Authorities on the largest Native American reservation in the U.S. are warning people against illegally growing marijuana and hemp. Navajo Nation police issued the warning Wednesday after confirming that officers were investigating complaints about marijuana or hemp being grown near the northwestern New Mexico community of Shiprock. Navajo Police Chief Phillip Francisco said his department has turned over its findings to tribal prosecutors for further review.
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After what farmers say was a lot of excitement before the hemp cultivation application process, only 191 Ohio farmers received permission to grow hemp after 207 across the state applied. Many of those farmers are preparing to plant their first crop in what will be the first growing season where hemp can be legally harvested.
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After coronavirus-related delays, Muskegon’s third marijuana dispensary is expected to open this summer. Redbud Roots, a Buchanan-based cannabis producer and distributor, expects its second retail location, at 237 W. Laketon Ave. in Muskegon’s marijuana overlay district, will open to the public on Saturday, June 27. The dispensary will cater to both medicinal and recreational users - and its design has been influenced by both Muskegon’s history and its recent brush with the COVID-19 outbreak, Alex Leonowicz, one of the company’s four co-founders, told MLive in a recent interview. “Curbside (pickup) is here to stay,” he said. Redbud Roots was founded in 2017 by Christopher Fanta, a real estate investor; David Murray, a hedge fund manager; Jim Finley, an entrepreneur; and Leonowicz, a corporate attorney specializing in cannabis law. They were licensed by the state in December 2018, according to Leonowicz. The company began as a cultivator and processor of cannabis, and currently produces 27 different cannabis-derived products in-house, including concentrates, edibles, waxes, tinctures and topical creams. Those products will make up half the stock at the 2,500-square-foot Muskegon store, which is still under construction, Leonowicz said. Last week, the company’s sign was installed outside its gleaming wood, metal and glass storefront. Just as the business’s first shop, in Acme, reflects northern Michigan’s vast woods, the Muskegon design is meant to reflect the city’s “grittier, more industrial feel,” Leonowicz said. Muskegon was a fit for the company because it was an “early adopter” of the cannabis industry, “and it’s also a great town,” said Leonowicz. Some of the company’s 92 employees are Muskegon natives, he added. The 14 people hired to work at the new store - security, managers, and sales associates known colloquially as “budtenders” - are all local, according to Leonowicz.
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If Arizona marijuana activists succeed in placing a legalization initiative before voters this November, it will likely pass by a wide margin, according to a new poll. In a survey of likely voters, about two-thirds (65.5 percent) of respondents said they would support the proposed measure, the Smart and Safe Arizona Act. That’s a notable shift since residents were surveyed late last year in a poll that showed 54 percent in favor of the policy change. The survey described the legalization initiative, which would make it legal for adults 21 and older to purchase and possess cannabis and also impose taxes on legal sales, and asked 400 respondents if they would vote yes or no on the proposal Forty-seven percent said they would “definitely” back it and 18.5 percent said they “probably” would. Nineteen percent said they “definitely” would not vote for it, while six percent said they “probably” wouldn’t. The campaign behind the initiative, Smart and Safe Arizona, said in April that it had collected enough raw signatures to qualify for the ballot. However, those haven’t been verified by the state yet and the group said it plans to continue petitioning to ensure success. Stacy Pearson, campaign manager for the organization, told Marijuana Moment on Tuesday that they’re “on track to turn in more than 400,000 signatures by the July 2 deadline.” “The HighGround poll is encouraging and tracks with what our internal polling shows—Arizonans are ready to legalize marijuana,” she said. “Particularly in this economic environment, new jobs and tax revenue are important to voters.” Activists asked the state Supreme Court to allow electronic signature gathering given challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, but that request was rejected. In the poll, which was conducted from May 18-22, the only group that appears divided on the issue are those who identify as “very conservative.” They were evenly split—47.6-47.6 percent—on whether or not they’d vote in favor of legalization. All other demographics were solidly in favor of the proposal.
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Local marijuana businesses are taking the state to court to protect their exclusive right to Maine’s adult-use marijuana market. In a lawsuit filed Friday, Maine Cannabis Coalition claimed the state Department of Administrative and Financial Services was violating state law by refusing to enforce the residency requirement that lawmakers included in the Marijuana Legalization Act. The law says only Maine residents can run a recreational marijuana grow, manufacturing plant or retail store.
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June 2, 2020
Louisiana Lawmakers Send Medical Marijuana Expansion And Cannabis Banking Bills To Governor’s Desk
Louisiana lawmakers sent bills to significantly expand the state’s medical marijuana program and to allow cannabis businesses to access banks to the governor’s desk over the weekend. The expansion legislation—which the House of Representatives initially approved last month and cleared the Senate on last week with one amendment—would allow physicians to recommend medical cannabis to patients for any debilitating condition that they deem fit instead of from the limited list of maladies that’s used under current law.
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Tilray Inc., Acreage Holdings Inc., and Sunniva Inc. had the highest-paid executives and directors among cannabis companies, according to a new survey by Bedford Consulting Group. The report examined the compensation of 437 executives and 449 board members at 96 pot firms. The data was collected in October, when the average cannabis share price was about one-third higher than it is today. Of the 166 CEOs included in the survey, Tilray’s Brendan Kennedy had the highest total compensation at $31.8 million Canadian, of which 97 percent was shares or options. Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was the highest-paid director, receiving $13.9 million Canadian from Acreage, all of which was equity-based.
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June 1, 2020
Mexico may move to complete legalization of marijuana & hemp without THC limits by the end of the year
In October of 2018 the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the ban on consuming marijuana is unconstitutional. The court has allowed several extensions in the deadline, but the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly aggravated Mexico’s numerous other problems. Now the Congress is finally looking at not just decriminalizing personal use, but also the formal legalization of retail sales and hemp cultivation. The Mexican economy was in bad shape before the pandemic, and the drop in industrial and agricultural exports to the U.S., the loss of the hugely important tourism sector, and the drop in remittances from Mexican workers in the U.S., have been devastating.
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Wither hemp? Earlier this month, the editors of the cannabis investment news site Technical420 lamented that a predicted hemp boom had failed to materialize. "[T]he sector has not lived up to expectations," the site declared. Likewise, Hemp Industry Daily reported this week that hemp farmers found "production costs far outpaced profits" last year. Others outside the industry have also taken note of hemp's struggles. Earlier this week, Politico reported that laws passed in Washington, D.C., that were intended to propagate a domestic hemp industry have instead proven to be "a flop."
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Since the first thousands of cases of coronavirus spread across the country in March, American life as we know it has changed and entire industries have been upended. In the cannabis industry, sales increased in many of the 33 states where some form of adult-use and/or medical marijuana are legal, likely because patients and consumers didn’t know the next time they could visit a dispensary and are experiencing increased levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic. In Florida, a record-setting 123,817 ounces of cannabis flower was sold in April 2020 — a 52% increase from January, according to the Florida Department of Health’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use.
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