Quick Hits

1. This weekend’s Outside Lands festival in San Francisco became the first major California music festival to allow REC sales and consumption. ????WW California has more.
   S.F. Chronicle
2. Leafly investigates the practice of companies lab shopping for the best test results.

• “This drug policy we had over the last 50 years did not work,” Health Minister Etienne Schneider said. “Forbidding everything made it just more interesting to young people.”
• The move, which could happen in as soon as two years, would step up pressure on other European countries to legalize.

Quick Hit

• Mexico is seeking public input on how to regulate REC.
  MJBiz

• A judge ruled a company called Woodstock Ventures, which has been developing Woodstock branded cannabis in partnership with MedMen is the only company with the rights to the name.

• Jared Mirsky, of cannabis branding agency Wick & Mortar says the case illustrates the value of picking an original name for your brand. “There seems to be a big misunderstanding in terms of what you can and can’t do in terms of naming,” he said.
• Canna Law Blog parent firm Harris Bricken is having a webinar on alternative dispute resolution for cannabis companies who want to stay out of court.

• A company called 420 Cyber has developed budtender kiosks which can use facial recognition to measure customer’s emotional response to products.

• “It is hard, if not impossible, to find an example of a surveillance technology that has not been turned against groups that are already vulnerable in our structurally inequitable system,” said Shankar Narayan, Director of the Technology and Liberty Project at the ACLU of Washington.

• NASA and the U.S. Navy will continue to ban CBD.
  Forbes, U.S. News

Quick Hits

1. Cannabis use can affect how patients respond to anaesthesia and recover from surgery, Kaiser Health News learns.
2. The FDA is investigating 127 cases of people who experienced seizures after vaping e-cigarettes.
   Axios

3. A controvertial study in Washington state is enrolling pregnant women who use cannabis to study what it means for their children’s brain development.
   AP

• More than four years after Louisiana legalized MED, it went on sale in as many as nine licensed dispensaries.
  AP
• The Utah Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state’s MED law, which was passed by the governor and legislature in December. It replaced a more liberal MED law passed by voters in November.
  AP
• Portland, Maine’s largest city, proposed rules for REC businesses. Maine voters approved REC in 2016.
  Press Herald
• A New Mexico judge ruled the state must issue MED cards to out of state residents.
  KERA
• Missouri’s MED licensing process is off to a slow start.
  St. Louis Public Radio

• Cannabis Wire looks at how companies lobbied New York lawmakers as they contemplated REC legalization.
• Here’s how the industry spent $600,000 on Illinois political contributions before the state passed REC.
  Chicago Tribune
• Powerhouse D.C. lobbying shop Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck opened a cannabis and hemp group.
  The Hill
• Major Sacramento firm Capitol Advocacy has teamed up with SoCal firm Spiker Consulting to lobby for cannabis.
  SLO Tribune
  

Quick Hits

1. Congress may finally be coming around to the industry’s view on bank access.
   Bloomberg

2. Business Insider asks how big venture capital firms are thinking about cannabis.
3. Ohio state rep. Candice Keller (R) brushed off calls to resign after she posted on Facebook that REC, gay marriage, “drag queen advocates” and other conservative bug-bears are to blame for mass shootings.
   N.Y. Times

• In general, states see a substantial gain in taxes between their first and second year of sales, with revenues slowing thereafter.
• Though substantial, the institute calls cannabis taxes “far from a budgetary panacea.”
• The group suggests that as cannabis prices decline, as they tend to do in more mature markets, pot taxes could decline as well. States such as California which tax partly on the weight of cannabis sold, appear more likely to generate the best tax rates.

Quick Hits

1. Cannabis job postings on Indeed have quadrupled since 2016, and interest in cannabis jobs has climbed even faster.
   Indeed Hiring Lab

2. A study found cannabis is a $458M bonanza for Santa Barbara County. ????WW California has more.
   Coastal View

3. L.A.-based retailer MedMen hired and quickly fired PR firm MWWPR in what the PR firm’s CEO called “one of the more dishonest and odd processes we have experienced.” MedMen declined to comment. ????WW California has more.
   PRWeek

• The transaction in question involved merging with a Canadian company to list on a Canadian stock exchange.
• Massachusetts regulators called it a “good faith” mistake since no channel or form existed to make the required disclosures.
• Curaleaf recently attracted a slapdown from the FDA for making “over the line” health claims about CBD. Canna Law Blog discusses the case.

• Nantucket’s first dispensary is opening, but having a pot shop on an island creates additional complications. For example, it’s illegal to cross federal waters with cannabis, even in a plane, so The Green Lady has created a vertically integrated business on Nantucket.
• The Boston Globe published the essential guide to buying and consuming in the Commonwealth.

• If enforced, it would end “almost all current state-legal activities,” Rand Corporation and Carnegie Mellon Scholar Jonathan Caulkins said.
• To continue operation REC businesses would need the same “explicit exemption” held by alcohol and tobacco, and winning it isn’t a sure thing. “It could all come crashing down,” Caulkin
• “I view Biden’s plan as a ham-fisted handing over of cannabis to the pharmaceutical industry,” Gavin Kogan, chairman of vertically integrated California business Grupo Flor said.

1. A venture capital firm controlled by Josh Kushner, brother of President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, is leading a $35M investment in online cannabis marketplace LeafLink.
   Bloomberg
2. LeafLink CEO Ryan Smith is a confirmed speaker at WeedWeek Recharge on September 20. ⬇️⬇️⬇️