Cannabis dispensaries in San Francisco were allowed to reopen after city officials determined that they are essential businesses that should not be subject to closure during the ongoing shelter-in-place order. Under the shelter-in-place order, most businesses were ordered closed for three weeks, although essential businesses such as grocery stores and pharmacies were permitted to stay […]
Just over two years after commercial cannabis sales became legal in California, the state has collected more than $1 billion in taxes from commercial marijuana activity. The total includes $498.1 million in cannabis excise taxes, $123.4 million in cultivation taxes, and $403.1 million in state sales tax. Most of the money, after regulatory costs, has […]
California officials announced that marijuana vape cartridges seized in illegal shops in Los Angeles contained potentially dangerous additives, including a thickening agent blamed for a national outbreak of deadly lung illnesses tied to vaping. Officials also found that the illegal vapes typically were not as potent as advertised, and sometimes contained just a fraction of the THC claimed […]
The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) announced yesterday that it plans to raise taxes on the legal cannabis industry once again. Increasing cannabis tax rates is considered to be another blow to an industry that is currently facing an economic downturn in a depressed market. See the original article on Forbes
California has suspended 394 cannabis business permits, affecting about 5% of the state’s legal supply chain. The move will temporarily reduce the number of legal cannabis operators in the state amid a crackdown on unlicensed operations. The suspensions apply to 63 retailers, 61 delivery services, 47 microbusinesses, 185 distributors, and 29 distributors that are transport-only. See the […]
For the past few years, “harvest season” has too quickly morphed into “fire season” in Northern California. Lots of pot is now in the most delicate and important stage of all: drying and curing. As a result of the fires and blackouts that have impacted California this year, the California Department of Tax and Fee […]
The Kern County Sheriff’s Office — with the help of the FBI and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife — executed search warrants on 11 fields in the Arvin area, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. From the 459 acres of land, authorities destroyed about 10 million marijuana plants — a value of […]
A new poll found that 63% of California voters favored their cities giving permits to cannabis stores, with support in all areas of the state, including 69% in Los Angeles County. The lowest support for pot shops was in the Inland Empire, which includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties, at 54%. The survey results could […]
California’s Assembly has approved a measure to allow school boards to decide whether or not to allow medical cannabis use on K-12 campuses. The measure only permits non-smokable forms of cannabis. Under the current state’s laws, students cannot bring medical cannabis within 1,000 feet of campus and parents must come to the school, pick up their child […]
A new ruling out of the California Supreme Court this week will create yet another obstacle to the expansion of legal cannabis, at a time when more than half of the state’s cities and counties still ban retail stores. The state’s highest court ruled that San Diego failed to adequately analyze the potential environmental impacts of […]
Seed Vault of California is a domestic cannabis seed bank that is providing the genetics for home growers to save money and harvest premium cannabis. Under Prop 64, all adults 21 and older in California are allowed to grow six cannabis plants, and Seed Vault of California encourages Californians to take advantage of that freedom. […]
When cannabis advocates in California began selling the idea of establishing a taxed and regulated pot market one of the critical points was throwing a chunk of the tax revenue at after school programs. In fact, the language on the ballot specifically showed that the state’s publicly funded After School Education and Safety (ASES) programs […]
The total number of suicides in California per year, including those committed with firearms, declined after the state legalized marijuana use for medical purposes, according to a new study. Researchers observed a notable decline in intentional deaths in the years after Prop 215 was approved. “Our results demonstrate that California’s 1996 intervention led to an […]
California lawmakers are pushing to require municipalities to lift bans on cannabis stores if voters there supported Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative that legalized sale of the drug for recreational use in California. Assembly Bill 1356 would mandate 2,200 new cannabis stores throughout the state, more than three times the 631 shops legally operating now, […]
A new bill OK’d by the California Senate would enable state officials to extend nearly 7,000 temporary cannabis growing licenses through mid-September. The temporary licenses, which the state stopped issuing on Dec. 31, will all expire by July, at which point there would be no authorized cannabis market “and a crisis will take hold.” The […]
California lawmakers have announced a bill that would reduce cannabis excise taxes and eliminate cultivation taxes. Assembly Bill 286, if approved, would reduce the excise tax on cannabis goods from 15 percent to 11 percent. A three-year cultivation tax for growers would also be completely eliminated. California’s cannabis customers sometimes pay taxes accounting for up to 45 […]
Last Dec. 5, Zeke Flatten, a former police officer now working in the cannabis industry, was driving south through northern California’s Sonoma County on US-101 when he was pulled over by Rohnert Park police. The officers, wearing green military-style fatigues without badges, insignia, or nametags, told Flatten they were with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, […]
Sunday night, California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill into law that allows for the streamlined clearing of prior cannabis convictions. The new law, AB-1793, automates the convictions’ removal, which supporters of the bill hope will allow people to move forward with their lives. Cannabis convictions can keep people from accessing fundamental services like […]
The Los Angeles International Airport updated its public marijuana policy on its website recently to green-light transporting legal amounts of cannabis through security checkpoints and onto planes. In accordance with California law, passengers will be able to travel through LAX with up to 28.5 grams of marijuana and 8 grams of concentrated marijuana. The policy […]
As more than a dozen wildfires continue to burn across California, cannabis cultivators affected by the blaze face challenges ranging from the health and safety of their employees to the potential destruction of their facilities and crops. Consumer safety and lab testing will also become significant concerns as cannabis grown in affected areas hits the […]
One in five batches of marijuana has failed laboratory testing since new state safety requirements kicked in July 1, according to data from the California Bureau of Cannabis Control. Failures have been triggered by inaccurate labeling or contamination from pesticides, bacteria or processing chemicals. Those testing requirements and results have left some retailers with severely […]
California health authorities dealt a blow to the burgeoning CBD industry by banning preparations of CBD derived from industrial hemp rather than psychoactive cannabis. The decree adds to the legal confusion around the cannabinoid and highlights the need for greater clarity from authorities at both the state and federal level. On July 6, the California […]
On Sunday, the stringent new “seed to sale” tracking standards for California’s cannabis market went into effect. Overnight, thousands of pounds of cannabis products worth hundreds of millions of dollars suddenly became noncompliant. Now, dispensaries are in the process of destroying them, in an event the industry has dubbed the “Marijuanapocalypse of 2018.” For the […]
California’s legislature is considering licensing its own cannabis banks to give the cannabis industry access to financial services not available to them federally. Despite the fact that cannabis businesses operate within their state’s legally regulated industries, they still represent a risk to federally licensed banks which could be charged for aiding in the trafficking of […]
There are certain states we think of when we think of marijuana sales, such as California and Colorado. But are there other states that are making a major impact on the cannabis industry in the United States? Here is a list of the 10 states that had the highest marijuana sales in 2017: 10. Maine […]
The 7th CannaGrow Expo will be held in sunny Palm Springs, California! The 7th CannaGrow Expo will be hosted May 19 – 20, 2018 in sunny Palm Springs, CA at the Palm Springs Convention Center & Renaissance Palm Springs Hotel. CannaGrow Expo is a two-day educational conference & exposition dedicated to the art & science […]
Berkeley City Council members have passed a resolution declaring the city a sanctuary for recreational marijuana. The move may be the first of its kind in the country, tweeted Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, who proposed the measure. Under the new resolution, which passed Tuesday night, no Berkeley department, agency, commission, officer or employee “shall use […]
Mike Tyson has been a boxer, an actor, a monologuist, and an animated detective, but now it looks like the former heavyweight champion wants to take a bite out of California’s new legal weed game. According to the Blast, Tyson and two business partners—Robert Hickman and Jay Strommen—have plans to build a massive “cannabis resort” […]
California Treasurer John Chiang wants the state to consider creating a government-owned bank that could serve cannabis businesses, one of several recommendations aimed at helping bring those businesses into the financial mainstream. The recommendations, the product of a year of meetings of a cannabis working group organized by Chiang’s office, suggest there may be ways […]
With the most devastating wildfire in California history laying waste to its members’ homes and livelihoods, the California Growers Association responded in the way most crises are handled in 2017: crowdfunding. As of Tuesday morning, 41 people have perished in the fires, which have burned more than 101,000 acres and destroyed 6,700 homes and businesses […]
The fires in northern California are turning into a catastrophe for local cannabis growers. Some farmers have seen their crops incinerated, while others have watched helplessly as ash and smoke contaminate sensitive marijuana flowers. The fires in Mendocino are south of the famed Humboldt County grows, but it’s still a part of what is known […]
The large number of illegal cannabis grows in California have been recently coming to public attention, increasing state officials’ fears that the federal government will step in and take action against the state. It is estimated that the state produced 13.5 million pounds of cannabis last year, even though the state’s residents only consumed 2.5 […]
Canndescent drew inspiration from such luxury brands as Tiffany’s, Hermes and Apple in designing a line of cannabis products whose elegant packaging wouldn’t look out of place on the shelves of Neiman Marcus. But the California cultivator might not be able to emblazon its name or Chanel-influenced flower logo on T-shirts, hats or other items […]