In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued warning letters today to companies selling products containing delta-8 THC. In total, the FDA sent out five warning letters to companies for violating the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act). Image [...]

The cannabis retail market is very unique. What began as compassion clubs and wellness centers in the early days of legal cannabis, eventually morphed into dispensaries, quickly becoming the retail model that regulators around the country adopted and businesses implemented. For most states with legal cannabis [...]

Some consumers participating in the legal cannabis market want to avoid inhalable products. They are concerned about the effects of the smoke or they want their usage to be discreet — without the pungent aroma emanating from burning cannabis flower. For those consumers, edibles are the [...]

The adult beverage industry, like any other category of consumer branded products, is driven by trends. If you’re old enough to remember Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, you probably also remember Zima and Smirnoff Ice, and more recently “healthy” options like Skinny Girl and Michelob Ultra. [...]

On Thursday, April 21, a handful of dispensaries in New Jersey begin selling cannabis to adults over the age of 21. The state has so far issued licenses for adult use sales to seven alternative treatment centers (ATCs), otherwise known as medical cannabis businesses already established [...]

Federal regulations have made compliant credit processing in the cannabis industry difficult to achieve. As a result, most cannabis retailers operate a cash-only model, limiting their ability to upsell customers and placing a burden on customers who might rather use credit. While some dispensaries offer debit, [...]

Happy 4/20! The cannabis holiday with unclear origins is today and with it comes hundreds and hundreds of marketing and story pitches landing in every journalist’s inbox. Some of those pitches are impactful, some lack substance, some celebrate anniversaries, most offer discounts and sales and some [...]

Once again, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a number of warning letters to companies selling hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) products. This time around, the FDA sent these warning letters to companies that had statements on their website claiming CBD is an effective treatment [...]

Sample preparation is an essential part of method development and is critical to successful analytical determinations. With cannabis and cannabis products, the analyst is faced with a very challenging matrix and targets that may range from trace level through percent level thus placing considerable demands on [...]

The cannabis business landscape is complex and is under constant review and control. Further, rules and regulations from both federal and state governments can pose additional challenges and barriers to business owners. For those unfamiliar, there is a section of Internal Revenue Code, Section 280E, that [...]

As the demand for legal cannabis continues to rise and more states come online, it is imperative to enact more rigorous and comprehensive testing solutions to protect the health of consumers. People use cannabis products for wellness and to find relief; they should not be susceptible [...]

If legal cannabis isn’t already a key facet of American culture, it is well on its way. The multibillion-dollar industry is already ubiquitous in politics, and consumers are increasingly seeing various types of marketing from cannabis brands, from billboards to magazine ads to organic content on [...]

As an emerging field in cannabis, contaminant testing remains a gray area for many businesses. The vast differences in state-by-state regulations, along with the frequent changes of previously established rules make testing a difficult, time-consuming process. But at its core, the science and reasoning behind why [...]

With more and more states fully legalizing cannabis for medical and adult use, regulation has become a hot topic for the industry – and it won’t be going away anytime soon. The markets for virtually all cannabis uses (with the exception of industrial hemp, under the [...]

Progress and history are being made in New York for adult use cannabis. Recently, Governor Hochul signed an amendment to New York State Cannabis Law which permits the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) to award conditional licenses to certain adult use cultivators and processors, allowing hemp [...]

According to a press release published last week, Cresco Labs has come to an agreement with Columbia Care Inc. to acquire the company. The $2 billion deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022, will create the largest multi-state operator (MSO) in the country [...]

On-demand cannabis delivery services are a rapidly growing part of the industry. Having a delivery option available for your dispensary’s patient population is a critical component of your service offering. This is especially true when considering medical cannabis patients who might have conditions that hinder their [...]

EDGARTOWN, MA, March 23, 2022 – Registration for the Cannabis Quality Conference & Expo, taking place October 17-19 at the Hilton Parsippany in New Jersey, is now open. The agenda features breakout sessions, keynotes and panel discussions that will help attendees better understand the cannabis markets in [...]

New York is embarking on a great social undertaking. In awarding its adult-use cannabis licenses, under the plan laid out by Gov. Kathy Hochul on March 10, the state is attempting to right generations of wrongs caused by the war on cannabis. The wrongs are numerous [...]

A new ASTM International standard seeks to create an internationally recognized symbol that indicates a product contains intoxicating cannabinoids. The cannabis technical committee at ASTM, D37, developed the standard for the International Intoxicating Cannabinoid Product Symbol (IICPS). The International Intoxicating Cannabinoid Product Symbol (IICPS) The standard [...]

Even if you don’t know much about cannabis pop culture, people are probably familiar with the phrase, “puff, puff, pass.”’But what if the future of cannabis is really more like “sip, sip, sip“? That’s what has everyone from the largest cannabis companies to the most mainstream [...]

Federal regulation of the cannabis and hemp sectors is coming sooner rather than later — and this is mostly good news for cannabis businesses and consumers. But cannabis producers already struggling to meet complex and ever-changing local regulations (where they exist) will be facing a new [...]

Risk management is the process of identifying potential hazards, assessing the associated risk, then implementing controls to mitigate those risks. With Salmonella and Aspergillus being two of the leading causes of cannabis contamination that can occur throughout the supply chain, applying upstream risk management strategies can [...]

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a Final Rule (FR) on hemp testing that went into effect on 22nd March 2021. Consequently, all hemp testing laboratories must familiarize themselves with what is stipulated in the FR and do all that is required to comply. The [...]

People today are more eco-conscious than ever. The last several years have seen a growing awareness of the impact of human behavior on the environment, and COVID-19 brought real-life context to the catastrophic effects of a global crisis. Lifestyle changes during the pandemic empowered people to [...]

The scent of pine from your Christmas tree. The fragrance of a ripe summer peach at the farmer’s market. The whiff of eucalyptus and lavender that greets you when you enter a spa. Aroma is a keystone in how we experience the world. In any given [...]

Medicinal Genomics announced today that they have received AOAC International certification for their PathoSEEK® Salmonella and STEC E. coli multiplex assay. In combination with their SenSATIVAx® extraction kits, labs can simultaneously detect Salmonella spp. and STEC E. coli with a single qPCR reaction for flower, concentrates [...]

The 2022 Emerald Cup Awards will look a little different this year. The competition is adopting a new classification system for different strains of flower, going well beyond the conventional and outdated sativa and indica categories. Developed by Napro Research in 2013 and supplemented with more [...]

This week, three companies in the cannabis testing space announced a partnership: Agricor Laboratories, its sister company Botanacor Laboratories and SC Laboratories will join forces to work together on comprehensive cannabis and hemp testing throughout the United States. The press release says that this partnership creates [...]

According to a press release published last week, Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. announced the opening of two new dispensaries in Pennsylvania. Their newest location in State College opened its doors to patients this week and the company is expecting to open an new dispensary in Erie next [...]

In the cannabis industry, it’s crucial to be able to predict the future, to adapt and survive in a competitive industry that is arguably regulated more closely than any other. From licensing to buildout, there are a growing number of barriers to entering the cannabis industry [...]

Cannabis products and medicines are progressing rapidly, eating away at the market share of smokable flower. Currently, the general adult use cannabis market is split in three, in order of popularity: cannabis flower, vaporizers and ingestible products like edibles or capsules. In the medical market, flower [...]

Now entering its sixth year of medical cannabis legalization, the Empire State is well on its way to expanding the market considerably. When New York first legalized medical cannabis, it had some of the strictest rules in the country. Dispensaries needed to have pharmacists and doctors [...]

As additional states around the country legalize cannabis – New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota and Montana, to name a few– more and more medical and adult use dispensaries are popping up. Business owners are looking for ways to stand out from their competition. Enter dispensary displays, [...]

The Pennsylvania Department of Health sent emails back in December to registered medical cannabis patients, notifying them of a safety review being conducted on ingredients found in cannabis vape products. According to the Pittsburgh City Paper, the emails the state agency sent out were kind of [...]

Update: Gov. Reeves signed the bill into law today. Mississippi is the 37th state to legalize medical cannabis in the country.  On January 26, 2022, both the Mississippi House of Representatives and the state’s Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve SB 2095, the bill that will legalize [...]

Let me be honest: I’ve only been part of the cannabis industry for six months. Before that, I worked at B2B tech start-ups and ad tech companies like Roku and Criteo. The most valuable thing I learned is that most good ad campaigns are linked to [...]

Back in November of 2020, voters in New Jersey overwhelmingly approved Question 1, the ballot measure to legalize cannabis. On February 22, 2021, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed three bills into law, laying out the framework for how the state would move forward with legalized [...]

Ask any cannabis connoisseur, and they’ll likely tell you that cannabis delivery services have been around for a long, long time. Given the distancing requirements of the COVID years, the increasing number of medical cannabis patients who need or would like cannabis delivered to their door [...]

Last week, Gary Chambers Jr., a Baton Rouge native, launched his political campaign to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana. He took the internet by storm with his first political advertisement, a 37-second-long video where he advocates for cannabis legalization, discussing the disproportionate effects [...]

One study published in the Journal of Natural Products two weeks ago proposes using the cannabinoid CBDA in conjunction with vaccines to prevent SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) infection. The study was conducted in a lab and says that cannabinoid acids (CBGA, THCA-A, CBDA, etc.) can bind to the [...]

Dalwhinnie Enterprises is a cannabis brand that started in Ridgeway, Colorado. Based in the San Juan Mountains in Western Colorado, the company includes brands like Dalwhinnie Farms Cannabis, Shift Cannabis, Ridgway Hemp Company and the Dalwhinnie Farms Boutique in Aspen, Colorado. Brandon Barksdale has about a [...]

Curaleaf Holdings, Inc., a Florida-based cannabis company operating in 23 states and Europe, made two big announcements earlier this morning. First, they acquired Bloom Dispensaries for $211 million. As part of the acquisition, Curaleaf is purchasing Bloom’s four dispensaries in Phoenix, Tucson, Peoria and Sedona. They [...]

Canadian cannabis giant Tilray (NASDAQ:TLRY) announced its fiscal second quarter of 2022 results last week. The company reported net revenue of $155 million in Q2 which was an increase of 20% year over year. Tilray attributed these gains to its expansion in verticals that include alcohol [...]

When Montana became a territory in 1864, its legislators chose as its motto the Spanish words “Oro Y Plata” which means “Gold and Silver.” Gold and silver discoveries brought people to the new territory in droves, and everyone expected to get rich. Near the North entrance [...]

Here we are entering a new year. Finally, many states in the United States have agreed to legalize adult-use cannabis either through medical or adult-use programs. In 2021, we saw Connecticut, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York and Virginia all legalize adult-use, bringing the total to 18 states that now allow [...]

Cannabis remains one of the fastest growing industries with no signs of slowing down. According to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, the legal cannabis market is poised to grow 20-30% per year to the tune of $50 billion by 2026.[1]With great opportunity comes numerous risks. Claims [...]

Federal legalization of adult use cannabis is still out there as a potential, but ultimately, there are no guarantees that come with such a move. Further, even with legalization, the state-to-state variations in regulations for everything from cultivation standards to packaging and transportation will make marketing [...]