• Steve DeAngelo digs in

    What is going to happen after January 1, 2018, to the many cannabis businesses currently in the food chain, and especially to the traditional Emerald Triangle farmer?
    MG Magazine (US)
    Monday, January 1, 2018

    "We are looking in 2018 and 2019 at an extinction event for 75 percent of the existing cannabis industry in California," says cannabis activist/entrepreneur Steve DeAngelo of Harborside. For DeAngelo, the answer is in immediate engagement with the market at a scale that addresses the demands of the market. "You talk to any cannabis consumer in a legal market and ask them what is the biggest problem they have with cannabis, and they will tell you price," he said. "Here is the flip-side of creating regulations that do not allow for the development of large-scale cannabis agriculture." DeAngelo claims to be acting in the best interest of the future of the small farmer. (See also: I grow pot in California for a living. I’m worried about legalization)

  • Hippy dream now a billion-dollar industry with California set to legalise cannabis

    The state that is the world’s sixth biggest economy will legalise cannabis on New Year’s Day – and expects a boom time for jobs and investment
    The Guardian (UK)
    Saturday, December 30, 2017

    On Monday, California, the US’s most populous state, and the world’s sixth biggest economy, will officially legalising cannabis. Overnight a shadow industry worth billions of dollars annually will emerge into the light, taking its place alongside agriculture, pharmaceuticals, aerospace and other sectors that are regulated and taxed. It will answer to the newly created Bureau of Cannabis Control. California legalised pot for medicinal purposes in 1996, ushering in a web of dispensaries, spin-off businesses and creeping mainstream acceptance. That culminated in voters last year approving proposition 64, a ballot initiative which legalised pot sales for recreation. History will mark the date it came into effect: 1 January 2018.

  • How Congress unwittingly turned the nation's capital into the Wild West of marijuana

    Nowhere is more pot sold so openly and publicly without any of the rules and regulations that elsewhere have come with legalization
    Los Angeles Times (US)
    Friday, December 29, 2017

    It’s not the promise of prompt delivery that has residents of Washington, D.C., spending fifty bucks for nondescript glass jars, nor is it the small jars themselves. It is the unmentioned “gift” which a local online upstart, Trendingleafs, tucks inside each jar: fragrant clusters of Grape Ape, Purple Kush or Woody Harrelson OG. The explosion of small businesses openly distributing thousands of such mind-altering “gifts” daily throughout the capital is not what Congress had in mind when it banned regulated sales of recreational pot in the nation’s capital, defying the will of local voters. Instead of shutting the legalization movement down, however, Congress has helped make this often-staid East Coast city the Wild West of recreational pot distribution.

  • I grow pot in California for a living. I’m worried about legalization

    Second-generation cannabis farmer Chiah Rodriques warns new regulations may sacrifice her farm to big business
    The Washington Post (US)
    Friday, December 29, 2017

    Chiah Rodriques As the daughter of a back-to-the-land homesteader and pot farmer, I learned never to speak of what my father did. We lived a simple life in times when only growing a few plants could sustain us. It’s only recently that I can publicly tell stories from my childhood, of when my dad would pull me into the shade to hide from low-flying helicopters searching for cannabis patches across the hills of Mendocino County, California. On Jan. 1, we can come into the sunlight as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act takes effect across California, legalizing recreational cannabis for adults 21 and older. Yet after waiting so long for the trophy of legalization, to finally be free in our lifestyle choice to live off the land, I can’t help but wonder: Will small farmers like me be wiped out by big business?

  • Legal weed isn’t the boon small businesses thought it would be

    As California opens its market Jan. 1, Washington state’s experience serves as a warning
    FiveThirtyEight (US)
    Friday, December 29, 2017

    The business of selling legal weed is big and getting bigger. North Americans spent $6.7 billion on legal cannabis last year, and some analysts think that with California set to open recreational dispensaries on Jan. 1 and Massachusetts and Canada soon to follow, the market could expand to more than $20.2 billion by 2021. So it’s no surprise that you see eager business people across the country lining up to invest millions of dollars in this green rush. But here’s a word of warning: The data behind the first four years of legal pot sales, with drops in retail prices and an increase in well-funded cannabis growing operations, shows a market that increasingly favors big businesses with deep pockets.

  • Canadian pot growers eye global expansion

    Canada growers are chasing first-mover advantage, analyst says
    Bloomberg (US)
    Thursday, December 28, 2017

    bruce lintonCanadian medical marijuana is setting the stage to go global. The country’s emerging legal producers have a chance to seize opportunities in other countries that could make them worldwide leaders, according to Canopy Growth Corp. Chief Executive Officer Bruce Linton. “If you pick a theme for 2018 it will be the globalization of medical cannabis," said Linton, whose company is the world’s largest publicly traded medical marijuana producer. “It’s not difficult to see a really substantial global market coming off what starts here." There are now at least 80 cannabis companies listed on Canadian exchanges whose combined market value has ballooned to more than C$20 billion ($15.9 billion), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

  • Californian growers and retailers brace for cannabis competition

    As the state prepares to fully legalise marijuana, established players are wary of new generation of start-ups
    Financial Times (UK)
    Wednesday, December 27, 2017

    California has long been a cannabis pioneer. The state became a hub for the drug-induced counterculture of “turn on, tune in, drop out” of the 1960s, from hash-smoking hippies of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco to Cheech & Chong driving around the streets of Los Angeles in a van made from weed. California was both the first state to criminalise pot in 1913 and then the first to legalise medical marijuana in 1996. From the start of January, California is set to become the latest — and by far the largest — state to fully legalise recreational use of marijuana by adults. The decision completes a cultural and political shift all along the west coast of the US where the drug has been gradually decriminalised.

  • Dutch councils vie to produce cannabis in bid to cut out criminals

    Netherlands trial is designed to stop gangs from supplying cannabis-selling coffee shops
    The Guardian (UK)
    Wednesday, December 27, 2017

    At least 30 companies want to get into the legal production of cannabis in the Netherlands, according to Paul Depla, the mayor of Breda, whose council is among two dozen vying to take part in government-backed trials designed to cut criminals out of supplying cannabis-selling coffee shops. Dutch coffee shops are allowed to sell small amounts of the drug to over-18s, yet production is illegal, leaving an opportunity for gangs also involved in harder drugs to prosper. Depla said the current system was "bankrupt". "This is all about the problem of the back door of the coffee shops," he said. "Production now is dominated by organised crime syndicates. We have got a bankrupt system." (See also: Pass the Dutchie: New Netherlands coalition government backs legalized cannabis production — finally)

  • Mumbaiites fight to legalise marijuana

    On December 17, members of the group walked 5km from Gateway of India to Chowpatty beach to get support for their cause
    The Hindustan Times (India)
    Wednesday, December 27, 2017

    The Bangalore-based founder of the Great Legalisation Movement (GLM), Viki Vaurora, wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to legalise hemp — leaves that are the source of cannabis — for medicinal, industrial and recreational purposes. The movement has been gaining momentum because Member of Parliament from Patiala Dr Dharamvira Gandhi’s bill seeking legalisation of the “non-synthetic” intoxicants was cleared for the Parliament last year, and was expected to be discussed in the winter session. However, speaking to HT, Gandhi said the bill may come up for discussion only in the budget session later next year because it wasn’t approved for the current session. (See also: Cannabis medicine in state to be reality soon?)

  • California's top marijuana regulator talks about what to expect Jan. 1, when legal pot market opens

    The dense regulations can be intimidating
    Los Angeles Times (US)
    December 25, 2017

    California's legal pot market opens for business on Jan. 1. The day will be a milestone, but what exactly will happen then and, especially, in the weeks and months to come is unclear. Lori Ajax, the state's top pot regulator, has been at the center of the effort to establish rules for a legal pot economy valued at $7 billion. Businesses are required to have a local permit and a state license to open their doors for recreational sales, and that process has moved slowly. State law has specific guidelines for where not to light up, and they include being within 1,000 feet of a school or a daycare center when kids are around, or smoking while driving. (See also: Lawmakers, pot growers say California's marijuana cultivation rules favor big corporate farms)

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