• Cannabis-related firms again face hurdles in qualifying for financial relief under the newly enacted $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, but the door has opened wider for hard-hit companies, especially small and economically disadvantaged businesses.

  The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) includes three programs worth exploring, marijuana industry experts said.

  Two offer billions of dollars in loans and grants, while another provides tax credits:

  • State Small Business Credit Initiative: More than $10 billion is being funneled to states to support small businesses, economically disadvantaged businesses and micro-businesses. Some experts believe state rather than federal rules should apply, potentially opening up funds for marijuana businesses operating in state-legal markets.
  • Employee Retention Credit: Requirements for these payroll tax credits have been relaxed some, and credits now could be in play for cannabis-related firms that have experienced a year-to-year drop in receipts of 20% or more (the previous standard was 50%).
  • Payroll protection loans and grants: The same strict requirements persist from the two previous economic stimulus rounds, but experts note that banks, which issue the loans and grants, ultimately determine whether a business qualifies.

  Overall, though, it’s tough for cannabis-related businesses to tap the funds, especially those that are plant-touching.

  “Once again, the cannabis industry has (largely) been left out of coronavirus relief, and likely that will only change once marijuana is legal federally,” said Josh Kappel, a founding partner of Denver-based law firm Vicente Sederberg.

  Potential help through states

  Steve Schain, a senior attorney in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the Hoban Law Group, views the situation more bullishly.

  He sees the State Small Business Credit Initiative as a funding possibility for both ancillary and plant-touching businesses. The initiative provides the following funding to state-run, small business-financing programs, Schain said:

  • $10 billion to support small businesses recovering from pandemic impacts.
  • $2.5 billion to support small businesses majority-owned by social and economically disadvantaged individuals.
  • $500 million to “very small businesses” with fewer than 10 employees.

  Some of those funds “could be in play for marijuana companies,” Schain said.

  To Continue Reading go to: Marijuana Business Daily

HELENA, Mont. — Bill Stocker could be considered the archetype of a conservative voter: He’s a retired Marine and former police officer who voted for President Donald Trump. But he’s also among the majority of South Dakota voters who broadly legalized marijuana this month.

Stocker, 61, said enforcing marijuana laws gets in the way of pursuing other drug crimes and called warnings about the ills of marijuana “a bunch of baloney” that even people in a Republican stronghold like South Dakota no longer believe.

South Dakota’s values of “personal responsibility and freedom” won out, said Stocker, who lives in Sioux Falls.

The 2020 election helped prove how broadly accepted marijuana has become throughout the United States, with measures to legalize recreational pot also breezing to victory in progressive New Jersey, moderate Arizona and conservative Montana. Fifteen states have now broadly legalized it, while 36 states allow medical marijuana.

Voters in Mississippi overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana this month, giving the drug another foothold in the South.

A Gallup Poll released Nov. 9 indicated that 68% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana — double the approval rate in 2003. That wide margin was evident in the election, with marijuana measures passing with strong bipartisan support.

In South Dakota and Montana — where Republicans swept to victory in the key races — recreational marijuana passed with at least 16 percentage points more support than Democratic President-elect Joe Biden received. South Dakota also approved medical pot, which outpolled Biden by 34 percentage points.

“We’ve waged a war against this plant for a century and by any reasonable metric, that war has been an abject failure,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors legalization. “All it’s done is incarcerate millions of Americans, it has perpetuated racism in this country, and perhaps the worst injustice of all is that it’s deprived us of medical marijuana research.”

Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, hurting veterans who can’t be prescribed medical pot at Veterans Affairs clinics, he said.

They “come home with chronic pain and we’re pushing them to opioids,” Schweich said. “That’s crazy. That’s unpatriotic and it’s a disgrace.”

Continue reading at ABCNews.com

Between the presidential election, governor races, and down-ballot contests, this year’s election features a lot of important choices. Among those, voters in five states will have a chance to legalize marijuana for recreational or medical uses.

In Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota, voters could legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. In Mississippi and South Dakota (in a ballot initiative separate from the full legalization measure), voters could also legalize medical marijuana.

If all these measures are approved, the United States would go from having 11 states in which marijuana is legal to 15. Counting by population, that would mean more than one-third of Americans would live in a state with legalized marijuana, up from more than a quarter today.

The ballot initiatives represent a massive shift in drug policy. A decade ago, zero states had legalized marijuana. Then, in 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize cannabis for recreational use and sales — and many others followed.

Despite the success of state measures, marijuana remains illegal at the federal level. But since the Obama administration, the federal government has generally taken a hands-off approach to states’ marijuana initiatives. There are still hurdles — banking is a challenge for marijuana businesses under federal prohibition — but for the most part the federal government has not interfered in states’ laws since 2013.

That policy may reflect a change in public opinion: As it stands, public opinion surveys show that even a majority of Republicans, who tend to take more anti-marijuana views than their Democratic and independent peers, support legalization.

In that context, legalization advocates are optimistic about their prospects this year, even in historically red states like Arizona, Montana, and South Dakota. If all these measures are successful, the US will have taken a major step forward both in undoing its drug war, and in undoing some of the damage it has done to communities of color.

Continue at MSN NEWS

During the last six months, the size of Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program has surged due to the anxiety-producing effects of COVID-19 and some favorable changes to regulation.

The number of patient visits at cannabis dispensaries has risen by more than 70 percent — rising from 70,000 a week in February to 120,000 each week in August.

Retail sales also have exploded. Since February, dispensaries have sold as much marijuana as they had during the previous two years combined, according to statistics released last week by the state Department of Health, which governs the cannabis program.

Patients bought about $385 million in legal marijuana products from the state’s 89 cannabis dispensaries during the period, according to the state Office of Medical Marijuana. Until February, total retail sales since the inception of the highly regulated industry two years ago in the Keystone State had totaled only about $400 million. There are at least 27 dispensaries now operating in the five-county region.

“The program is doing really well,” said Chris Woods, CEO of Terrapin Care Station, a cannabis grower and processor upstate in Clinton County. “It’s hard not to draw a correlation with COVID-19. In unsettled times, cannabis is a medicine that seems to help people cope with anxiety.”

Anxiety remains one of the most cited reasons for getting a state medical marijuana card. It comes in second only to chronic pain. Post traumatic stress disorder is a distant third.

Why has marijuana suddenly taken off?

It is chiefly attributable to temporary changes to the regulations implemented by the Wolf administration. Marijuana dispensaries were among the first businesses deemed “essential” by Gov. Tom Wolf. But Wolf also streamlined access to medical marijuana in ways that made it safer to join the program.

Continue Reading at MSN.com

Investors and cannabis companies are jockeying for a stake in Arizona’s $750 million-plus marijuana market in advance of a likely adult-use legalization ballot initiative in November.

If, as expected, residents vote to legalize adult use, the recreational program could launch by next spring.

The rec initiative – which favors existing medical marijuana operators – is creating enormous interest among investors despite the recession and tight capital markets, according to industry insiders.

While the election sets up the prospect of multimillion-dollar medical marijuana license sales, it’s unclear how many businesses will decide to cash out given that the initiative gives existing operators the inside track to what is expected to be a massive rec opportunity.

“We will have adult use, the marketplace will double in size and an Arizona license is going to be one of the best investments” going, said Demitri Downing, founder of the Arizona Marijuana Industry Trade Association (MITA) and a cannabis consultant.

A business’ ability to qualify for an adult-use license immediately increases the value of an operation by 30%-80% because of the additional market opportunities, Downing estimated.

Arizona cannabis attorney Janet Jackim said marijuana companies and investors, both in-state and from other regions, “are trying to gobble up any licenses they can.”

In fact, she said she already is working on several potential transactions.

Continue Reading at Marijuana Business Daily

Arkansas regulators approved a sixth cultivation license to support a rapidly growing medical cannabis market nearing $100 million in total sales.

Carpenter Farms Medical Group, a minority-owned company, was awarded the license Tuesday, according to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission awarded the sixth cultivation license after accepting a settlement agreement that resolved a lawsuit by Carpenter Farms, according to the Democrat Gazette.Currently, only three growers have sold products, but two additional ones are expected to harvest soon.

Read more at MJBizDaily.com

Jim Belushi says the tragic death of his brother John (the actor, comedian and musician known for his roles on sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live,” “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and the cult classic film “The Blues Brothers”) in 1982 ripped a hole in his family, leaving trauma and pain. “Addiction enters a family like a snake and starts to squeeze until somebody dies,” he says. “It collapses families.”

A famed actor, comedian and musician in his own right, Belushi spent years wrestling with John’s death, searching for meaning and purpose to it. It wasn’t until 2016, when he began cultivating cannabis on a farm he had acquired in Eagle Point, Ore., that he started to find answers to his questions. He’s not sure why cannabis cultivation appealed to him, but he’s adamant that he’s a changed person for it.

“Why am I doing this? I don’t know. I kind of stumbled into it, but it’s leading me to an understanding of my own brother’s death, the trouble that it caused in my family, the collapse of my family,” Belushi says. “And ever since I’ve been working with this cannabis, I’ve come a long way in healing all of that.”

With that newfound perspective, Belushi feels a responsibility to use his celebrity status to build a business that might help other individuals and families process their traumas. Thus, Belushi’s Farm was born.

Continue story at Cannabis Business Times

Cannabis sales have increased substantially in the last few years, but so has the competition with more growers, retailers and other entrepreneurs vying for a stake in the “green rush.” At the same time, an oversupply of marijuana and the cost of operating in this highly regulated industry are taking their toll.

Here, industry executives predict top trends for 2020.

Cannabis Legalization Is Going Global

Legalization is growing outside of the United States, and countries that are first to the global marketplace can create sustainable advantages for themselves in their customer base and their funding. Kyle Detwiler, chief executive of Clever Leaves, an international operator with brands, extraction facilities, cultivation operations, and other investments in six countries, says that countries like Colombia and Portugal that have been among the first to legalize cannabis “are poised to continue establishing their global dominance in short order.”

The countries’ first-mover status will also be a magnet for financial interest he said. “There is little doubt that the expanding European cannabis market will make it an attractive investment opportunity,” Detwiler said.

Hemp, the source for CBD in many non-psychoactive products, will expand internationally as well, driven by the CBD’s demand. The CBD market will grow to $2.1 billion in consumer sales by 2020 according to the Hemp Business Journal, with $450 million of those sales coming from hemp-based sources. Puerto Rico’s Department of Agriculture has already reported there will be at least 10,000 acres of hemp cultivated for commercial purposes in 2020.

Read More Here at Forbes

(Bloomberg) — Illinois per-capita recreational pot sales topped every state but one in its debut month.

The state logged $39.2 million of adult-use recreational marijuana sales in January, or $3.07 in sales per resident, according to New Frontier Data, a cannabis research company. Those are the second-highest sales per capita during the first full month of legalization among eight other states where adults can buy pot for recreational use. Nevada was the highest at $8.88 per capita in July 2017, a figure bolstered by tourism, according to Kacey Morrissey, New Frontier’s director of industry analytics.

Illinois’s performance is “typical for first month’s sales,” Beau Whitney, executive vice president and senior economist at New Frontier, said in an email. “Illinois is fairly strong out of the gate.”

On Jan. 1, Illinois became the 11th state to legalize recreational use of the drug. The fervor around the industry’s prospects has been strong especially as Illinois, which has the lowest-credit rating of all 50 states, needs revenue. With nearly 13 million residents and more than 100 million tourists a year, Illinois is expected to be the largest adult-use market in the Midwest and annual sales could reach $4 billion when the market matures, according to Cresco Labs Inc., the state’s largest cannabis operator by capacity.

Illinois “had the most successful roll out in the industry,” Boris Jordan, executive chairman of Curaleaf Holdings Inc., said in an interview. Curaleaf is the largest U.S. cannabis company and its pending purchase of Chicago-based GR Companies Inc., better known as Grassroots, is expected to close in the second quarter, giving it a foothold in the Illinois market.

Sales during the first full month of legalization in other states were impacted by a combination of factors, including a limited number of retail locations, according to spokesmen from Oregon, Washington and Michigan.

Given Vermont does not have recreational dispensaries and Maine has not officially begun adult-use cannabis sales, these two states were not included in the data, according to New Frontier’s Morrissey.

Companies are rushing to ramp up production in Illinois given demand is expected to exceed supply for at least another year, Curaleaf’s Jordan said. Products sold in Illinois must be from cultivators, growers or dispensaries in the state as marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

The first month, especially the early days, saw long lines and some shortage of flower, according to the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois. The state has deliberately tried to temper growth and manage expectations to balance social equity, criminal justice reform and revenue, said Toi Hutchinson, senior advisor for cannabis control to Governor J.B. Pritzker.

“I didn’t have a $40 million benchmark,” Hutchinson said in a telephone interview on Monday after the sales data was released. “The strong start is what we hoped for” but Hutchinson said the sales figure “is surprising to us.”

About a quarter of the state’s take will go toward community reinvestment partly to reverse some of the challenges from past drug policy, according to Hutchinson. Collections may also help chip away at Illinois’s $6.2 billion of unpaid bills and $137 billion of pension debt. Tax collections on legal pot are forecast to jump from $34 million in 2020 to $375.5 million in 2024, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.

Revenue from the industry is hard to predict. First month sales aren’t necessarily indicators of the future, according to Alexandria Zhang, research officer for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Some evidence also indicates growth and revenue collections “tend to slow as markets mature” even after strong initial performance, Zhang said in an interview. “Early revenue collections don’t mean the strong growth will continue in the long run.”

Illinois’s Pritzker will unveil his 2021 budget on Feb. 19 and the role marijuana tax collections will play remains to be seen. During his “State of the State” speech last week, he mentioned legalization as “a chance to collect tax revenue from the residents of Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa and Indiana,” where recreational cannabis is illegal. He also highlighted the criminal justice reform that his administration also enacted, including 11,017 pardons for people with low-level cannabis convictions under the state’s new cannabis law.

Extrapolating from Colorado’s legalization experience, Illinois sales will amount to $3.7 billion in five years, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Pablo Zuanic wrote in a note published Feb. 4.

The January data “support even the most bullish projections for recreational consumption in the state of Illinois,” Zuanic said.