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HIGHLIGHTS: Canopy Acquires Edible Maker Wana, MO Judge Kills State Residency Requirement, Adult Use Movement in Ohio on Ballot and Republican-Sponsored Bill + MORE!
+ MORE: V.A. Resistant to Medical Cannabis Research, MS Gov Stalls Special Session re Med Marijuana, Dutchie Raises $350 Million, Cresco Double Disps in PA…and MORE?!?
Hybrid News/Analysis Extract from 420+ Sources: Featuring all the developments this past week in the cannabis world on the federal level, state legalization/implementation, science/technology, business deals, international scene, social equity, celebrity cameos, and miscellaneous ridiculousness.
DISCLAIMER: All opinions are my own, and not those of my law firm Zuber Lawler. Even though I drop knowledge bombs, the show is NOT legal advice.
Send comments to: jp@globalcannabistimes.com
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Transcription
WE NOTE THAT THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT WAS CREATED BY A ROBOT THAT MAY NOT HAVE APPRECIATED THE FINE POINTS AND NAMES SPOKEN BY JON, SO PLEASE FORGIVE ANY TYPOS, OR BIAS IN FAVOR OF OUR FUTURE ROBOT OVERLORDS:
On behalf of global cannabis times. I’m very excited to welcome you to episode deux of Cannabis Last Week, news and analysis extracted from over 420 plus sources, AKA the weekend update of weed. Just less funny. I’m your host, John Purow and in our highlight stories this week can be growth really, really, really wana wholly own wana brands.
A Missouri judge struck down the regulations, residency requirement, and then Ohio Republican state legislature proposed an adult use legalization bill. Now, before we get down to business, I’m going to speed up and make my standard disclaimer, when I’m not Batman, I practice cannabis and or IP law at the law firms, Zuber Lawler.
So I need to say that any views expressed are my own and not that of my law firm. So for example, if I was to say, I note that I haven’t seen no time to die yet, so no spoilers, but I think that the next James Bond should either be a woman. Or Idris Elba because who wouldn’t want to see stringer bond. Okay. Last disclaimer, this is not legal advice.
And also I have to say that all puns and alliteration are always intended. Please subscribe. And if you have any feedback, please send to jp@globalcannabistimes.com. All right. Onto the news. And our first highlight story canopy growth announced the plan to purchase Wana Brands conditional upon federal legalization in the U S and the way that it is structured is $300 million are being paid by canopy now, and at the time of federal legalization, there are going to be some other adjustments and payments made according to Wana’s valuation at the time.
Now Wana is in 12 states. Currently it is the largest edibles maker. And by the end of 2022, it’s aiming for 20 states. It’s also in Canada. Now, back to the story about the Missouri judge, which I enjoy because I’m an attorney to recap a little bit, a Pennsylvania investor challenged the residency requirement and Missouri’s regulations on the basis of the dormant commerce clause, which is a little bit kind of hypocritical in the sense that you know, is illegal on the federal level.
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Marijuana. However, the dormant commerce clause effectively prevents states from regulating interstate commerce, because that is solely the job of the Congress of the entire United States. And so at bars them. We have seen multiple courts knocked down these residency requirements. The only court that went in the other direction appears to be on the basis of a technicality.
And so what happened here was the Missouri judge had already essentially bar the residency requirement temporarily while the case was being. The time came for the case to be heard. This is my favorite part of the story- this is why I do the deep dive. The length of the trial of this case was seven minutes.
That is how open and shut this dormant commerce clause issue is. And now the question then was will the state, and this department and the state is the Missouri department of health and senior services. And I always love terrible acronyms so I’m going to call that the MDHSS. Well, the MDHSS has already announced that is not going to appeal the decision.
And they even issued a statement saying that they were just happy to have clarity on the rule. Which is kind of like your significant other being really, really into you, you’re dumping them and then you’re sticking the thing and others saying, oh no, no, no, it’s okay. I just wanted clarification into our relationship.
So that is what happened in Missouri. Now, moving on to Ohio, we have to keep an eye on Ohio because every week it seems like there is new news in terms of adult use legalization. And then the latest is first there’s a ballot measure moving forward. And I would get into the details of the ballot measure and how many votes that they need to get and how many that they don’t.
But then it clicked in my head that there already was a ballot measure back in 2015, they’re able to get the votes that they needed then in terms of bringing the ballot to the voters. It did not work. It seemed to be the consensus was that Ohio voters were discerning and it seemed that certain interests, moneyed, interests had kind of stacked the ballot bill in their favor.
That’s from what I recall from then, you know, without going into any more detail. So if it happened in 2015, they were able to get it before voters- I should think that there’s. Level of confidence that they could get it back in front of voters in 2022. And perhaps we get a different results now that we have a bustling medical market and other factors.
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The other news in Ohio that I mentioned in the highlight stories is that a Republican state lawmaker representative Jamie Callender, conservative from Concord is working on introducing an adult use legalization bill. A couple highlights of the bill is that there would be a 10% tax rate and there would be limited home.
Now I have to note having read through the news in terms of this Bill’s prospects, while calendar said that there’s more support than you would think when asked the speaker of the house. Also Republican named Robert Cupp laughed and said, quote, unquote, let’s just see where it goes. So let’s not hold our breath for this Bill’s chances.
But if I had to play Smokradumus, I would say that there is a strong chance that the ballot gets passed by the voters in 2022, moving over to federal news. There’s a lot of publicity. I just want to comment again about this letter, that senators Corey Booker and Elizabeth Warren wrote to attorney general Merrick Garland to ask him and telling him that he has the authority to take marijuana off schedule one of the controlled substances act either entirely or knocking it down the schedules.
And it seems really positive. I got really into the idea. It could help with social equity and a lot of the stuff that we need to accomplish. And then maybe that would open up the ability of the safe banking act to pass as well. However, when I did the deep dive research, it would appear that this process, which has only happened three times before in the shortest period that it ever took took six years.
And so it is likely that perhaps even federal legalization can happen prior to this process running its course. And there also might be a different AG by the end of it. And so just want to make that disclaimer. Next, I want to talk about the continued saga of veterans trying to use medical marijuana.
The current state is that no VA doctor can prescribe medical marijuana. Now there’s certain bills progressiving. There is a hearing in the house subcommittee on veteran affairs this week. And the VA had some testimony there. And essentially when this bill was trying to push this forward for there to be robust research in terms of medical, marijuana, and veterans in relation to PTSD or not – the position of the VA and its statement was that it was quote unquote redundant. There already studies underway. But the position of a lot of veterans affair groups were, these studies are no one knows what’s going on. They’re not public statements and they are not thorough enough. This was supposed to be according to the bills, progressing a lot more advanced, comprehensive research.
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And the VA for whatever reason is saying no. So we always like to look at the tea leaves and when it comes to the Biden administration, And this isn’t necessarily a positive sign. I also think that this is a story to take note of because not just for marijuana, but also for psychedelics and how that’s going to move forward.
The way that I looked at it when it came to marijuana, in terms of progressing things, you know, medically the use case of children with very, very severe seizure disorders where nothing worked whatsoever and it was terribly effecting and very sad when I watched a story about this on Dateline years ago, but CBD reduced seizures by 80%. And that convinced certain lawmakers who were opposed to it to switch their position and go for it. And, you know, and support medical, marijuana usage, medical cannabis usage, pardon me. And I’m hopeful that when it comes to psychedelics and the research speaks for itself, the fact that every research and medical, prestigious ones are trying to open up psychedelic research centers in relation to mental health. I was thinking, considering the results that perhaps veterans is a way veterans in relation to PTSD and depression and how psychedelics help would be the use case to push that forward. But if we’re making such minimal progress, when it comes to medical marijuana, what is the hope when it comes to actual.
Psychedelics. All right. So moving on to our state of play in state different states in New Jersey. Two years after applications were submitted for another round of medical marijuana licenses, the state finally, after a year of litigation, that seemed a little bit unnecessary, actually announced winners while they could have awarded up to 24 licenses.
Instead the state awarded 14, I’m going to note that every single one was a woman or minority owned business. Now moving over to Mississippi, which was a state that kind of fell into a trend of ballots, either being approved to be taken to voters or actually approved by voters and medical or adult use in different states and then being struck down in the courts and technicalities. In Mississippi, the medical bill, the ballot bill, which was approved by voters was actually struck down after the fact for this virtually unintelligible reason, the Mississippi Supreme court, about the number of districts. Bottom line is that there been progress in the legislature in relation to medical marijuana, after they saw the will of the people and the governor, governor Reeves expressed openness to having a special session to pass this bill.
But legislators are now complaining that the governor is essentially stalling and imposing conditions that hadn’t been there before. And so it’s not necessarily so. That something’s going to happen during a special session, or that’s gonna even be called moving over to Florida. It just shows us how far we’ve come.
The two democratic candidates couldn’t be fighting more over who is the most friendly to the idea of passing adult used marijuana in the state. Charlie, Chris, his campaign says, quote, unquote, this is the first part of the crisp contract with. And I think that this is relevant sometimes where certain candidates become very in favor it because it pushes other candidates.
And the example that comes to mind is in New York, where Cynthia Nixon, the former sex and the city star made marijuana legalization, her number one issue too, which pushed Andrew Cuomo towards changing his stance on legalization as well. Moving over to South Dakota. Another state, just like Mississippi. Where an adult use ballot bill was passed and yet the legislators and the governor stepped in and it hasn’t really progressed. They are making progress once again, to bring a ballot in front of voters in the next election.
Over in New York. I want to make a little note on the business side. A Cureleaf If executive at the large multi-state operator was interviewed in an article I saw and stated that he anticipates the retail sales are not going to start until early 20, 23, but perhaps it comes sooner because of the progress being made quickly by governor local and her administration.
One other quick little note in Arizona. Cannabis regulators are announced that there is a list of 87 zip codes across the state where applicants for 26, social equity, retail, marijuana licenses must have lived recently moving over to the business news and a very, very active week. The section that I like to call green new deals, we have a grasp the Duchy with the deft raised vibe.
Dutchy the tech company that helps with cannabis orders, point of sale, and e-commerce raised $350 million in a series D funding round. It’s actually its valuation has doubled to $3.7 billion just seven months after the company raised 200 million. Now Dutchie assists with the sales of over $14 billion, a 5,000 dispensary’s across the country.
MSO Pharmacan is buying LivWell, which owns 21 dispensaries in Colorado for an undisclosed price. And Pharmacan also announced that it’s building a cultivation facility in Michigan, moving over to Pennsylvania and the multi-state operator Cresco. Cresco has announced that it bought Laurel Harvest Labs and a cash and stock deal worth $80 million.
Now this follows a week behind the $90 million purchase of cure, Pennsylvania by Cresco. So now Laurel harvest has six dispensary licenses, one operational grow, and a clinical registrant license because it has partnered with temple university med school. And yes, this means that Cresco has doubled dipfed.
In Pennsylvania. So yes. Welcome Seinfeld to Netflix. Right? Cresco dipfed in Pennsylvania, it took a bite and then it just began. All right, moving over to science and medical. There’s an interesting article about HHC. This is another cannabinoid besides Delta eight, THC and Delta 10 THC, which is being derived from hemp.
And so I just want to make a little note. The article I read about it seemed a little bit like an ad, but I want to say it was kind of interesting because the process by which they make this HHC, which anecdotally they state that it passes drug test because it’s not technically in the THC family. The extraction process starts with CBD, and then there’s certain companies put it into a black box where a complex chemical conversion process happens.
Now, one note I liked from the article was a scientific experts, said there is a concern that there could be a risk of explosions if there is any type of static discharge. So you now have a unregulated market in terms of these hemp derived cannabinoids. Where there is the risk of explosions. Moving over to international news in Costa Rica, the poor Davida is one step closer to reality because medical cannabis and the industrial production of hemp are very, very close to legalization.
In equity news, the inaugural black Canada conference and expo 2021 will be held in new Orleans between November 18th and November 20th in miscellaneous news. And a poll 60% of cannabis users say that they would like to get high with the grandparent, which begs the question. Who paid for this poll, I guess maybe it was just a little bit of a PR grab.
I’m happy to know that that’s great. Who pays for this kind of stuff is what I ask. And last but not least let’s move over to celebrity cameo. This week, I saw a video in which Arnold Schwartzenegger gifted to Danny DeVito, his CoStar in twins, a cigar. The surprise was that the cigar was filled with marijuana.
Now I highly recommend that you track down this video on YouTube, just so that you could see Danny DeVito’s face when he takes the cigar out and it clicks in his mind and he smells it. And he realizes that it’s weed. It’s kind of like the face of the. Of Isaac Newton, when the apple hit him on its head, it’s glorious.
And I recommend that you check it out. And then all their little celebrity news, Steven van Zandt, interesting timing considering the new Sopranos prequel movie than many saints of Newark came out as announced a line or pre-rolls and Jay Z, a man of many marijuana investments, alliteration intended, invested in flow hub, a platform that enables cannabis transactions without the payment of cash.
And with that. We’ve covered all the news this week. And let me sign off by saying, stay grassy my buds, and I’ll see you next week.
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