Category: Industry News

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers looking to draw attention to pet issues have formed groups in favor of everything from auto care to zoos. Now, there’s a caucus for cannabis.
Rep. Earl Bluemenauer said the move is a sign of how mainstream the drive for marijuana legalization has become.
“This is happening all across the country, and its going to continue,” said the Oregon Democrat, an advocate for legalized marijuana since the 1970s. “The industry is growing, as is public acceptance and demand for medical marijuana.”
Blumenauer is one of the caucus’s founding members, along with California Republican Dana Rohrabacher, Colorado Democrat Jared Polis and Alaska Republican Don Young.
A wave of states approved recreational marijuana in November, a seeming boon for the argument that federal laws and regulations need to be revised to keep up.
But it remains to be seen whether new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime foe of legalized marijuana, will roll back Obama-era policies that have allo..

MEDFORD, Ore. — As legalized marijuana brings more business to Oregon, some communities are seeing a large amount of cash in the economy thanks to strict regulations keeping banks away from the businesses.
The Mail Tribune reports that banking officials say that after years of moving away from cash, financial institutions have seen a recent influx due to the marijuana industry.
Many banks will not offer lines of credit to marijuana businesses due to high federal penalties for holding pot-tainted money. As a result, the marijuana industry operates with cash. Dispensaries pay their employees, landlords and lawyers with cash that is then spent in grocery stores and other daily tasks.
People’s Bank Vice President and Operations Manager Dawn DeVita says the Southern Oregon-based institution does not work directly with marijuana businesses, but it has seen an increased volume of cash circulation.

ABERDEEN — An Aberdeen schoolgirl plagued by a seizure disorder that’s proven untreatable by mainstream medication is one step closer to finding relief today with the State House of Representative’s Health Care and Wellness Committee’s 13-3 approval of a bill that would allow parents and guardians to administer medical marijuana to qualified students on school property.
According to the bill summary, House Bill 1060 – also known as Ducky’s Bill – would require school districts to allow students to consume marijuana for medical purposes on school grounds, aboard a school bus, or while attending a school sponsored event. School districts would be required to adopt policies to allow that practice. That policy would have a long list of requirements of its own, ranging from which students would qualify to the establishment of legal protections for anyone involved with providing that student medicinal marijuana.
“Ducky” is the nickname for River Barclay, an elementary school student who is..

Growing any plant from seed is very satisfying and exciting experience. Every person will gain pleasure while watching a life developing from that tiny little seed. Still, it is highly important to choose the right seed – growth and life of the plant depend on that in many ways.
Whether you’re an experienced marijuana grower, or you’re going to give it a try, the seeds are the first thing to pay attention to. Today, cannabis is developed in that way that it became a plant which has many variations for many different purposes.
In any case, there are some details you should pay attention to when making an order from a cannabis seed bank, especially if you want to be sure that you get what you ordered in the desired time frame. Here are the most important things to look at when you are browsing online cannabis seed banks.
Strain Type Availability There are plenty of types of cannabis strains. Varieties are designed to increase specific features of the plant or to separate the strain fo..

Cannabidiol is swiftly changing the dispute surrounding the use of marijuana as a medicine. From the popularly known THC marijuana ingredient that gets users high, recent attention has moved to another compound in marijuana known as cannabidiol or CBD. Evidence of CBD’s therapeutic benefits has increased exponentially, for one; it does not present the side effects that THC presents.
However, to understand why people are using cannabidiol to aid their health, here are a few things you need to know.
What is Cannabidiol? Cannabidiol is a chemical compound found in the resin glands (trichomes) of the female cannabis plant. The chemical compounds are substrates that bind to special receptors on the human cells, to make up the endocannabinoid system. The cell receptors are immensely concentrated in the CNS (central nervous system) although others can be found all over your body.
The endocannabinoid system helps in regulating almost everything in your body from cognition, mood, appetite, m..

LOS ANGELES — Hi is a cannabis brand. Its logo — “hi” in white letters inside an orange circle — can be found above the front door of a Portland marijuana shop and on a handful of cannabis products, including massage oil and Hi Releaf pain-relief balm.
But you wouldn’t guess any of that from Hi’s trademark filings. In 2015, the brand’s parent company, Cannabis Sativa Inc., filed a trademark application — not for any of Hi’s core products, but for hats, T-shirts and a wide array of other apparel.
If the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office signs off on the application, Cannabis Sativa would be able to stop other companies from using the Hi brand on clothing, but it might not be able to stop rivals from setting up Hi-brand marijuana shops or selling knockoff Hi-brand products.
This is the odd state of affairs for trademark protection in the cannabis industry, one of the many byproducts of the gap between state and federal marijuana laws.
Though cannabis is legal for recreational or medic..

OLYMPIA — Members of the Commerce and Gaming committee heard testimony Tuesday from lobbyists, concerned citizens and shop owners for several marijuana bills.
The bills included changing the penalties for marijuana offenses, a process for medical marijuana patients who are over 18 but under 21 to buy plants and seeds from retailers, a change in the packaging requirements for marijuana-infused edibles, a limit on the number of licenses a retailer or co-owner can possess, and a plan to address the issue of county governments’ unofficial moratoriums, or suspensions, on marijuana retail.
Rep. Cary Condotta, R-Wenatchee, the ranking Republican on the committee, and Rep. David Sawyer, D-Lakewood, the chair of the committee, either wrote or co-sponsored most of the bills.
One of the biggest bills during the hearing was a plan to sanction counties and cities that have informal moratoriums on marijuana retail sale.
The sanction for continuing a moratorium on marijuana retail sales would for..

SEATTLE — Washington lawmakers this week will consider a bill that would allow parents to administer medical marijuana to their children on school grounds.
KING-TV reports that the House Committee on Health Care & Wellness is scheduled to consider the bill Tuesday during a public hearing. The bill has bi-partisan support and would ensure children could stay in school.
John Barclay currently has to pull his daughter out of school to administer CBD oil to control her severe epilepsy. He says the bill would help keep his daughter in class.

He sat between Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters on “The View,” parried with Stephen Colbert on the Comedy Channel, and declined Bill O’Reilly’s repeated offers to appear on his show.
As the first mainstream newspaper editor in the U.S. dedicated to covering legal weed, Ricardo Baca blazed a trail few of us could’ve imagined a few years ago.
He led The Denver Post’s creation of The Cannabist, a digital publication focused on all things weed. The Cannabist staff grew from two to seven people last year, it got more page views than High Times, and made enough money to support itself while adding — modestly, Baca said — to The Post’s bottom line.
The Cannabist also was the subject of a documentary film, “Rolling Papers.” Fortune magazine ranked Baca as one of the seven most powerful people in American cannabis and the Brookings Institution said he’s one of 12 people to watch on marijuana policy.
Baca announced last month he was leaving The Cannabist to take a position at a technology..

If you’re looking for a vaporizer that’s unlike the plethora of others available on the market then you need to consider the Hydrology9 from Cloudious9.
I was lucky enough to receive one to review and at first sight I was immediately intimidated by it’s beauty. Crafted using an anti-rust spacegrade aluminum alloy casing and borosilicate glass, the Hydrology9 gives off a sleek and futuristic vibe. This vaporizer unit looks delicate because of the glass, but feels sturdy when held, I’d still recommend handling it with care because it’s such a precious piece.
The Hydrology9 Kit Includes: Hydrology9 Vaporizer 2 Charging Cables 1 Long Cleaning Brush 1 Short Cleaning Brush 1 Air Intake Adjustment & Chamber Loading/Cleaning Tool From top to bottom the Hydrology9 has a magnetic cover, Borosilicate Glass Mouthpiece, Detachable Anti-Leak Top Cover, Body/Water Chamber (inside you’ll find the LED Light Indicator), Bottom Chamber Cover with built in stir tool during your session turn the knob to ..

WASHINGTON — Backers of marijuana legalization on Monday stepped up their pressure on the U.S. Senate to block the confirmation of Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions as the next attorney general.
Sessions, a staunch opponent of legalization, angered proponents in April when he called pot “dangerous” and said that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
Marijuana backers want the issue aired today when the Senate Judiciary Committee begins Sessions’ confirmation hearing.
“It’s a national thing: This hearing is make or break for the marijuana folks,” said Adam Eidinger, who heads a pro-legalization group in Washington, D.C., called DCMJ.
The hearing comes amid an explosion of support for legal marijuana in the past year, with nearly a quarter of all Americans now living in states that allow use of the drug for recreation.
Marijuana won big in the Nov. 8 election, with voters passing ballot measures to ease marijuana restrictions in eight of nine states, including California.
As a r..

While some activists are planning to give away marijuana on Inauguration Day, other entrepreneurs are taking a different approach: making a ton of money from it.
According to Governing.com, 29 states and the District of Columbia have or will soon have laws legalizing marijuana in some form. Use of recreational marijuana is legal in eight states. As its popularity has grown, so have profits. In 2016, sales of legal marijuana in North America totaled $6.7 billion — an increase of more than 30 percent — according to a report from Arcview Market Research. The number is projected to rise to $20.2 billion by 2021.
Debra Borchardt, who covers retail and cannabis for Forbes, contends that the growth is larger and faster than even the dot-com era and also quoted Arcview’s editor-in-chief, who said “the only consumer industry categories I’ve seen reach $5 billion in annual spending and then post anything like 25 percent compound annual growth in the next five years are cable television (19 per..

Willie Nelson and Snoop have quite the bromance.
Both have collaborated on some of the best smoking songs (My Medicine and Superman), both smoke hella weed, and both have recently been big names in the ganjapreneur game. With such a tight bond, I thought it was dope AF that Snoop gifted Willie Nelson with a Christmas sweater emblazoned with the words “Smoke Weed Everyday” on it. (via)
Thank you @SnoopDogg for the Christmas Sweater pic.twitter.com/jzaw7pkQEe
— Willie Nelson (@willienelson) January 4, 2017
The post Best Buds: Snoop + Willie Nelson appeared first on Mrs. Nice Guy.

BOSTON — As marijuana shops sprout in states that have legalized the drug, they face a critical stumbling block — lack of access to the kind of routine banking services other businesses take for granted.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is leading an effort to make sure vendors working with legal marijuana businesses, from chemists who test marijuana for harmful substances to firms that provide security, don’t have their banking services taken away.
It’s part of a wider effort by Warren and others to bring the burgeoning $7 billion marijuana industry in from a fiscal limbo she said forces many shops to rely solely on cash, making them tempting targets for criminals.
After voters in Warren’s home state approved a November ballot question to legalize the recreational use of pot, she joined nine other senators in sending a letter to a key federal regulator, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, calling on it to issue additional guidance to help banks provide se..

The nation’s first recreational marijuana shop opened nearly three years ago in Colorado. Since then, a growing body of research has shown that the availability of recreational marijuana — in Colorado and elsewhere — is having little to no effect on teens’ propensity to smoke weed.
That’s the conclusion, at least, of the official statistics out of Colorado through 2015. It’s what federal data show nationwide through this year. And it’s also backed up by other federal surveys of drug use in the states where marijuana is legal.
The data on this point has been consistent enough that longtime skeptics of the merits of marijuana legalization, like Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, are expressing surprise at the findings. “We had predicted based on the changes in legalization, culture in the U.S. as well as decreasing perceptions among teenagers that marijuana was harmful that (accessibility and use) would go up,” Volkow told U.S. News and World Report last month. “But i..

This Christmas police in Cheltenham, England raided a local home that was also a small cannabis farm. All of the plants inside were confiscated, but apparently one plant almost went undetected because it was covered in decorations making it look like a Christmas Tree. Before seizing the tree they snapped a photo ad posted it to Twitter with the caption reading “Not your traditional Xmas Tree! Two arrested in Cheltenham on suspicion of cannabis cultivation”.
Brings a whole new meaning to the words “Merry Kushmas”…(via)
Not your traditional Xmas Tree! Two arrested in Cheltenham on suspicion of cannabis cultivation. pic.twitter.com/hpPgEX8YDL
— Glos Police (@Glos_Police) December 22, 2016
The post British Police Find Weed Plant Disguised As Christmas Tree appeared first on Mrs. Nice Guy.

I wanted to quickly share this list of “Six Predictions For The Cannabis Industry In 2017” that Debra Borchardt wrote yesterday. To read the full article, please hit this link.
Los Angeles Will Become The Marijuana Capital Move over Denver, Adam Bierman Chief Executive Officer of cannabis investment firm MedMen Capital believes that the City of Angels will steal the spotlight from the Mile High City. Bierman said that by some estimates, Los Angeles’s medical marijuana market alone is already close to $1 billion, easily overshadowing Colorado’s entire market. The city is expected to pass an ordinance in 2017 that will clear the path for a proper licensing program and open up the recreational market. Bierman said that capital is flowing into the area for local ventures as investors begin to smell money in the emerging market.
A Sports League Will Green Light Marijuana Bierman believes that in 2017 a major sports league will approve the use of cannabis for medical purposes. Many profess..

Auto-flowering cannabis offers many fascinating benefits that allows the most inexperienced grower to cultivate a cannabis plant with amazingly considerable success.
An Auto-flowering cannabis plant has many distinctive advantages over conventional cannabis plants. For this reason it makes them suitable for cultivation mostly (but not only) for beginners. The most appealing advantages of Auto-flowering plant is hinged on the fact that it’s not affected by the 12/12 stipulated light cycle that is required for conventional cannabis plant to grow and produce flower. An auto-flowering seed is relatively convenient when compared to regular cannabis with a higher level of resilience that makes it suitable to grow in variety of conditions. There are a lot of guides on the web for learning more.
While the auto-flowering is suitable for a variety of acceptable reasons, the dwarfish Ruderalis strain which is one of the major strains of auto-flowering cannabis is remarkably short. While cultiva..

Twenty Sixteen has been quite the year for Chance the Rapper and it’s been a special thing to watch.
I was first introduced to Chance when his Acid Rap mixtape dropped and I was enamored by his interesting sound. Since Acid Rap he’s been on a mission to carve his name next to some of the greats. He worked on Kanye’s The Life of Pablo and most recently dropped his mixtape Coloring Book that received rave reviews and led to a huge tour. He’s nominated for 7 Grammy’s including Best New Artist and Best Rap album, a first for streaming-only albums.
Last night my Twitter feed was abuzz with joy because Chance and Jeremih decided to drop a Christmas collaboration that’s just what we needed to end this crazy year. Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama has a special appearance from comedian Hannibal Buress (read about how this came about) on “All the Way” where he request that they “Put them Travis Scott effects on his shit”.
Merry Christmas Lil Mama is for Chicago, the hometown of Chance and Jeremih, b..