L.A. marijuana business

June 19, 2018

Long Beach Finally Passes Recreational Marijuana Business Policies

Long Beach will soon be the next city in Los Angeles County to embrace recreational marijuana business plan marijuana after its city council voted overwhelmingly to regulate industry operations. The council passed a series of amendments that will set guidelines for cultivators, testing labs, distributors, and dispensaries in the city, according to an article from Press-Telegram. The 7-1 vote reflected a strong support from council, with the support of the mayor as well as the residents who voted for Proposition 64 in November 2016.

City staffers estimate the move could bring in about $750,000 in taxes from recreational sales next year and a whopping $4.5 million from medical marijuana taxes. City officials also hope to stimulate the economy with a clause that requires collective-bargaining agreements with United Food and Commercial Workers 324, the union that represents cannabis workers, raising the bar on the quality of jobs provided by local establishments. Continue reading

June 11, 2018

STATES to Feds: Marijuana is None of Your Business

By Cannabis Law Group

A bipartisan blend of politicians has come together to support a bill that could finally offer some concrete relief from the oppressive federal law that continues to bind the hands of marijuana businesses despite state legalization. The STATES Act, Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States, is a more formal way of declaring that state laws regarding cannabis usurp the federal government’s Schedule I classification under Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. Section 812.

According to a report from Leafly, the bill allows representatives who refuse to step into the 21st Century to support marijuana businesses without taking a stance on marijuana at all. It turns the matter purely into a states’ rights issue, which has become the great unifier in the cannabis debate. It also removes industrial hemp from the definition of “marijuana,” freeing many industries that create products unrelated to the psychoactive properties of cannabis. Continue reading

February 22, 2017

From Chocolate to Cannabis: Former Hershey Factor Purchased by Marijuana Business

By Cannabis Law Group

A Canadian company has tripled its production capacity by moving into an old chocolate factory, a long-time vacant facility that had posed the risk of blight and crime for the community in a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario for years.

According to Financial Post, this purchase could make Canopy Growth, the parent company, the owner of the biggest indoor marijuana production site in Canada, and possibly the world. The building was purchased with the help of a group of collective investors who backed Canopy. There was previously a medical marijuana facility of the site, but they were only a tenant and they only took up a third of the building’s space – a whopping 472,000 square feet.

This new space has the potential for add-ons of hundreds of thousands of square feet of production and processing space, which could include expanding the indoor facilities or creating greenhouse growing platforms. Even as there is a need for commercial processing of the drug, there is also space needed to convert the marijuana and cannabinoids into products that are higher margin means of profit, such as oils and edibles. Vaporizer pens and other medical delivery options too could be easily manufactured at this site. Continue reading