doomed
2 hours ago
More maga bull shit…
Try 15% you Lier!
And guess what?
They purchase on the internet.
Not from large corporations.
Legacy rules. Large corporations have no traction.
NOVEMBER 1, 2025
What Percentage of Americans Smoke Marijuana?
Editor's Note: This article was updated on Nov. 1, 2025, with Gallup's latest data on Americans' self-reported marijuana smoking.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Fifteen percent of Americans report they smoke marijuana, according to combined Gallup data from 2023 and 2024. While not statistically different from the average of 14% in 2021-2022, it is consistent with the upward trend in recent years.
The percentage of U.S. adults who report they smoke marijuana has more than doubled since 2013, when Gallup first added the question to its annual Consumption Habits survey. That year, 7% said they smoke it.
Marijuana use varies significantly by gender, age and other respondent characteristics:
Men (17%) are more likely than women (11%) to say they smoke marijuana.
Adults aged 55 and older (10%) are less likely to report using marijuana than are middle-aged (18%) and young (19%) adults.
Smoking marijuana is more common among adults without a college degree (17%) than it is among college graduates (11%).
Democrats (23%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans (10%) to report using marijuana, with independents’ rate (14%) falling between them.
Regionally, the highest rates of marijuana usage are in the West (19%), Midwest (16%) and East (16%). It is lower in the South, where 11% report using it.
What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Tried Marijuana?
Gallup asks a separate half-sample of respondents in its annual Consumption Habits survey if they have ever tried marijuana. The combined data for 2023 and 2024 puts this figure at 47%.
Gallup’s trend on ever having tried marijuana shows that experimentation increased sharply in the first decade after the initial measure in 1969. Between then and 1977, it jumped 20 percentage points, from 4% to 24%. It rose another nine points by 1985, to 33%, but after that stalled at under 40% until 2015, when it ticked up to 44%. It has since increased slightly but remains below 50%.
Do Americans Support the Legalization of Marijuana?
Gallup has also recorded a significant increase in the U.S. public’s support for the legalization of marijuana over the past six decades, rising from 12% in 1969 to a high of 70% in 2023, before leveling off at 68% this year.
Gallup measures Americans' use of marijuana and tobacco as part of its annual Consumption Habits poll, one of 12 surveys that make up the Gallup Poll Social Series.
Explore Gallup articles about marijuana on our "Marijuana" topics page.
Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
doomed
10 hours ago
Home / All U.S.
Debt and default force Gold Flora into receivership filing
Doomed
April 1, 2025
Another one of California’s largest cannabis operators plans to liquidate assets after mounting financial losses and operational challenges.
Gold Flora Corp., one of the state’s largest cannabis retail chains, is entering receivership after defaulting on a $11.5 million loan.
The company said in a press release its seeking court protection as a result of lawsuits related to its 2023 acquisition of TPCO Holdings, rising business expenses and high-yield debt.
The deal for TPCO, which operated as The Parent Co., was positioned to streamline operations while generating annual savings of $20 million to $25 million, Gold Flora said at the time. The deal also had high visibility because of The Parent Co’s affiliation with rap mogul “Jay-Z” Carter.
Gold Flora’s receivership filing followed a default notice from J.J. Astor & Co. related to a senior secured promissory notes issued between August 2024 and December 2024.
The default increased the notes’ outstanding principal and interest to approximately $11.5 million.
“This was a difficult but correct decision to make for all stakeholders,” CEO and founder Laurie Holcomb said in a releases statement.
“While Gold Flora remains a leading operator and retailer in the cannabis market in California with over $100 million in annual revenues, the liabilities on our balance sheet, many of which are due to lawsuits we inherited with the TPCO business combination, forced us to file for a voluntary receivership that is necessary to achieve an orderly sale of the business.”
Gold Flora did not immediately respond to attempts to reach it.
The company said it expects to be placed into receivership in the Los Angeles Superior Court, Santa Moncia Division and Richard Ormond of Stone Capital Blossom, LLC, to be appointed as receiver.
Ormond, a Los Angeles-based attorney with expertise in finance, banking and cannabis regulations, briefly served as chief restructuring officer for MedMen after a management shakeup and the multistate operator entered bankruptcy proceedings in Canada about a year ago.
Gold Flora said it will continue operating as a going concern amid the asset sale, which includes 16 dispensaries, three cultivation facilities in Desert Hot Springs and two in San Jose totaling 107,000 square feet.
Its retail brands include:
Airfield Supply Co.
Caliva.
Coastal.
Calma.
King’s Crew.
Varda.
Deli.
Higher Level.
The vertically-integrated company, based in Costa Mesa, also operates a manufacturing and extraction business in Desert Hot Springs, as well as a distribution arm under Stately Distribution.
As a result of the receivership filing, Gold Flora expects its common stock and warrants will be suspended from trading on the Cboe Canada exchange and will ultimately be delisted from Cboe Canada, where it had a $14 million market cap Monday.
Frank A. Segall of Blank Rome LLP is serving as the Costa Mesa-based company’s legal counsel during proceedings.
We November reported financial recovery firm Global Assets Liens & Foreclosure filed an ex parte application for receivership in Santa Barbara Superior Court against Gold Flora, which owed more than $236,725 in unpaid invoices and incurred losses exceeding $37 million at the time.
Gold Flora’s demise follows the collapse of several of California’s largest cannabis companies, including Herbl, MedMen, High Times and StateHouse Holdings.
In receiverships, secured creditors such as banks and those with asset-based collateral are paid first, while unsecured creditors often go unpaid.
BottomBounce
12 hours ago
Tilray Brands, Inc., $TLRY Total Cash (mrq) $252.25M a lifestyle consumer products company, engages in the research, cultivation, processing, and distribution of medical cannabis products in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, and internationally. The company operates through four segments: Beverage Alcohol, Cannabis, Distribution, and Wellness. It also offers medical and adult-use cannabis products; purchases and resells pharmaceutical and wellness products; and produces, markets, sells, and distributes beverage alcohol products, and hemp-based food and other wellness products. The company offers its products under the Tilray, Aphria, Broken Coast, Symbios, Navcora, Charlotte's Web, Montauk Brewing, Shock Top, 10 Barrell, Breckenridge Brewery, SweetWater Brewing, Breckenridge Distillery, Blue Point Brewing, Broken Coast, Redecan, XMG, Manitoba Harvest, CC Pharma, Good Supply, Solei, Mollo, Chowie Wowie, Original Stash, Canaca, RIFF, Bake Sale, The Batch, HEXO, Alpine Beer Company, Green Flash, Hiball Energy, Redhook Brewery, Square Mile Cider, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Runner's High Brewing Company, Happy Flower, and Fresh Hemp Foods brands. It sells its products to retailers, wholesalers, patients, physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, researchers, and governments, as well as direct to consumers. The company was formerly known as Tilray, Inc. and changed its name to Tilray Brands, Inc. in January 2022. Tilray Brands, Inc. is headquartered in Leamington, Canada.
doomed
12 hours ago
Legacy foot soldiers are finally rewarded after 30 years of hard work!
Cannabis Culture Opens Its First Legal Pot Store In Niagara Falls
Cannabis culture knowledge is needed in this biz.
Cannabis Culture has traction with consumers.
Contrary to large corps, they walk the walk and talk the talk.
By Cannabis Culture Magazine on March 3, 2025
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The Mayor of Niagara Falls showed up to cut the ribbon of Cannabis Culture’s first legal cannabis store in Canada
After 30 years of fighting for cannabis legalization, Cannabis Culture has opened its first legal weed store in Niagara Falls, as a way to continue its long-time advocacy efforts.
The store, located at 5927 Thorold Stone Road, marks a return to the cannabis retail business for CC, after authorities forced the closure of the company’s 30 legacy market stores across Canada from 2017 to 2019.
“We hope this Niagara Falls retail store is the first of many to join the Cannabis Culture brand family in Ontario and beyond,” said Cannabis Culture CEO Jodie Giesz-Ramsay.
The company hopes to open new stores as a way to advance change in the pot industry and bring attention to the ongoing problems with Canada’s legal cannabis system.
“The legal cannabis retail industry is currently a challenge for many small businesses, and mom and pop operators struggle to compete against large corporate chains and costly regulations,” Jodie said. “We want to license our internationally recognized Cannabis Culture brand to a network of independent locally-owned retail stores, and help highlight the small businesses that work so hard to serve their communities.”
Cannabis Culture is also launching a new advocacy group called FAIR Cannabis – The Campaign for Fair and Inclusive Regulations for Cannabis, which hopes to help educate Canadians about the serious issues with the legal cannabis system, and take action to make positive change.
Over the last 30 years, Cannabis Culture has produced an international print magazine, pioneered live online video with the Pot TV network, opened cannabis dispensaries and vapour lounges, and organized huge events like Vancouver 4/20 – all with a focus on reforming cannabis laws and ending the Drug War.
“By returning to Ontario with this brand licensing opportunity, we aim to help support retailers in a competitive landscape, and advocate for more freedom and fairness in the cannabis industry,” Jodie said.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati was at the Grand Opening of the new store to officially cut the ribbon and welcome Cannabis Culture to the neighbourhood.
“All the great residents of Niagara Falls will appreciate having a professional view on a natural product,” Diodati said. “Ironically we’re on Thorold Stone Road.”
“You guys are doing this Cannabis Culture and I think what a great location,” Diodati said. “Great partners, great city, great location, and if you’re going to do something like this I can’t think of anywhere better than the number one leisure destination in Canada that gets up to 14 million people a year…. We wish you all the best and now we’re going to make this official.”
Find out more about Cannabis Culture Niagara Falls at CannabisCultureHQ.com or SHOP NOW ONLINE if you live in the area!
doomed
12 hours ago
Great news for long!
Trump White House Says Marijuana Decriminalization ‘Opened The Door To Disorder’ In Washington.
April fools, 2025
Doomed
President Donald Trump’s White House says the move to decriminalize marijuana in Washington, D.C. is an example of a “failed” policy that “opened the door to disorder.”
In a fact sheet about an executive order that Trump signed on Friday—which is broadly aimed at beautifying the District and making it more safe—the White House listed several local policies in the nation’s capital that it takes issue with, including cannabis reform. That’s despite the president’s previously stated support for a states’ rights approach to marijuana laws.
“D.C.’s failed policies opened the door to disorder—and criminals noticed,” it says, citing “marijuana decriminalization,” as well as the District’s decision to end pre-trial detentions and enforcement practices around rioters, as examples of such policies.
CBD Can Help Treat Pain, Cancer, Schizophrenia, COVID And Other Conditions
The executive order itself doesn’t mention marijuana specifically. But it says the directive will involve “deploying a more robust Federal law enforcement presence and coordinating with local law enforcement to facilitate the deployment of a more robust local law enforcement presence as appropriate in areas in or about” D.C., and that includes addressing “drug possession, sale, and use.”
With respect to the fact sheet circulated by the White House, cannabis possession and personal cultivation is legalized in D.C. under a voter-approved ballot initiative, though commercial sales of non-medical marijuana remain illegal (a policy referred to by some as “decriminalization”).
Because of a long-standing congressional rider that’s been annually renewed since that vote, the District hasn’t been able to use local funds to implement a system of regulated recreational cannabis sales, so officials have taken steps to expand the city’s existing medical marijuana program as a workaround.
During Trump’s first term, he maintained that D.C. rider to keep blocking cannabis sales in his budget requests, as did his successor, former President Joe Biden.
But as advocates and industry stakeholders have waited to see how the Trump administration will navigate cannabis policy issues during this second term—and whether the president will push for reforms such as rescheduling and banking access as he endorsed on the campaign trail—the fact that his White House’s first public mention of marijuana links decriminalization to disorder is hardly encouraging.
The prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana cheered the White House’s messaging, adding that “Washington DC did not just decriminalize private marijuana use for adults—it’s opened the door to total legalization, which can be smelled on virtually every street today.”
Washington DC did not just decriminalize private marijuana use for adults—it’s opened the door to total legalization, which can be smelled on virtually every street today.
This comes one day after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)—President Donald Trump’s first pick for U.S. attorney general this term before he withdrew from consideration—said in an op-ed that “meaningful” marijuana reform is “on the horizon” under the current administration, praising the president’s “leadership” in supporting rescheduling.
The former lawmaker’s column omits mention of the fact that former President Joe Biden initiated the rescheduling review that led federal agencies to recommend the reclassification. And while it’s true that, during his 2024 campaign, Trump endorsed the policy change in a social media post, he has not publicly discussed marijuana issues since taking office.
The current administrative rescheduling process is delayed, with a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) judge postponing hearings on the proposal near the end of Biden’s term amid complications related to selected witnesses. That included questions about whether DEA leadership actually supported the proposed rule despite the agency’s role as the “proponent” of the policy.
Trump’s selections for key administration positions also come with a a mixed bag of cannabis records.
For example, the president picked former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) to run DOJ, and the Senate confirmed that choice. During her confirmation hearings, Bondi declined to say how she planned to navigate key marijuana policy issues. And as state attorney general, she opposed efforts to legalize medical cannabis.
Adding to the uncertainty around the fate of the rescheduling proposal, Trump’s nominee to lead DEA, Terrance Cole, has previously voiced concerns about the dangers of marijuana and linked its use to higher suicide risk among youth.
Stakeholders have been trying to leverage Trump’s stated support for rescheduling, appealing to him by framing the issue as a means to support veterans and patients in a way that they hope will motivate the president to advocate for the reform from the Oval Office. Regardless of how other officials in his administration feel, the thinking goes, a mandate from Trump would not go unheeded.
To that point, a marijuana industry-funded political action committee (PAC) is attacking Biden’s cannabis policy record as well as the nation of Canada, with new ads promoting sometimes misleading claims about the last administration while making the case that Trump can deliver on reform.
doomed
1 day ago
All is well, nothing to see here.🤣😂🤣
Home / Cultivation
Oklahoma loses nearly 40% of licensed medical marijuana operators in 12 months
Doomed
March 31, 2025
A reckoning is under way in the Oklahoma medical marijuana market.
Over a 12-month period through July 2024, the number of commercial MMJ businesses in the state decreased by nearly 40%, according to a fiscal year 2024 annual report recently published by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA).
Through July 2024, the total number of licensed MMJ operators totaled 6,937, down from 11,330 a year earlier.
Licensed medical cultivators, dispensaries and processors all experienced significant shifts over the 12-month period.
Grower permits fell to 3,645 in July 2024, down nearly 44% from 6,497 in July 2023.
Licensed dispensaries dropped 27%, from 2,852 to 2,051.
MMJ processing licenses decreased 39% from 1,792 in July 2023 to 1,092 a year later.
The licensing decline was first reported by the Tulsa World.
Meanwhile, the number of registered MMJ patients declined by 2.5% during the 12-month period, from 353,437 to 344,556.
In response to the ongoing exodus of licensed medical cannabis businesses:
Last year, the OMMA said it planned to eliminate 10% of its workforce in a reorganization, or roughly 25-30 employees.
In May 2023, Oklahoma lawmakers extended a moratorium on new MMJ business licenses until 2026. About a month later, the OMMA published the results of a study that concluded the state was producing 32 times more marijuana than was needed for the number of MMJ patients who were registered at the time.
doomed
1 day ago
When inversion is the mood…😂🤣😂
Home / Legal
How a Colorado operator stumbled onto ‘blueprint for laundering marijuana’
By Doomed
March 31, 2025
Justin Trouard thought he was doing a favor when he agreed in January to look at the books of a struggling, licensed Colorado marijuana cultivation company to see if he could help turn the business around.
Instead, the CEO of licensed outdoor cultivator Mammoth Farms stumbled onto “the blueprint for how to launder marijuana” in and out of the state’s regulated industry.’’
While examining the cultivator’s track-and-trace records in Metrc, a widely used software program that’s Colorado’s mandated seed-to-sale compliance tool, Trouard noticed some suspicious activity.
In one column, the company reported purchasing 25 pounds of cannabis flower from an unidentified cultivator for $16,250. That’s a normal transaction at Colorado’s average market prices in 2025.
In another column in the same row, the company entered what it claimed to have done with the market-rate flower: The cannabis was sold to another cultivator, but this time as flower intended for extraction into distillate for vaporizer cartridges – for $20.
In other words, the business reported a loss of $16,230 on the transactions.
Trouard said the business’ records for 2024 showed many similar losing deals.
In all, the business reported buying $3.4 million worth of cannabis flower that it then resold for $70,000, a claim Trouard’s Mammoth Farms alleges in a March 10 lawsuit filed against Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED).
Following the data leads to startling discovery
Trouard doesn’t believe the business struggled because it chose to lose millions on repeated bad deals in which it bought expensive source material and converted it to a lower-priced product.
Instead, according to the Mammoth Farms lawsuit, the business likely diverted legally grown cannabis flower to the illicit market – and then inserted unlicensed hemp-derived THC oil into the flower’s place that was then sold in vaporizer cartridges at licensed Colorado marijuana stores.
In other words, Trouard believes he found what amounts to a how-to guide for inserting illicit cannabis into the regulated marijuana market.
That’s a practice known in the $32 billion regulated marijuana industry as “inversion,” and it’s one that operators in several states say is a growing problem that jeopardizes legitimate businesses.
All the business’ transactions examined by Trouard were reported to the MED via the Florida-based Metrc platform.
But instead of flagging the transactions as suspicious and taking action, Colorado regulators did nothing, the Mammoth Farms suit alleges.
A spokesperson for the MED said the agency could not comment on Trouard’s inversion allegations, citing the pending lawsuit.
That’s despite the fact that what Trouard outlined to Doomed in a series of interviews goes beyond what’s alleged in Mammoth Farms’ initial March 10 filing.
Metrc, which is not accused of any wrongdoing and likely does not have access to Colorado data on its platform, did not respond to request for comment.
Trouard declined to identify the business but said the company still holds a Colorado license.
Since the filing of the lawsuit, Trouard identified a similar pattern at another licensed Colorado company he also was asked to help with.
The discoveries raise questions about the value of track-and-trace systems.
But, more importantly, they also highlight the issue of “inversion” – a method of thwarting the law that the architects of adult-use marijuana legalization did not anticipate because they did not know the cannabis culture.
Is inversion new threat to marijuana industry?
Since the beginning of regulated marijuana sales in the United States, state lawmakers and regulators have emphasized the risk of “diversion” – cannabis grown with legal protections that’s then sold on the illicit market.
Guardrails such as seed-to-sale track-and-trace systems were mandated across the country to prevent diversion and satisfy the multitude of legalization skeptics.
However, operators in regulated marijuana markets claim that inversion, with cannabis grown illegally but inserted into legal channels and sold in licensed stores, is as equally concerning as diversion.
The practice of inversion is becoming increasingly widespread, according to licensed operators, who say that regulators are failing to stop it.
And Colorado regulators monitoring Metrc-supplied data ought to have suspected inversion in this case, Trouard said.
“This is what’s taking place” throughout Colorado, he contends.
Operators in other states, including New York, echo Trouard’s complaints, suggesting that “inversion” is a known and growing issue industrywide.
At a public meeting in December, former New York Cannabis Control Board member Jennifer Gilbert Jenkins called inversion the marijuana industry’s “dirty secret that everybody (in the sector) is talking about.”
But so far, the issue has yet to raise alarms at state legislatures or regulatory agencies, critics say.
Inversion likely also costing state tax revenue
If Trouard’s allegations are correct, inversion could have another troubling effect – a loss of state tax revenue, and at a time when many states are scrambling to close budget deficits.
In California, for example, the excise tax on cannabis is scheduled to increase to as much as 19% on July 1.
Many licensed operators say such a hike would encourage even more consumers to patronize the illicit market and heap more woes upon the struggling regulated industry.
Cannabis is subject to a 15% excise tax in Colorado that’s charged “on the first sale or transfer from a retail marijuana cultivation facility to a retail marijuana store or retail marijuana product manufacturing facility,” according to MED guidelines.
But as the March 10 lawsuit alleges, since “cultivation-to-cultivation sales are generally not taxed,” the system can be cheated.
The Metrc data that Trouard analyzed demonstrates one possible method of tax evasion, he said.
Since the excise tax isn’t imposed until cannabis leaves a cultivator for a manufacturer or retailer, it also means the licensee reduced $3.4 million in taxable sales, the value of the original flower purchased, to $70,000, the value of the product sold for distillate extraction, the lawsuit alleges.
That’s a potential loss of $500,000 in excise taxes that the state would otherwise have collected, according to the lawsuit.
According to Colorado data, marijuana excise tax revenue in the state has remained relatively stable even as overall annual revenue has declined to pre-pandemic levels – a decrease that most observers attribute to stagnant sales, not any hijinks along the supply chain.
But depending on how widespread the alleged inversion problem is, Trouard believes the state’s excise-tax losses over time might exceed $100 million.
Despite Colorado’s apparent lost tax revenue, “It’s obvious no one was paying attention to this and without inversion, nobody can survive in this market, Trouard said.’’
doomed
6 days ago
The freewheeling days for hemp-derived THC in America appear to be dwindling.
After a seven-year boom for hemp-derived THC products, lawmakers are pursuing blanket bans or disruptively strict regulations on intoxicating hemp products in about a dozen states, a situation that’s sowing deep anxieties across the industry, advocates and operators told doomed.
In contrast to the blanket ban on hemp-THC products imposed last fall in California, little of the nationwide hemp crackdown seems immediately poised to help struggling operators in the regulated marijuana industry who saw hemp as an unwelcome competitor playing by different rules.
“We’re under fire from a lot of different sources,” said Jonathan Miller, the counsel-in-charge of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a major federal-level lobby group.
“There are a number of states that are looking at completely banning retail sales of our products.”
For more, check out this detailed update from Chris Roberts, who highlights individual state policies, the clash between lawmakers and lobbyists and the push from large multistate operators to enter the market.
doomed
1 week ago
Home / Cultivation
Oklahoma loses nearly 40% of licensed medical marijuana operators in 12 months
By Doomed
March 25, 2025
A reckoning is under way in the Oklahoma medical marijuana market.
Over a 12-month period through July 2024, the number of commercial MMJ businesses in the state decreased by nearly 40%, according to a fiscal year 2024 annual report recently published by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA).
Through July 2024, the total number of licensed MMJ operators totaled 6,937, down from 11,330 a year earlier.
Licensed medical cultivators, dispensaries and processors all experienced significant shifts over the 12-month period.
Grower permits fell to 3,645 in July 2024, down nearly 44% from 6,497 in July 2023.
Licensed dispensaries dropped 27%, from 2,852 to 2,051.
MMJ processing licenses decreased 39% from 1,792 in July 2023 to 1,092 a year later.
The licensing decline was first reported by the Tulsa World.
Meanwhile, the number of registered MMJ patients declined by 2.5% during the 12-month period, from 353,437 to 344,556.
In response to the ongoing exodus of licensed medical cannabis businesses:
Last year, the OMMA said it planned to eliminate 10% of its workforce in a reorganization, or roughly 25-30 employees.
In May 2023, Oklahoma lawmakers extended a moratorium on new MMJ business licenses until 2026. About a month later, the OMMA published the results of a study that concluded the state was producing 32 times more marijuana than was needed for the number of MMJ patients who were registered at the time.
doomed
1 week ago
Home / Finance
What’s causing the decline in M&A activity in the cannabis industry?
Omar Sacirbey, Interim Editor in chief
March 25, 2025
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Image of Frank Colombo
Frank Colombo (Courtesy photo)
Mergers and acquisitions in the cannabis industry in 2024 totaled $1.169 billion, a decrease of $579 million – or 33% – from the $1.749 billion of industry M&A the previous year, according to Viridian Capital Advisors.
What’s behind the decline?
There are several factors, according to Frank Colombo, managing director at Viridian, a New York-based, cannabis-focused investment banking and data analytics firm, who spoke with Doomed about the cannabis industry’s decreasing M&A activity and what it means moving forward.
What are the biggest reasons behind the decline of cannabis M&A in 2024?
Cash is very tight. Over the last two years, cannabis companies have been in cash conservation mode, and a lot of deals have been canceled.
The motivation for M&A has also changed.
Going back in time, it was kind of a land grab, companies wanted to be in every state. Now it’s more of a concentration game.
The poster child of the land-grab movement was Acreage (Holdings, a New York-headquartered multistate operator now owned by Canopy Growth Corp.).
A few years ago, Acreage had more states on their map than practically anybody. But they were an inch deep and a mile wide, as they say.
The MSOs have figured out that you just can’t be profitable that way.
You have to have concentration in a market to really take advantage of it.
You basically have to have a sizable presence and vertical integration.
And you’re not going to be able to do that if you just have one or two dispensaries here and there.
What a lot of these companies have been trying to do is really pick their shots and try to go big in those markets.
What else has dampened M&A?
The other thing that has restrained things are stock prices. You need cash or stock to finance an acquisition.
Cash is tight because it’s hard to raise money. You can’t really sell equity in this market because we’re at all-time lows now.
Stock is not an attractive currency to use because your stock is not worth what it ought to be.
You can go out and borrow money, or you can use seller notes – and a lot of people did – but you’re starting to see a lot of these MSOs have gotten to the point where they are borderline over-leveraged.
Businesses don’t really want to take on more debt. They can’t sell equity. They don’t want to use equity in an acquisition.
So how do they continue to do acquisitions?
The answer, in a lot of cases. is that they don’t.
They’ve decided to concentrate on building out the places they already have and spend some judicious capex (capital expenditures), making sure that operations are as efficient as they can be.
Do merging cannabis companies typically integrate well?
Integrating any companies in an acquisition is always hard, no matter what industry you’re in.
The data pretty clearly shows that the majority of large acquisitions in America, not just in cannabis, fail. And it’s because of this integration.
On paper, it looks good.
But then you start trying to meld the two cultures of people together and decide who’s going to run that area and who’s going to run this area?
And somebody’s pissed off, and you have different underlying accounting systems and control systems, and it’s just so much harder to get these deals to work.
But look at Vireo (Growth), which had operations in Minnesota, New York and Maryland.
In December, they announced four acquisitions – one in Utah, one in Missouri, one in Nevada and one in Florida.
Those are all new operations.
They’re all in markets where those four companies don’t have anything to do with each other. They don’t compete, they don’t cooperate there, they just don’t relate to each other at all.
So, there’s no integration issues here, because they’re not going to try and put their own people in to run the Utah operation. They’re going to let Utah run Utah. Nevada runs Nevada.
Only at the very high level of maybe some capital allocation are they going to try and manage this thing at all.
What other types of acquisitions are you seeing?
The other thing that we see happening is intrastate M&A, consolidation within states.
Lots of little companies in Missouri are combining together to make a bigger entity. We see the same thing in Michigan.
Not so much in Massachusetts, because of the screwed-up laws of Massachusetts.
In Massachusetts, you can only have three dispensaries and 100,000 square feet of canopy.
So, everybody who wants to be in Massachusetts is already in Massachusetts.
If you want to sell your company in Massachusetts, the list of MSOs you can go to, it’s an empty set.
There’s nobody left that’s not already there.
You’re forced to be talking about trying to sell it to private companies or to combine with smaller companies.
That’s part of the whole story of what’s restraining M&A.
Why is hemp-derived THC M&A down?
It’s smaller, private legacy companies that are fuelling that market.
And they have not yet gotten to the point where they’re consolidating from an M&A point of view.
You have a lot of smaller competitors there making these products that are going into the convenience store chains, gas stations and whatnot.
And we just have not yet seen them start to consolidate and do M&A.
How’s the outlook for cannabis M&A this year?
The overall restraint on stock prices, the challenges of getting any reform done in Washington, D.C., industry revenues are flat to down, margins are down.
So, going out and making yourself bigger in that environment is just not that attractive right now.
Over the long term, we’ve got to have consolidation in this business still.
A bunch of people have said this, but I agree with it.
I think you end up with an hourglass-shaped industry where there’s a lot of concentration of big companies and there’s a bunch of little craft growers in the bottom, and there’s not that many in the middle.
doomed
2 weeks ago
More bunk weed caper.
Home / Manufacturing / Testing
Marijuana pre-rolls in New Jersey contain yeast, mold and bacteria, study shows
Doomed
March 21, 2025
Marijuana pre-rolls purchased in New Jersey by secret shoppers participating in a study have tested for high levels of yeast, mold and bacteria and were less potent than advertised.
The shoppers, participating in a Safe Leaf Society study, submitted 25 pre-rolls they purchased at licensed marijuana retailers for testing, the Asbury Park Press reported.
According to the study, the microbial levels in seven of the pre-rolls, which had undergone testing before hitting store shelves, were much higher than the legal limit of 100,000 colony-forming-units-per-gram set by the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (CRC).
Levels of yeast and mold were five times higher than the limit in two of the products tested.
“Mislabeled cannabis is equivalent to a pharmacy providing the wrong prescription or a restaurant regularly serving moldy food,” Andrea Raible, co-founder of the Safe Leaf Society and a medical marijuana user for neurological conditions, told the Asbury Park Press.
New Jersey has six licensed laboratories for testing rapidly increasing product offerings in the state’s $1 billion cannabis market.
In a statement responding to the Safe Leaf Report, CRC Executive Director Chris Riggs said his agency “is investigating the recent cannabis testing laboratory discrepancy allegations and is attempting to obtain information surrounding the products which were claimed to have been tested.
“Should the investigation lead to findings of regulatory violations, the NJ-CRC will institute enforcement actions.”
Allegations about improper cannabis testing and potency inflation are popping up around the industry, including neighboring New York as well as California, Colorado and Massachusetts.
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Home / Retail
State bans, restrictions threaten hemp-derived THC market after Farm Bill boom
Chris Roberts, Reporter
March 21, 2025
The freewheeling days for hemp-derived THC in America appear to be dwindling.
After a seven-year boom for hemp-derived THC products, lawmakers are pursuing blanket bans or disruptively strict regulations on intoxicating hemp products in about a dozen states, a situation that’s sowing deep anxieties across the industry.
In contrast to the blanket ban on hemp-THC products imposed last fall in California, little of the nationwide hemp crackdown seems immediately poised to help struggling operators in the regulated marijuana industry who saw hemp as an unwelcome competitor playing by different rules.
In some of the new restrictive laws, hemp operators see the hand of an alcohol industry aware that young people are drinking less and keen to capture a future revenue source.
“We’re under fire from a lot of different sources,” said Jonathan Miller, the counsel-in-charge of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a major federal-level lobby group.
“There are a number of states that are looking at completely banning retail sales of our products.”
How some states are addressing hemp-derived THC
State laws under consideration that would disrupt the hemp industry include:
California: An extension of emergency regulations that outlaws all hemp-derived THC.
Texas: A blanket ban on anything containing hemp-derived THC.
Florida: A ban on synthetic THC and restrictions on hemp-derived Delta-9 THC.
Georgia: A ban on hemp beverages as well as restrictions on synthetic THC such as delta-8 and delta-10 THC.
Arkansas, Kentucky, Montana, Tennessee: The imposition of a mandatory third-party distribution model – similar to what’s seen in the alcohol industry – as well as bans on direct-to-consumer sales.
While the bans are destructive to the entire sector, some smaller hemp operators are raising specific alarms over the third-party distribution proposals.
“This is the first step toward a hostile takeover of cannabis by the alcohol industry,” said Jim Higdon, the co-founder of Kentucky-based hemp-derived THC and CBD operator Cornbread Hemp.
Higdon and other operators are lobbying Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to veto a recently passed bill that would eliminate direct-to-consumer sales by mandating third-party distribution.
“Make no mistake about it,” Higdon added, “if we let this stand, everything is next.”
‘They’re pretty ticked off’
Most observers contacted agree that the 2018 federal Farm Bill, which created the opportunity that hemp operators have since exploited to varying degrees, is encouraging state lawmakers to take more drastic action.
Signed into law during President Donald Trump’s first term, the Farm Bill triggered the nationwide surge in products with intoxicating levels of THC sold outside state-regulated cannabis industry channels.
Though the Farm Bill legalized only hemp with 0.3% THC or less, many operators across the country applied creative interpretations to claim legal protections for the manufacture and sale of high-dose edibles as well as THCA flower, which is indistinguishable from marijuana.
And they’ve done so in jurisdictions such as Texas, where adult-use marijuana legalization remains a distant dream.
That sequence of events created mistrust and ill will among lawmakers that new lobby groups, such as the recently formed Coalition for Adult Beverage Alternatives (CABA), are trying to address in Washington, D.C. – but with mixed success.
“Members, especially on the Republican side, say things like, ‘We felt duped by what the hemp industry told us. We didn’t believe we were legalizing anything intoxicating,'” said Jake Bullock, the co-founder and CEO of Cann, a California-headquartered manufacturer of low-dose, hemp-derived THC beverages and a CABA member.
“They’re pretty ticked off about that.”
No hemp-derived THC regulations at federal level yet
Congress is now almost two years overdue in passing a new Farm Bill, but there appears to be bipartisan recognition that the hemp-derived THC situation is out of hand and something must be done.
Last year, for example, Indiana Republican Rep. Mary Miller raised anxieties with a proposed amendment that would have banned most hemp-derived THC products.
It’s unclear how that amendment would have been enforced.
Separately, Congress could address hemp-derived THC via stand-alone legislation.
Last fall, Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden introduced a separate proposal that, while banning most synthetic derivatives such as delta-8 THC and imposing serving limits, would have nonetheless given most hemp businesses clear guidelines to continue operating.
However, so far, nothing has come out of Washington, D.C.
And that void is creating the opportunity for state lawmakers to take action.
The role of marijuana multistate operators
Some large marijuana multistate operators, such as New York-based Curaleaf Holdings, have eagerly pursued hemp lines, including beverages.
That’s in part because of Congress’ failure to pass federal marijuana reforms allowing banking access, tax relief and interstate commerce.
But diversifying into hemp allows marijuana operators to place products on the shelves of multi-item retailers rather than restricting them to MJ dispensaries.
It also allows major marijuana brands to enter markets such as Texas, one of nine states where liquor retailer Total Wine & More will carry Curaleaf beverages.
Texas is considered the country’s biggest hemp market in large part because it has no access to legal marijuana. The state’s medical marijuana law allows only low-THC CBD oil.
As many as 8,300 retailers across Texas sell hemp-derived THC – a market that Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick claims is worth as much as $8 billion.
Texas would “ban THC and shut all of these stores down” if Senate Bill 3 – which the state Senate approved Wednesday – is signed into law, Patrick said.
“That includes THC that’s being sold in liquor stores in drinks,” Patrick added.
“There’s no exception to this.”
California’s action was taken at the behest of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was concerned about the wide availability of hemp-derived THC products at liquor stores and other mainstream retailers throughout the state.
Less-stringent proposals create a threat
Hemp operators view even modest proposals such as third-party distribution as a threat, saying it’s a stalking horse for large alcohol interests to seize control of the hemp-derived THC market.
That fear is triggered in part by a generational shift in which young people are eschewing alcohol due to cancer links.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy added to those concerns last fall when he signed a bill into law that would limit sales of hemp-derived THC beverages to liquor stores – thereby eliminating the direct-to-consumer sales that smaller hemp operators say keep them afloat.
“Direct-to-consumer sales are a core component to their business,” said Shawn Hauser, a partner at Denver-based law firm Vicente.
“And that doesn’t fit squarely within the alcohol model.”
In general, the state-level proposals “absolutely threaten people’s business,” she added.
No legalization expected anytime soon.
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2 weeks ago
Home / Cultivation
Canadian cannabis companies look overseas as domestic market saturates
Margaret Jackson, Reporter
March 20, 2025
Facing a saturated market and unable to compete against LEGACY’s intense competition domestically, Canadian cannabis companies will TRY exporting more of their products overseas.
The cannabis export market is an opportunity for marijuana businesses to tap into new revenue streams and mitigate the impact of Canada’s domestic excise taxes.
The growth of medical cannabis markets, particularly in Europe, is a key driver of the export trend.
Canada’s volume of cannabis exports to Germany, for example, is minuscule.
“But people are assuming that it’s much easier than it actually is. It’s not for everybody. There are barriers that you need to get around.”
Strict licensing standards
One of those challenges is having European Union Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certifications. They don’t want bunk weed.
Of Canada’s 900 licenses, only 19 have the certification.
One license holder with EU-GMP certification is Village Farms International, which has offices in Lake Mary, Florida, and Vancouver, British Columbia.
The company exports medical cannabis from its EU-GMP-certified facility in Canada to international markets, including Germany, Australia, Israel and the United Kingdom.
The company is expanding its international presence with more export contracts in new countries in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.
Village Farms, whose exports totaled $1.4 million last year, expects to at least triple its international sales in 2025, said Sam Gibbons, the company’s senior vice president of corporate affairs.
“The European markets are taking a much more pragmatic approach to the regulatory environment and see real potential for cannabis as a medicine,” Gibbons said.
“There’s not as much dysfunction as there is in the U.S., where there’s all sorts of red tape and regulatory frustrations. They’re letting these markets behave in a way that’s rational.”
Companies that don’t have EU-GMP certification can run their products through a facility that does.
“They’ve created hubs that are EU-GMP-certified. (Cannabis) gets transformed in these hubs and gets shipped to Germany,” said Niklas Kouparanis, co-founder and CEO of Frankfurt-based Bloomwell Group.
Kouparanis said 2% of Germany’s imported cannabis comes from Canada.
“Prices were falling, and you had overproduction in Canada for a long time,” Kouparanis said.
“Germany is ramping up in terms of patient numbers, and the amount needed here is a blessing to the industry.”
Although Canada has a head start in Germany, Portugal is scaling up, increasing its exports into Germany by 3% to 7,230 kilograms between 2023 and 2024, according to the BfArM.
Germany also is importing cannabis from Denmark, Spain, North Macedonia and the United Kingdom.
The cannabis excise tax
Another factor Canadian cultivators consider is the $1 per-gram excise tax or 10% of a producer’s selling price (whichever is higher), which they don’t have to pay on exports.
“It depends on the quality of the product and how you price it, but you generally get more on a per-gram basis than you would in Canada,” said Adam Coates, chief revenue officer of the Calgary, Alberta-based Decibel Cannabis Co.
“Your gross revenue becomes your net revenue because you’re not paying the excise tax.”
Decibel Cannabis’s domestic business still accounts for the biggest portion of sales, but that’s starting to change, Coates said.
“Our outside-of-Canada business will be hopefully bigger than in Canada in the not-so-distant future,” Coates said.
In its early days, the domestic business experienced double-digit, year-over-year growth, but those times are over, and Decibel is now seeing mid- to high-single-digit growth in Canada.
In October, Decibel purchased AgMedica Bioscience, which expanded the company’s international footprint with the addition of an EU-GMP-certified facility and enables it to export cannabis products to Australia, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Although it’s uncertain if or when marijuana legalization will occur in the United States, along with the country’s ability to export cannabis products, Canada has an advantage by being in overseas markets first.
“Canadian companies would do well to establish themselves in the supply chain before the U.S. gets into it,” Coates said.
‘’But canna expert Doomed see no future for bunk weed anytime soon.’’
‘’Not to mention that Europe is already overflowing with Albania, Spain and Morocco legacy fire.’’
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2 weeks ago
Home / Legal
Will marijuana rescheduling happen under Trump? Industry’s doubts grow
Chris Roberts, Reporter
March 17, 2025
President Donald Trump’s choices over his first 50 days in office, including appointments to lead the federal drug and health agencies, are sowing serious doubts that marijuana’s status under federal law will change anytime soon.
That’s the gloomy vibe lurking outside the U.S. Capitol and seeping into C-suites as the marijuana rescheduling process – begun in October 2022 by former President Joe Biden and put on indefinite hiatus in January – remains stuck in limbo.
Skeptics wonder if the administration will simply cancel the process to downgrade marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 of the Controlled Substances Act.
All in all, “so far, the actions of this administration have not matched President Trump’s previous rhetoric in support of cannabis rescheduling,” U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat and co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, told doomed.p
Public, private opinions vary on rescheduling future
Despite near-constant victories in individual states – with some recent exceptions – the federal marijuana policy reforms that many companies say are vital to achieve profitability remain elusive.
Most executives and operators in the $32 billion regulated U.S. marijuana industry present a brave face in public despite acknowledging privately that the tax relief provided by moving reclassifying marijuana won’t happen.
‘Hard to think anything will … change’
Perhaps the most prominent voice so far is Ben Kovler, CEO of major multistate operator Green Thumb Industries, who said during a Feb. 26 earnings call that “at the moment, it’s hard to think anything will fundamentally change” at the federal level.
Green Thumb representatives did not respond to a request for a follow-up comment.
But the company’s prognosis – “not a popular opinion,” Kovler said – is based on public data points such as Trump’s appointments, including Terrance Cole, a longtime Drug Enforcement Administration official and marijuana skeptic, to lead the agency.
Cole’s most recent role, observers note, was serving as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s secretary of public safety.
Virginia is notable for being the only state to have legalized adult-use marijuana without approving a retail market.
Critics told doomed onthey hear Cole’s voice in Youngkin’s public statements as he vetoes bills that would have regulated sales, and they wonder if Trump might take similar cues from his top drug cop, if Cole is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Other negative signs include a flip-flop on marijuana reform by new Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
After voicing support for cannabis during his failed presidential bid, Kennedy told senators during his confirmation hearings that he’d defer to an apparently hostile DEA on the matter, while separately promising anti-marijuana Republican lawmakers that he’ll study the “risk” of high-THC products.
However, marijuana rescheduling could become a distant fading memory if one factors in:
Recent hostile acts toward cannabis research.
Trump’s Truth Social post in September in which he endorsed medical cannabis and rescheduling marijuana, thereby offering hope for tax relief for regulated businesses and more reform.
Art of the rescheduling deal
Regardless of their overall outlook, the attorneys, lobbyists, and industry figures contacted in all stressed that it’s still early days for the Trump White House and that nobody seriously expected significant movement immediately.
“We certainly knew the first 100 days (of Trump’s second term) would not be our window” to secure commitments, let alone tangible reform, said Shanita Penny, the executive director of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education and Regulation (CPEAR), a Washington, D.C., lobbying group.
“I think folks are stepping into the reality that this is not going to be the quick win some boasted,” she added.
“They’re finally understanding this is going to be a very, very slow process at best.”
One angle some advocates want to pitch to an administration seemingly bent on dismantling the Biden camp’s accomplishments is for Trump to serve as a corrective.
Under Biden, the DEA appears to have gone rogue:
As documents from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel released last spring show, the agency argued internally against Health and Human Services’ finding that cannabis has a currently accepted medical use in the United States.
In the months leading up to the highly anticipated rescheduling hearing, critics say the DEA stacked the witness list for the hearings with legalization opponents to ensure the preferred outcome: the status quo.
This presents a twofold opportunity tailor-made to appeal to Trump: Do something popular, something the “corrupt” Biden administration would not.
In the past, most constitutional scholars agreed that the administrative process Biden launched is how the executive branch could bypass Congress and reclassify cannabis.
But in the unpredictable, gloves-off Trump era, rescheduling marijuana – or removing it entirely from the Controlled Substances Act’s list – via an executive order is another option.
However, that presupposes marijuana ever makes it onto a Trump to-do list.
“It was always going to be a two- to three-year administrative rescheduling process, and that was without changing presidential parties,” said Charlie Panfil, vice president at The Daschle Group, which lobbies on behalf of legal marijuana companies in Washington, D.C.
“The reality here is the only way to get to a true regulated cannabis market is through Congress.”
“With everything else that’s going on in the world, I don’t know if cannabis is a high enough priority for Trump,” added Cat Packer, the director of drug markets and legal regulation at the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance.
“It’s definitely not a high enough priority for the Republican Party.”
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