to the Danville Register and Bee, the Project Phoenix facility “is projected to purchase and process upward of $50 million worth of hemp from Virginia farmers within the first three years.”

Reporter Caleb Ayers points out that the grant application specifically cites “68 hemp producers at an average of 15 acres apiece” as a figure for what to expect from Project Phoenix when it gets up and running.

That capacity for taking on new contracts will give farmers a better shot at finding a buyer for their product. Many Virginia hemp growers (and hemp growers working in other states) ended the 2019 season without a contract on which to pin their harvested biomass.

OHIO: The State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy today awarded a Dispensary Certificate of Operation to Ohio Grown Therapies, located at 1246 N. 21st St., Newark. The Board has now issued 48 Dispensary Certificates of Operation. The interactive map of Dispensaries with Certificates of Operation will be updated within two business days.

When George Sadler, president of Platinum, a California-based cannabis product manufacturer that distributes products in both California and Michigan, started receiving messages on social media from its Michigan customers about vape cartridges not meeting their expectations, he suspected that counterfeits of the company’s products were being sold at unauthorized retailers, and he immediately started looking for ways to stay one step ahead of the counterfeiters.

“We started receiving stuff on social media saying, ‘Hey, I bought this cartridge [and] it doesn’t taste right. This isn’t a Platinum vape. What are you guys doing?’” Sadler told Cannabis Dispensary. “We … started to look around and started asking questions [like], ‘Where did you purchase this product?’ Then we realized, they were purchasing from stores that were not licensed and we had not done any distribution to. We had flown out there, and we started hitting these stores.”

Sadler’s main concern was consumer health. Generally, when cannabis products are counterfeited, untested product is produced on the illicit market and placed in an established cannabis brand’s packaging, which is duplicated and sold on illicit websites.

“You can actually go [online], type in ‘Platinum vapes,’ the packaging comes up, and you can purchase that packaging,” Sadler said. “Then it’s just a matter of getting some cheap, untested oil. … They don’t care what’s in it. They just fill it and know there’s a demand for it, and the stores that are not licensed have no issues with carrying that because it’s a selling point in their stores.”

These untested, counterfeit products, which could contain pesticides or other negative residuals, then end up in unknowing customers’ hands, which could be damaging for their health, as well as the brand’s reputation.

An audit of the Minnesota Health Department’s controls and compliance has revealed several ways that the state’s medical cannabis program is not being correctly monitored, according to a Duluth News Tribune report.

The Office of the Legislative Auditor, the state’s legislative watchdog, examined the program’s operations from July 2016 through December 2018, the news outlet reported, and found the following issues:

Failure to verify new patients’ doctors were licensed and in good standing;Poor record-keeping for parent and guardian eligibility for the program;Problems with oversight of patient fees collected by the state;Inadequate oversight of cannabis manufacturers, including failure to adequately track and test the drug prior to sale; andToo few controls to detect loss of medical cannabis by the manufacturer.

The audit did not include an evaluation of Minnesota’s two licensed medical cannabis operators, LeafLine Labs and Minnesota Medical Solutions, the Duluth News Tribune reported.

Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm submitted a response to the audit, indicating that health officials agree with the findings and that they have made efforts throughout the past year to improve their oversight of the program, and that further improvements may require legislative action, according to the news outlet.

Minnesota lawmakers approved a medical cannabis law in 2014, and the program now has roughly 17,000 patients, according to the Duluth News Tribune.

Florida Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-Pinellas County) filed legislation Jan. 13 that would legalize adult-use cannabis in the state, according to a local NBC2 report.

The move comes after two political action committees suspended their efforts to get legalization initiatives on the state’s 2020 ballot.

The groups are now looking toward 2022 ballot initiatives, NBC2 reported, but Brandes hopes to legalize cannabis legislatively before then.

“We think the better place to have that conversation is through the legislative process and so in order to be able to do that you need a piece of legislation,” he told the news outlet.

Brandes’ bill aims to incorporate small businesses in an adult-use industry in the state, according to NBC2, and the legislation also includes expungement provisions for those convicted of simple cannabis possession.

Place your beer down and pass the joint around. That may be a regular sentence in any of the universities based in states that have legalized the use of marijuana.

A study by Oregon State University (OSU) has discovered that undergraduate students aged 18 to 26 are smoking more and more marijuana in legalized states.

In contrast, they're binge drinking less and less. The study was published on Monday in Addiction.

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Fabienne Lang ~ InterestingEngineering.com ~ 

A state-best $9.8 million in marijuana tax revenue was collected by Nevada in October, according to the Nevada Department of Taxation, which regulates the industry.

The total, the largest since recreational sales began legal in July 2017, represents an increase of more than $1 million from September and a jump of close to $1.6 million from the October 2018.

The state collects on a 15% wholesale cultivation and production tax, along with a 10% excise tax on retail sales.

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Bryan Horwath ~ LasVegasSun.com ~ 

'The findings are astounding and present a national challenge,' says doctor.

Approximately 1.4m British people are using “street cannabis” to treat medically-diagnosed chronic health conditions, a poll has found.

Previous research estimated between 50,000 and 1.1m people in the UK regularly use cannabis bought illegally as a form of medicinal treatment.

However, according to a new study of the “largest ever polling sample”, a greater number than estimated are purchasing cannabis outside of the law as a means of treating chronic health issues.

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A House panel on Wednesday is set to examine some of the barriers to marijuana research amid a growing disconnect between federal and state policies.

“There is a chasm between the federal laws and what over 30 states are doing,” Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) told The Hill in an interview Tuesday.

Eshoo, the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, said she wants to hear officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency explain why the federal government is potentially blocking research into the effects of marijuana.

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Nathaniel Weixel ~ TheHill.com ~ 

After last year’s failed attempt at cannabis legalization in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is renewing his push for policy reform in 2020.

The Democrat vowed to legalize adult-use cannabis this year in his Jan. 8 State of the State Address. The announcement was met with applause from state lawmakers, who tried and failed to pass the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act last summer, according to a Patch.com report.

Cuomo said during his address that it is an ethical imperative to legalize the cannabis in the state, according to the news outlet, and said he hopes to work with Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to coordinate policy reform efforts. Cuomo also called for the State University of New York to form a cannabis and hemp research center, Patch.com reported.

“I think it’s a rehash of the momentum that picked up last year,” Joshua Horn, partner at Fox Rothschild, told Cannabis Business Times.

Cuomo first announced support for adult-use legalization in December 2018, when he called on the New York Legislature to pass legislation that would regulate and tax cannabis. He included a legalization plan in his 2019 state budget, but the proposal was ultimately removed.

Two trends—legal cannabis markets expanding and millennials drinking less—are converging, with major implications for both the cannabis and alcoholic beverage industries, and perhaps society more generally, if cannabis gradually supplants alcohol as the intoxicant of choice.

For several years, millennials and Gen Z adults in the U.S., Canada and Europe have been moderating how much and how often they drink, which has driven alcohol beverage brands to reinvent their offerings Global beer brands including Peroni, Heineken, Guinness, Budweiser and, perhaps most remarkably, Leffe, brewed by Belgian monks since 1240 (but now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev), have responded by introducing low- or zero-alcohol beers. Diageo, maker of Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, Ketel One vodkas, Captain Morgan and other well-known spirits, recently acquired Seedlip, a line of non-alcoholic distilled spirits based on centuries-old recipes, for $300 million.

It is unclear how access to legal cannabis relates to declines in drinking by millennials, but there is evidence of a correlation. CDC data analyzed by the research firm Cowen showed binge drinking rates were 13 percent lower in states with legal cannabis compared to prohibition states, and that the rate of first-use of cannabis by adults increased as binge drinking declined. Based on that data, Cowen projected flat or slow growth for alcohol brands while increasing its projection of cannabis market size from $50 billion in 2026 to $75 billion in 2030.

It is worth noting cannabis-infused beverages are a relatively small slice of the $11.3 billion in U.S. cannabis sales in 2018. Fortune Business Insights estimated global sales of cannabis-infused beverages totaled $174 million in 2018. The continuing federal prohibition of cannabis has kept risk-averse global brands from investing in the U.S. market, which has left the market to regional brands such as Lagunitas’ cannabis-infused beverages in California.

The legalization of cannabis edibles in Canada, a nation that has long been home to some of the world’s largest and best-known brewers, drastically changed the prospects for infused beverages. Brewers that have already developed zero-alcohol alternatives to their traditional offerings are now preparing cannabis-infused versions of those products. Sales became legal in Canada in December and are expected to ramp up over the course of 2020.

The entrance of global beverage brands into cannabis, with their technical and marketing expertise and access to capital, may have far-reaching consequences. Developing a zero-alcohol, cannabis-infused beverage is not a simple project. Cannabis has a strong flavor that makes infusing wines, other than sangria and some sparkling wines, difficult. Beers, with their stronger flavors, mask the taste more easily. The established process for removing alcohol from beer, called “arrested fermentation,” adversely affects the taste and texture.

PRESS RELEASE - As a testament to its reach and impact on clients in this highly regulated industry, Fox Rothschild’s Cannabis Law Group has been named a 2019 “Practice Group of the Year” by Law360.

The legal cannabusiness has been pushing innovation in all things growing and manufacturing related.

In the olden days of hemp it was farmed much like any other crop with backbreaking labor at the forefront of the process.

Today technology is at the forefront, not only controlling water and nutrients, but also monitoring for excess moisture and problems like mold and rot.

With these plants being as expensive and controlled as they are, any bit of technology to help boost yields is going to be a game changer. 

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Statewide sales of legal marijuana totaled $19.7 million in the first 12 days, officials said.

There were 495,385 transactions from Jan. 1 to Sunday at marijuana shops across the state, including in Addison, North Aurora and Mundelein, for an average transaction of $40.

"Illinois had a far more successful launch of cannabis than many of the other states that have legalized, but this is about more than money, it's about starting a new industry in a way that includes communities left behind for far too long," Toi Hutchinson, senior adviser to Gov. J.B. Pritzker for cannabis control, said in a news release Monday.

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Elena Ferrarin ~ DailyHerald.com ~ 

The results could pave the way to new treatments for anxiety.

When we’re stressed or anxious, we tend to turn to things that make us feel better — and for some, that means cannabis.

In fact, this is one of the primary reasons for smoking weed or taking CBD, according to a 2009 study on young adults.

But despite its popularity as a salve for anxious brains, scientists don’t know how the chemicals in marijuana work to calm anxiety — but the discovery of a molecule that affects an anxiety-producing super-highway in the brain could hold the key.

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The marijuana industry has been growing steadily since its legalization in the United States, with more than 75% increase in sales, and contributing greatly to the economy of this nation. To date 11 states have legalized marijuana for recreational use and other 33 have authorized cannabis for medicinal use. Legalization has seen the creation of a diverse range of companies Read the full article...

CANADA: Tilray, a global pioneer in cannabis production, research, cultivation, and distribution, announces the expansion of its global senior leadership team with two strategic hires: Jon Levin as Chief Operating Officer, who was formerly with Revlon, and Michael Kruteck as Chief Financial Officer, who was formerly with Molson Coors and Pharmaca. Mr. Kruteck’s appointment will be Read the full article...

Helena, MT — PRESS RELEASE — New Approach Montana, a statewide campaign working to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana, has submitted two complementary 2020 ballot initiatives to the state government for review. The first is a statutory initiative that would legalize marijuana in Montana for adults aged 21 and over and establish a regulatory framework for cultivation and sales. The second is a constitutional amendment that would allow the legal minimum age for marijuana consumption to be 21.

“Montanans support legalizing marijuana and setting the minimum age at 21,” said Pepper Petersen, spokesperson for New Approach Montana. “Our initiatives will give voters the opportunity to approve those laws at the ballot box on Election Day. It’s time for Montana to stop wasting law enforcement resources that could be spent fighting more serious crime. We can shift marijuana out of the illicit market and into licensed, regulated, and tax-paying businesses. At the same time, we can create jobs and generate significant new revenue for the state.”

The initiatives were hand-delivered to the Secretary of State and the Legislative Services Division Jan. 13, starting a review process that will also involve the Attorney General and the Governor’s budget director.

New Approach Montana is sponsoring both initiatives, which were were drafted with the assistance of Montana voters, stakeholders and policy experts.

“These initiatives are the result of a collaborative and diligent drafting process,” said Petersen. “We held seven community listening sessions across the state and received input from hundreds of Montana voters. We’ve spoken with community, church and tribal leaders. Montana lawyers with experience in ballot initiative drafting and litigation have carefully vetted the details. We’ve received input from Montanans with expertise on our state’s existing medical marijuana program, civil rights and fiscal policy. We have covered every base.”

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has announced that adult-use cannabis sales from Jan. 1 through Jan. 12 totaled nearly $20 million.

Dispensaries processed 495,385 transactions and raked in $19,709,345.10 during the first 12 days of adult-use cannabis sales, according to a local KHQA report.

The Illinois Department of Revenue expects to release figures on the total tax revenue generated by the end of February, when the first tax payments from dispensaries are due, according to the news outlet. Twenty-five percent of cannabis sales tax revenues will go to the state’s Restore, Reinvest and Renew (R3) program, which aims to address social equity in Illinois’ adult-use cannabis industry.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker kicked off legal adult-use sales in the state with a Dec. 31 announcement that he was pardoning more than 11,000 low-level cannabis convictions on the eve of legalization.

RELATED: Cannabis Industry, Chicago Alderman Respond to End of Prohibition in Illinois