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California has suspended more than nearly 400 marijuana business permits, temporarily paralyzing roughly 5% of the state’s legal cannabis supply chain ranging from retailers to distributors.
Those companies must cease all sales transactions until their licenses are reinstated to “active” status, leading one prominent trade group to criticize the state for temporarily reducing the number of legal shops.
Tests run on cannabis vaporizer cartridges recently obtained by Leafly at illegal California stores show shocking levels of pesticide contamination and toxic vitamin E oil.
By law, those shops shouldn’t even exist, let alone sell tainted THC vape oil to an unsuspecting public. Under Proposition 64, which took effect Jan. 1, 2018, all medical and adult-use cannabis retailers must have a state-issued license.
California-based Pax Labs, one of the leading vape pen companies in the cannabis industry, disclosed Monday it laid off 65 workers, or 25% of its workforce, after missing its revenue projections.
The layoffs come amid a health crisis that has shaken the vaporizing industry.
The San Francisco company – which originally had ties to the Juul e-cigarette before that product was spun off as a separate company – declined to directly link the vaping health crisis to the layoffs, saying only that its sales had fallen short of expectations.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a passel of bills affecting the cannabis industry, his office announced on Saturday. Among the legislation that is now law is AB 37, a proposal sponsored by Democrat member of the California House Reggie Jones-Sawyer that will allow cannabis companies to make tax deductions.
AB 37 requires that eligible companies file their taxes as sole proprietors or partnerships. A similar bill was vetoed last year by former Governor Jerry Brown.
Weed workers across the country are unionizing, and California just made it easier for them.
On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a requirement that all cannabis stores enter into so-called “labor peace agreements” as soon as they have 20 or more employees.
California is now one of two states — New York is the other — that requires licensed weed shops to make a deal with a formal labor union in which managers promise not to stop workers from joining a union. And in exchange, organizers won’t encourage labor strikes against the company.
New Jersey
Last week, Politico reported Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney moved to ban the sale of all vaping products, including marijuana vape products.
That followed New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announcing a task force on vaping that is due to file recommendations in the next three weeks.
“The only safe alternative to smoking is not smoking. Period. Full stop,” Murphy said..
Recreational marijuana vape product sales are suffering in the wake of a nationwide health scare that caused several deaths and hundreds of illnesses.
The shares of vape sales in California, Colorado, Nevada and Washington state’s recreational markets have declined significantly since the first vape-related death was reported in late August, according to Headset, a Seattle-based provider of data and analytics to the cannabis industry.
Unregulated cannabis vaporizer cartridges tainted with a potentially deadly lung toxin have hospitalized seven people with pneumonia-like symptoms in Hanford, California, officials there reported Wednesday.
The cluster of tainted vape cart poisonings caused the Kings County public health department to issue a rare warning this week urging consumers to avoid buying cannabis e-cigarettes from unlicensed sellers. Street cannabis products are not subject to the rigorous testing that licensed products undergo in California.
The major online pot shop directory and cannabis marketplace Weedmaps announced Wednesday that it will no longer allow black-market businesses to advertise on its site, a decision that could boost California's efforts to rein in its vast illegal market.
State regulators and licensed businesses had been pressuring the company to ban unlicensed businesses. Allowing untaxed, unregulated product on the site alongside the taxed marijuana of licensed and regulated stores undercut the legal market, they said.
As a new industry, cannabis is evolving fast. Try to jump into the market looking at the current opportunities, and you’re going to end up behind. On day one. Every industry needs innovators and market builders. But success in cannabis takes visionary skills, as well. Take for instance the race right now to become a multi-state operator (MSOs). In most instances, bigger is better. MSOs create a larger addressable market by having a presence in several marijuana-legal states. Yet, scale comes at a cost.
