In California, the Cannabis Advisory Committee “warned Gov. Gavin Newsom and California legislators that high taxes, overly burdensome regulations and local control issues posed debilitating obstacles to the legal marijuana market,” according to the San Francisco Examiner. Those obstacles have spurred illicit-market growth, too, leaving state regulators in a quandary: some of the high-level goals of legalization are not being realized in what has become the world’s largest cannabis market. So, what comes next? In the Examiner’s piece, sources around the state suggest that a new law—perhaps one left to the voters—may be in order.
The Motley Fool points to Major League Baseball’s December decision to remove cannabis from its list of banned substances as one of the great victories for the industry in late 2019. Other professional sports have mostly stood on the sidelines here, but the MLB brings another degree of normalization to this evolving marketplace.
Canada legalized adult-use cannabis in 2018 (with cannabis-derived edibles, beverages and concentrates being legalized in 2019), and that move has allowed licensed producers up north to capitalize on quickly opening global marketplace. In the U.S., however, where cannabis companies are turning decades of underground experience into business savvy, the federally illegal status of the crop has kept American growers out of the international space. The Washington Post looks at how this disconnect is teeing up even more frustration for those businesses that plan to scale up in the next year.
Michigan began adult-use sales at three licensed dispensaries in Ann Arbor Dec. 1, but there’s a lot more coming in the new year. According to mlive.com, as of Dec. 23, 2019, “the state has issued 42 recreational marijuana businesses licenses, including 21 retail licenses, 11 growing licenses to four businesses, 4 processor licenses, a license for testing labs, two event organizing licenses and three to secure transportation companies.”
Cannabis Wire has a great feature on Michael Cone’s Greenview Investment Partners, which serves as a reminder that scams abound in the burgeoning cannabis space. “Cone is one of a handful of cannabis fraudsters whose schemes have been exposed in public documents,” Stephen Paulsen writes. “But talk to advocates and entrepreneurs in the cannabis space and you’ll find that several have known a company something like Greenview: a fly-by-night business that, promising riches, offers dubious services in cannabis investments and/or consulting.”
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