Not to be defeatist, but there’s probably a pretty good chance you’ve already broken your new year’s resolutions. That is, unless you have made the kind of half-assed resolution that doesn’t really mean anything…cutting down on canned lima beans, for example. The way we see it though, there’s a far better approach to new year’s […]
Without a doubt, the USA have been a point of reference in the development of new and amazing cannabis strains ever since the decade of the 70’s, which normally take only a few years to become popular in Europe. Thus, and if we want to know which strains will be increasingly demanded in the near future in the Old Continent, we must definitely take a look at the current scene in the US.
Moreover, the legalisation in some States has led to a much more bearable situation for breeders and growers, who can now focus on developing new varieties without the worry of being caught by the Authorities. In this way, massive selections and large-scale breeding projects are being done today in the USA, which will doubtless led to a new generation of top grade marihuana genetics.
Cannabis dispensary in the USA
The first hybrids ever developed in the USA and exported into Europe were normally kept in Holland, where they were bred and crossed to develop both seed versions of the American clones and new hybrids. European growers should wait for a few years in order to grow these new and exciting genetics from the USA, which were actually being reproduced in Europe.
But today things have changed a lot. Communication between …
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental health condition that often doesn’t get treated because the people who suffer from it don’t want to be stigmatized.
There are many reasons why medical marijuana may be a great treatment for you. Cannabis has successfully been used to help patients manage pain, as well as control seizures, reduce inflammation, and even help with treatment of muscle spasms arising from multiple sclerosis. The list goes on, but regardless of what you need marijuana to treat, the question becomes: How do I get started?
New year, new rules for California cannabis employers.
Beginning January 1, California employers with five or more employees will be prohibited from asking about an applicant’s conviction history and cannot consider an applicant’s criminal history until after a conditional job offer has been made. A conditional job offer is an offer made contingent on the completion of a background check. Only after the conditional job offer is made, can an employer inquire about conviction history.
This all holds true for cannabis businesses as well. Do not ask a potential employee about criminal history until after the conditional job offer has been made.
If criminal history turns up after the conditional job offer is made, the employer can rescind the job offer, but only after performing an individualized assessment. An individualized assessment requires the employer to consider:
the nature and gravity of the offense and conduct;
the time that has passed since the offense or conduct and completion of the sentence; and
the nature of the job held or sought.
If, after individualized assessment the employer decides the conviction history disqualifies the applicant from the position, the employer must provide written notice of its preliminary decision to withdraw the job offer.
And what is required in the “preliminary notice,” you may ask? That notice must name the disqualifying conviction or convictions, …
A little over a year ago, I put together a State of the State blog post on Oregon cannabis. At that time, the rules were rolling out in a business-friendly manner, many of our clients were proceeding toward licensure, and the market did not feel saturated. Today, the first two items remain true, but the Oregon market has become fuller and more competitive. Part of this has to do with the state’s lack of residency requirements, part has to do with how easy it is to acquire an Oregon marijuana license, and part is just standard free market dynamics. All of this has been a long time coming.
As of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s (OLCC) December 19 report, there were 877 licensed marijuana producers in Oregon, with nearly another 1,000 applications pending. Much of the massive Croptober harvest is drying out and finding its way to the market, and prices for outdoor cannabis seem to be falling fast: in some cases, flower is dropping below $400 per pound. It’s hard to know where bottom is. Program architects may not put the brakes on this anytime soon: the legislature won’t meet again until February (and may not take up the issue at all); and, in the interim, OLCC has no authority to cap …
Mankind and cannabis have maintained a close relationship throughout the History. Although scientific and archaeological evidence allows us to estimate the date and place where it originated, it is difficult to establish its exact place – and time – of origin.
The Yangtze River, one of the possible areas of origin of cannabis
Different researchers have proposed three possible places of origin of the cannabis plant:
China: Along the Yellow and the Yangtze Rivers (Li 1974b). The first remains of the use of hemp have been found in China in the form of a fiber, as well as the oldest paper sample of the history, which also contains cannabis fibers. Some of the earliest records of the use of hemp also come from this country. It has been found that ancient Chinese treatises of medicine already distinguished between ‘ma fen’ (psychoactive seed) and ‘ma tze’ (non-psychoactive seed).
Central Asia: From the Caucasus to the Altai Mountains (De Candolle 1882). The neighboring region to the Takla Makan desert has been proposed as the birthplace of this plant, since from there it could have easily spread into three directions: East towards China, South to India and West towards Europe. Vavilov (1931) suggests that cannabis might have its origin in the northern part of Afghanistan and the
When Colorado and Washington kicked off recreational marijuana legalization and business licensing, both states limited ownership of licensed marijuana businesses to their own state residents. Oregon’s ballot measure, passed two years later, followed suit. But Oregon’s legislature almost immediately removed that restriction. Colorado’s legislature similarly lifted the restriction in 2016, allowing U.S. citizens to qualify for ownership of licensed cannabis businesses. California, Nevada, and the clear majority of legal cannabis states allow at least some level of out of state ownership of licensed businesses. Washington, however, continues to maintain its strict residency requirement for ownership of marijuana businesses.
Washington’s residency requirement does not have any de minimis baseline — a 0.01% business owner is subject to the same restrictions as a 100% business owner. And the residency requirement doesn’t only apply to owners: any person that can exert control over a business (such as a director, officer, or contract manager), anyone that has the right to receive business profits, and the spouses of all those people are all required to live in Washington. The restrictions even rope in things that may not be apparent on first read. For example, the state Liquor and Cannabis Board still considers royalties on branded products (e.g. a trademark license for 2% gross sales on products carrying the …
You’ve started to read a lot about medical cannabis. You’ve been dealing with your symptoms for a while now, and all the other drugs your doctors have recommended have failed. Someone suggested you look into medical cannabis—something you had no idea could help manage your condition—and you fell down a deep research hole. But the more you learn, the more questions you have.
Although cannabis performs well in many latitudes, a rigorous selection of the genetics that we’re going to grow is sometimes necessary in some places in order to harvest our plants successfully, especially outdoors. In this article we will focus on two classic, adverse climate conditions: cold and humid areas – like Northern Europe – and hot and dry climates, where the different cannabis seeds won’t develop in the same way.
Cannabis strains for humid and cold climate
While high humidity promotes a lush and healthy growth, things are different during the flowering stage, when flowers can be infected by mildew and other pathogenic agents due to the effect of cold temperatures and rains. However, it isn’t impossible to grow in these regions, and many growers from places like the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Canada or even Alaska successfully harvest their outdoor cannabis crops every year, mainly thanks to an accurate selection of the genetics grown – always looking for the most resistant strains – and of course the use of greenhouses, greenhouse heaters, etc.
Before presenting you a brief list of this type of genetics, especially suited for outdoor growing in these areas for being particularly resistant to moulds, we are going to explain a few desirable traits that might ensure the best possible results.
From a more flavorful taste to a less obvious odor, vaping cannabis has a number of benefits over smoking it. Once you’ve made the choice to vape it, you still have a few other decisions to make. Choose between Dry Herbs or Cannabis Concentrates Your first choice is opting to vape dry herbs or concentrates. […]
Ever wondered whether you’re missing something in your stash box? Check our list of the 12 items every cannabis stash needs to be sure yours is complete.
One of the great things about cannabis – of which there are of course plenty – is the way in which it is technically so easy to grow. Provided with at least moderately stable conditions, even those with no experience or specialist equipment at all can produce semi-decent cannabis plants. At the same time, if […]
You cannot consider yourself to be any kind of cannabis connoisseur, until you know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. Ask any sample group of 100 cannabis users and chances are at least 90 of them will tell you that they know cannabis contains Terpenes. However, ask the same group of 100 cannabis users […]
Everybody knows that because marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act, it is illegal to sell under federal law. Last year, the FDA again reviewed the published scientific literature on medical cannabis and recommended that marijuana stay in Schedule 1. The DEA relied upon this finding in its August 2016 ruling upholding the cannabis ban.
What everybody doesn’t know is that the FDA’s website says that it “actively supports the development of drugs from marijuana.”
Some statements are even more emphatic: “FDA needs to do all it can to support the needed scientific research with marijuana to characterize its therapeutic promise.” What? Is the FDA suffering from cannabis cognitive dissonance? Not at all. Under the Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act (FDCA), the FDA has the power to approve drugs, based on scientific evidence.
The reason cannabis hasn’t been rescheduled is because, according to the FDA, there is not sufficient evidence to show a currently accepted medical use.
Where does the FDA get off saying there is no medical use? A look at the FDA’s history is instructive. Modern drug regulation started in the beginning of the last century, when the market was filled with unregulated patent medicines claiming to cure everything from constipation to cancer. Many of these medicines, e.g., Johnson’s Mild Combination Treatment …
In April of 2016, we covered the basics of marijuana business valuation on this blog. At that time, we were aware of just one accounting firm–or, more accurately, one accountant at one accounting firm–who claimed to have any interest in marijuana business appraisals. This was likely due to a couple of factors: 1) CPA firms were slower than attorneys to offer services to cannabis businesses historically, due to complications with CPA ethics rules (there were no CPA firms in Oregon or Washington with cannabis clients when we started, seven years ago); and 2) business valuation is a uniquely specialized and accredited field, even among accountants.
But things are changing fast. Recently, we were excited to see Cogence Group PC, one of Oregon’s best financial forensics and valuation firms, publish a no-paywall series of excellent articles on cannabis business valuation. The first article, “How to Perform a Business Valuation of a Marijuana Business,” gives a high-level overview of the three approaches appraisers commonly take: the asset approach, the market approach and the income approach. Each of those approaches, in turn, comes with a dedicated article of its own. Those links are here, here and here.
In our 2016 blog post, we briefly described each of the three valuation approaches as follows:
As Canada prepares to make marijuana legal by July 1, 2018, many dispensaries and medical cannabis “clinics” are popping up—and disappearing—all across the GTA. For the most part, these are still technically illegal operations (hence why they seem to disappear overnight), which makes procuring marijuana for a doctor-prescribed treatment plan difficult. Many patients cannot afford to wait for their medicine to come through the mail; they’re in need of immediate relief from their symptoms.
Choosing the right strain for your ailment as a patient who’s new to the world of medicinal marijuana can be overwhelming. While there are only two types of marijuana plants, namely sativa and indica, there are many hybrids of the two that focus on specific medicinal cannabinoids. Cannabinoids are the compounds found in marijuana that can produce a variety of benefits for patients, including better chronic pain management and improved sleep.
There’s a huge cannabis scene in Catalonia and throughout all of Spain. In order to buy cannabis here one must become a member of a cannabis club. It’s perfectly legal to smoke either in the club or in the privacy of your own home. You can’t just show up at a cannabis club however. You […]
If you dab, it’s pretty likely you’ll have an essential piece of hardware called a nail. In most applications, you need this to complete the dabbing experience. But did you know that carb caps like this are also useful for dabbing? Lots of people think that carb caps are unnecessary but there’s a lot they’re missing out on by not using one. We’ll go through the different types of nails that are available to help you decide which one suits your needs. We’ll also give you a rundown on why carb caps are so misunderstood. A basic list of dab essentials is here.
Nail Me to the Wall
Like we said before, nails are an essential tool for dabbing. You can’t dab without them but they come in so many different types of materials it can be hard choosing the right one for your needs. You can get nails in glass, ceramic, quartz and titanium. Most dab rigs will come standard with a glass nail but you’ll probably want to upgrade that sooner rather than later.
What a lot of people don’t realize, especially when they’re new to dabbing, is that glass is weak and fragile. Glass can’t withstand consistent high temperatures in one spot without breaking. And that just leaves you with a hot mess you should …
Representative Cohen’s quote raises a good point about the value of state-level cannabis. Justice Brandeis is right about the benefit of using states as laboratories for trying out new ideas. These state experiments allow us to test what works and what doesn’t before pushing things out nationwide. They also allow each state to tailor its programs to what works for their own citizens and to what their own citizens want.
All this holds true for cannabis too where we see so many of the state-level experimentations working. The states that have legalized cannabis have built up their economies, provided their citizens with access to useful medicine, and offered patients a route out of opioid addiction.
The cannabis “experiment” is working and that bodes well for it to continue rolling out state by state until such time as the whole country wants it.
Nail Me to the Wall
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