Lp,s are doomed!
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Let’s compare what is in store this week.
Any promotion at Crappy Groth?
Lugh's Disciple
@ExtractedVideo
You keep placing people that do know anything about this plant or it's consumers on any level in charge of policy regulating it.
Same goes for stock market weed CEO.
Don't surprised when it gets regulated in ways that don't make sense..
You see, these people think in their minds you're getting away with something and on some level must still be punished for it, through regulations.
Meanwhile legacy rules and stock buyers are getting empty bags.
Big sales coming when money run’s out.
Sad.
Matt Lamers ??
@matt_lamers
I have read dozens of cannabis laws, final and in draft form, and this German version is the worst attempt among all of them.
The public policy goals are guaranteed to fail. Is it sabotage?
Great at selling shares to suckers
Great at destroying bunk
Great at paying millions to top brass
Wrong folks to purchase weed from but.
Legacy rules.
When?
Some folks are just in the know.
They are on that cannabis ´´thing’´ like nobody,s business.
It,s not that they ´´want’´ canna stock to fail…
It,s that they ´´know’´ that canna stock will eventually fail.
Fact matters.
Overgrowing bunk is not what the good doctor ordered.
No money, no candy.
Home / Cultivation
Details emerge about Germany’s ultra-regulated recreational cannabis clubs
B
May 12 2023
The German government is preparing a draft law that would highly regulate so-called cannabis clubs – associations that would not produce profits – potentially leaving very little room for making money for even ancillary businesses.
In April, Germany unveiled a watered-down, two-pillar approach to legalization involving nonprofit cannabis clubs and, separately, regional trial programs.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to details of the draft rules leaked to the German Press Agency, the not-for-profit associations could be up and running as early as later this year.
The Press Agency, called Deutsche Presse-Agentur, said it acquired a draft version of the rules, which are yet to be officially released by the government.
Of note, the German Press Agency report said Germany could limit cannabis distribution only to association members and up to only a maximum of 50 grams per month per person.
Consumers 18 to 21 years old would face a lower monthly limit in addition to a potency restriction.
For comparison, Canada limits sales to 30 grams of flower per person per purchase, with no lower limit for young people. (However, provinces have different lower-age limits, with most being 19.)
Other details of the rules, which the news agency says could be changed after deliberations in the Bundestag, would require “neutral” packaging and no “consumption incentives” for young people.
Consumption on the site of the associations would be banned.
Labels would need to display the package’s weight, harvest date, best-by date and cultivar as well as THC and CBD content.
ADVERTISEMENT
The German Press Agency report also said the premises of the cannabis clubs as well as where any marijuana is stored or cultivated would need to be fenced off with burglar-proof doors and windows.
The clubs would also be required to keep a record of:
The source of their seeds.
How many plants are grown and stored.
Inventory levels.
How much cannabis is distributed to members.
How much product was packaged.
How much was destroyed.
Manitoba cannabis stores say they need their money back
MAY 10, 2023 | DAVID B
Several cannabis retailers are telling the Manitoba provincial government that they support its efforts to repeal a six percent fee charged to stores, but say the government needs to go even further.
During a meeting where the Standing Committee on Social and Economic Development discussed Bill 10—a bill that would repeal Manitoba’s six percent Social Responsibility Fee (SRF) charged to retailers—retailers discussed the often dire economic circumstances many are facing, in part due to the fee.
The SRF was originally intended to offset the cost of legalization borne by the province. The provincial government now says those expected costs did not bear out, and cannot say where the money from that fee has gone.
Retailers have been paying the fee since June 2022, and the provincial government says they now want to repeal the bill retroactively to January 2023. However, several retailers who came to share their support for the bill also said they would like to see the change made retroactively to January 2022.
“We are not big publicly traded companies with access to lines of credit and payroll loans. But we are the majority of cannabis stakeholders in Manitoba. While many businesses and industries are receiving financial help as they slowly try to recover from the pandemic, we are not.”
SHANNON SALA, ESSENTIAL CANNABIS COMPANY
Cliff Cullen, the province’s Minister of Finance, told retailers and other speakers that he would take their concerns under consideration as they continued to discuss the bill. The committee passed the bill, which will now be sent back to the House for third reading, along with a report.
Several of the retailers who spoke shared their concerns with many owners’ ability to pay this year’s SRF, due June 30, and said stores pay tens of thousands or even over $100,000 a year in SRF fees. Because this is taken from their revenue, not their profits, some store owners say it is very difficult to maintain profitability.
Todd Friesen, a manager at Supercraft Cannabis in Ste Anne, who was the first of about ten stores represented at the meeting, said the fee is taking money away from small business owners. Given that the government says the fee wasn’t even used for its intended purpose, he considers it misallocated.
“I would suggest that this is borderline fraudulent, and we want our money back so that we can continue to run and grow this industry as we have, year over year,” said Friesen.
Sean Stewart, the owner of Supercraft, says their annual SRF bill has been as high as $142,000, and in their first year of operation, the fee put them into the red.
Sean Stewart, AAAAA Supercraft Cannabis
Shannon Sala, the owner of Essential Cannabis Company in Selkirk, who also said the fee should be repealed back to 2022, tried to convey to the committee that the industry is not awash in cash as some might think, with the smaller independent stores most impacted.
“The Manitoba cannabis industry currently has approximately 170 cannabis retail stores, with 70 percent of those stores being independently owned and operated. We are not big publicly traded companies with access to lines of credit and payroll loans. But we are the majority of cannabis stakeholders in Manitoba. While many businesses and industries are receiving financial help as they slowly try to recover from the pandemic, we are not.”
“I would suggest that this is borderline fraudulent, and we want our money back so that we can continue to run and grow this industry as we have, year over year.”
TODD FRIESEN, AAAAA SUPERCRAFT CANNABIS
In response to one question from another retailer, Minister Cullen also shared that the Manitoba government is in conversation with the federal government around the federal cannabis excise tax, something the provincial government has discussed in the past. Manitoba is the only government that opted out of participating in the federal excise tax, but has suggested they may revisit that agreement.
The bill will still need to pass third reading before coming into effect. No changes to the bill were added during their vote.
The meeting can be viewed here.
Cannabis sales brought in over $24 million for Manitoba in 2021-2022 (Year ending March 31) after all operating costs and allocations. This was up nearly 75% from the earnings in the previous year of $14.1 million.
Although it doesn’t break down specific cannabis dollars, the province released more than $11 million in social responsibility funding in 2021-22 and more than $12 million in the previous year.
Revenue generated by cannabis operations in the province was $113.9 million in 2021-22, an increase of $33.7 million, or 42 percent from revenue of $80.2 million in the prior year. Manitoba also launched a “cross docking” service in 2022 to address some of the challenges the province’s direct-to-retail distribution can pose.
Yup!
GERMAN LEGALIZATION DETAILS
B·MAY 9,
German legalization details have emerged. A draft of the German legalization bill leaked to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur or DPA news agency.
The German government is still hammering out the legalization details, so some of these rules could change. But so far, we’ve seen how Germany’s social cannabis clubs might work. And what kind of restrictions the government is placing on cannabis legalization
As German politicians deliberate in the Bundestag, their initial legalization details look like this:
Cannabis clubs will be limited to 500 members. You cannot be a member of more than one club.
You’ll be able to grow three plants at home for personal use.
Cannabis club premises must be fenced with security requirements like burglar-proof doors and windows.
Greenhouses need a privacy screen.
The clubs must remain a specific distance from other cannabis clubs, schools, playgrounds, sports facilities, daycare centers, and other areas that government deems vulnerable.
Cannabis clubs will be required to draw up a “health and youth protection” plan and appoint an “addiction officer” who must complete training and continually update it.
Members of the cannabis club board of directors will have to obtain a “certificate of good conduct.”
The clubs will have to follow the rules on the uses and limits of pesticides and fertilizers and keep detailed records of the seed-to-sale process. Including the source of the seeds, how many seeds they store, how many plants they grow, how much they’ve sold to members, current levels of inventory, destroyed or discarded stock, etc.
Cannabis clubs will also have to report to the government the cannabinoid content of their products. So far, the German legalization is only interested in THC and CBD details.
Cannabis clubs cannot sell over 50 grams monthly to a single member.
Cannabis must come in “neutral packaging or unpackaged.”
“Consumption incentives” for young people are forbidden.
A leaflet requiring information on weight, harvest date, best before date, and THC & CBD content in percent will be mandatory with each purchase.
Consumption in public will be legal, but not within the hours of 7 am and 8 pm.
You can also not consume within 250 meters of schools, daycares, playgrounds, youth or sports facilities, etc
.
Cannabis remains illegal for anyone under 18. If you’re over 18 but under 21, you can only purchase up to 30 grams per month of cannabis, limited to 10% THC.
As mentioned in another article, German legalization includes a pilot project to test commercial legalization in select municipalities. Details still need to be worked out.
CANNABIS SOCIAL CLUBS: PROS AND CONS
Pro-cannabis German politicians hope to get these social clubs up and running by the end of the year. The pilot programme may take longer, but the optimistic anticipate an Autumn 2023 launch.
That said, what about these cannabis social clubs? While full-scale free-market legalization is ideal, one could argue that the German model is superior to Canada’s.
As we’ve covered before, Canada is cartel country. And the cannabis industry is shaping up to be the same kind of oligopoly that dominates Canada’s telecom, banking, maple syrup, airline, beer, and grocery industries.
Meanwhile, authorities target Canada’s social cannabis clubs that predate legalization – like the VCBC.
So let’s examine the pros and cons of the revealed details of German legalization.
PROS
Local quality control. Although the German government insists on setting national standards, it looks as if each club can pursue its own growing style.
Non-profit vs. Profiteering. There is nothing wrong with profiting from cannabis people have voluntarily bought.
But suppose you’ve lobbied and used government regulations to help eliminate the competition. In that case, your profit comes at the expense of others. That’s not profiting; that’s profiteering. Suppose the only options are this profiteering crony-capitalist model like Canada’s or a nonprofit social club model like Germany. In that case, many would prefer the German model.
Access: Any step toward legalization is a step in the right direction. Germans will be able to find and buy cannabis easily and know who the farmers are and how they grow it.
Economic Benefits: Even small-scale, nonprofit legalization has economic benefits. From the capital goods required to grow cannabis to the uptick in stoners buying munchies. Everybody benefits from legal cannabis. Only moral busybodies oppose it.
CONS
Social Stigma: If the current draft becomes law, German legalization details include the continued stigma of a nontoxic, medicinal herb.
Nonprofit vs. Profit: If the marketplace is open and free, anybody can buy or sell cannabis. In this environment, the only way to profit is by offering goods and services to people on a consensual basis.
The German government, bowing to EU pressure, removed the profit-and-loss feature that signals where resources should go.
German politicians haven’t set their legalization details in stone. But even if half of these proposals remain, it clearly indicates the direction the German government is moving.
Like other legal regimes, the government emphasizes public health and safety, including moral outcry about “young people,” as if young adults had no agency.
But unlike other legal regimes, where the appeal to “public health” is often cover for corporate-state control, in Germany, lawmakers actually seemed concerned with an illicit supply of cannabis.
Therefore, they plan to legalize nonprofit cannabis clubs. There is no excuse for other countries not to follow in their footsteps. Including already legal Canada, where nonprofit cannabis clubs have to fight for their existence in the courts.
FOOTNOTE(S)
https://www.stern.de/gesundheit/cannabis-klubs–diese-regeln-sollen-in-den-vereinen-gelten-33446480.html
Matt Lamers ??
@matt_lamers
·
19h
Linton: 'Canopy was never built to be little. This was to be a globally dominating company'
The problem is there was not a global market to dominate. That's how these companies ended up producing 10-20 times more supply than they could sell. That's why they fail.
Cannabis naive CEO are not cutting it.
Doomed!
Matt Lamers ??
@matt_lamers
·
8 mai
The #German plan for "cannabis clubs", as outlined in this report, is so bad, so poorly thought out, that policy failure is an absolute certainty, and the only thing worse is the status quo.
The overseas "fact finding" trip must have been a disaster.
@Karl_Lauterbach
is lost.
Another bonehead « legalization »
In Germany this time
I predict another doomed scenario
Oh well
Home / Cultivation
Details emerge about Germany’s ultra-regulated recreational cannabis clubs
B
May 8, 2023
The German government is preparing a draft law that would highly regulate so-called cannabis clubs – associations that would not produce profits – potentially leaving very little room for making money for even ancillary businesses.
In April, Germany unveiled a watered-down, two-pillar approach to legalization involving nonprofit cannabis clubs and, separately, regional trial programs.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to details of the draft rules leaked to the German Press Agency, the not-for-profit associations could be up and running as early as later this year.
The Press Agency, called Deutsche Presse-Agentur, said it acquired a draft version of the rules, which are yet to be officially released by the government.
Of note, the German Press Agency report said Germany could limit cannabis distribution only to association members and up to only a maximum of 50 grams per month per person.
Consumers 18 to 21 years old would face a lower monthly limit in addition to a potency restriction.
For comparison, Canada limits sales to 30 grams of flower per person per purchase, with no lower limit for young people. (However, provinces have different lower-age limits, with most being 19.)
Other details of the rules, which the news agency says could be changed after deliberations in the Bundestag, would require “neutral” packaging and no “consumption incentives” for young people.
Consumption on the site of the associations would be banned.
Labels would need to display the package’s weight, harvest date, best-by date and cultivar as well as THC and CBD content.
ADVERTISEMENT
The German Press Agency report also said the premises of the cannabis clubs as well as where any marijuana is stored or cultivated would need to be fenced off with burglar-proof doors and windows.
The clubs would also be required to keep a record of:
The source of their seeds.
How many plants are grown and stored.
Inventory levels.
How much cannabis is distributed to members.
How much product was packaged.
How much was destroyed.
— CannaWorld (@cannaworldsite) May 5, 2023
More Supreme Disappointments
By David Malmo-Levine on May 1, 2023
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CANNABIS CULTURE – The Supreme Court of Canada rejects Quebec home-grow rights – judges and attorneys on both sides of the argument assume cannabis is a hard drug worthy of tight regulations and instead focus on jurisdictional arguments.
“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
– H.L. Mencken, In Defense Of Women, 1918 (1)
The Supreme Court of Canada, who back in 2003 (2) rejected my “harm reduction/harm principle” arguments in favour of the “cannibal argument” (no joke) (3) have done it again and disappointed an entire province worth of pot gardeners. On April 14 th , 2023, The Supremes released their decision in Murray-Hall v. Quebec (Attorney General). The bottom line? Pot is too dangerous for the people of Quebec to grow at home.
Image #1: “Quebec ban on homegrown cannabis plants unconstitutional, lawyer tells Supreme
Court – It’s up to province to regulate how cannabis is consumed, says lawyer for Quebec Émilie
Warren” · CBC News · Sep 15, 2022
According to a “plain-language summary” supplied by the Supremes, the excuse for preventing anyone in Quebec from growing their own pot has to do with the “hard drug” nature of cannabis – the risks from the wacky tabacky that justify a minimum age: “According to the Chief Justice, the prohibitions act as incentives for the integration of consumers into the legal cannabis market that ensures ‘control of the quality of the products offered, education on the risks of cannabis consumption and compliance with rules on the minimum age for purchasing cannabis’, among other things. Such provincial legislative action in the field of public health comes within the provinces’ jurisdiction over property and civil rights and residual jurisdiction over matters of a merely local or private nature.” (4)
If you search for “minimum age” in their actual decision, they mention it three times – in paragraphs 5, 42 and 45. I’ve provided the offensive paragraphs and a “no-bullshit translation” below each one to provide further clarity:
“[5] The enactment of the federal Act represents a paradigm shift in the Canadian legal landscape. Canada has moved from a suppression-based approach to a scheme that gives the provinces responsibility for determining the framework for the sale and distribution of cannabis within their borders. In other words, the provinces are being called upon to make laws, within their fields of jurisdiction, concerning a substance that was previously subject to criminal prohibitions for nearly a century. The statutes and regulations passed by the provinces in parallel with the federal Act primarily establish rules governing the sale of the substance, for example with regard to the location, operation and staff of the stores where the various cannabis products are sold. Much of the provincial legislation also sets out additional restrictions that supplement the federal legislative framework, including with respect to the minimum age required to purchase cannabis, the applicable limit on the possession of this substance and the places where it may be consumed in public.” (5)
Translation: We have shifted from a prohibition to a cartel. The cartel relies on tight regs which
themselves require an updated myth of reefer madness.
“[42] In reality, the impossibility of possessing and cultivating cannabis plants at home without risking penal sanctions has the effect of steering Quebec consumers to the safe source of supply that is the SQDC. As a result, they receive quality-controlled products and advice from sales employees who have been trained on the risks associated with cannabis consumption (on the first point, see ss. 29, 44 and 45 of the provincial Act and the Regulation to determine other classes of cannabis that may be sold by the Société québécoise du cannabis and certain standards respecting the composition and characteristics of cannabis, CQLR, c. C-5.3, r. 0.1; on the second point, see s. 1 and Sch. I of the Regulation respecting training on the retail sale of cannabis and information to be communicated to a purchaser in the course of a cannabis sale, CQLR, c. C-5.3, r. 1). The fact that consumers buy from the SQDC also means that they are subject to a series of requirements, the most important of which seems to me to be the one setting a minimum age of 21 years for purchasing cannabis from the SQDC.” (6)
Translation: Even though we’ve attempted to shift the market to a corporate-based profit-focused minimal- quality cartel, we will continue to promote the myth that cartel pot is cleaner than dispensary pot, and that budtenders have the necessary “training” to deal with the “risks” of pot. And the “most important” thing to remember is that pot is much, much too dangerous for anyone under 21 to use, so we must guarantee everyone will provide a valid I.D. indicating the proper age has been achieved to obtain cannabis – or all hell might break loose.
‘
“[45] In short, when viewed together with the other provisions of the provincial Act, ss. 5 and 10 do not have the separate and independent objective of prohibiting the possession and cultivation of cannabis plants for personal purposes. The prohibitions themselves must be seen as one means among a broad range of measures that the Quebec legislature has deemed necessary in order to achieve the provincial Act’s public health and security objectives. In particular, the prohibitions act as strong incentives for the integration of “consumers into . . . the legal market” that ensures, among other things, control of the quality of the products offered, education on the risks of cannabis consumption and compliance with rules on the minimum age for purchasing cannabis (see s. 16.1 para. 1 of the Act respecting the Société des alcools du Québec; see also R.F., at para. 12).” (7)
Translation: Legal pot means quality pot, educated pot dealers and – most importantly – that those under 21 do not get their hands on the devil’s broccoli. If people in Quebec are allowed to grow their own pot they will immediately lose all that safety – their pot will be shitty chemmy bunk shwag, they’ll use it in the most ignorant fashion, and it will be the Breakfast Club all over again – happy, hungry, relaxed, inspired teens all over the place.
The horror.
The horror.
Image #2: The Breakfast Club, 1985
The people who live in the real world of facts and evidence know that cannabis does not cause mental problems for the young – the evidence is by now completely and totally overwhelming. I’ve gathered this evidence and put it here.
And here.
And here too:
POTFACTS.CA
Since the time I’ve gathered the above evidence that Reefer Madness 2.0 is a total scam, even more evidence has come to my attention. On August 3 rd , 2015, yet another study on cannabis use and “physical or mental health problems” (such as psychosis) in young men was published and then ignored, because the conclusions arrived at did not follow the official narrative. In Bechtold, et al., the conclusion was that cannabis use by young men in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania didn’t cause any detectable problems;
“After controlling for potential confounding variables such as alcohol, tobacco, and hard drug use, socioeconomic status, whether the young men had health insurance, and early health status (prior to marijuana use), findings from this sample indicated that chronic marijuana users were not more likely than late increasing users, adolescence-limited users, or low/nonusers to experience several physical or mental health problems in their mid-30s. In fact, there were no significant differences between marijuana trajectory groups in terms of adult health outcomes, even when models were run without controlling for potential confounds. This is particularly striking given that men in the early onset chronic group were using marijuana (on average) once per week by late adolescence and continued using marijuana approximately 3– 4 times a week from age 20 to 26 years.” (8)
And, keeping in mind that most of Canada has allowed (to a certain extent) home growing of cannabis, a 2022 analysis of the health effects of all this home-grown pot found that: “Implementation of Canada’s cannabis legalization framework was not associated with evidence of significant changes in cannabis-induced psychosis or schizophrenia ED presentations.” (9)
These conclusions were echoed in a joint Minnesota/Colorado study from January 2023, which compared the health problems of twins who lived in legalized and non-legalized US states: “We used a longitudinal, co-twin control design in 4043 twins (N = 240 pairs discordant on residence), first assessed in adolescence and now age 24–49, currently residing in states with different cannabis policies (40% resided in a recreationally legal state). We tested the effect of legalization on outcomes of interest and whether legalization interacts with established vulnerability factors (age, sex, or externalizing psychopathology). . . . Recreational legalization was associated with increased cannabis use and decreased AUD (alcohol use disorder)
symptoms but was not associated with other maladaptations. These effects were maintained within twin pairs discordant for residence. Moreover, vulnerabilities to cannabis use were not exacerbated by the legal cannabis environment. ” (10)
There’s no real debate about all this in the academic world – the studies that attempt to provide evidence for cannabis harming the developing minds of young people generally ignore the studies that provide evidence to the contrary, and vice versa. Academics, government, media, judges and lawyers generally ignore the second set of studies which disprove Reefer Madness 2.0 and only cite the studies which claim it’s a real thing. Because most if not all of the academics who disprove Reefer Madness 2.0 are too timid to call out the scammers in high-profile campaigns, they sort of become part of the scam through their silence. At the very least, they almost always leave it to the unaccredited – those who are smart enough to read their reports but not dependent on getting grants to survive – to call out these bullshit studies instead. The unaccredited can easily be ignored by the media – they have no accreditation, after all. Regarding the “quality control” justification for tight regulations, I’ve gathered evidence to the
contrary on that topic too.
Here.
And here
And here
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here
Regarding the special “training” that legal bud-tenders have received in order to sell pot safely,
it seems to me that it either consists of the advice illegal activist/legacy dispensaries have been
providing for decades, or else industry propaganda about how dangerous black-market pot is
and how young people should never ever use it.
Image #3: “The year in provincial pot politics,” DECEMBER 22, 2022
https://stratcann.com/insight/the-year-in-provincial-pot-politics/
Pot activist Lawyer Jack Lloyd was quoted in the media regarding the Quebec home-grow
challenge, arguing that his upcoming jurisdictional argument for Manitoba home-grow rights
was stronger than the Quebec jurisdictional-based challenge:
“‘Quebec’s goal was to strengthen their Provincial monopoly and sales, like R v Comeau,’ he
continues. ‘Manitoba’s goal is to issue penal sanction against cannabis growers, which is a
purely criminal issue and thus outside of the Province of Manitoba’s jurisdiction.’” (11)
I emailed Jack to make sure I understood his argument, and asked him about the prospects of a future challenge based on less jurisdictional, more (to me at least) substantive arguments:
DML: “As a layperson with zero legal training, it appears to me – on the surface – that both the Quebec and the Manitoba challenges involve jurisdiction issues rather than whether or not cannabis is a hard drug that requires tight regulations such as age limits. Have I got that right?”
Jack Lloyd: “It is about jurisdiction correct!”
DML: “OK. Second question. Even if you win the Manitoba challenge allowing some Manitobans to grow
in their homes, won’t cannabis still be over-regulated like a hard drug in Manitoba? Won’t
teens still unable to use it, poor people still unable to grow it in their window boxes,
landlords still able to forbid growing it, grow limits such as the number of plants allowed or
the limit being ‘per household’ instead of ‘per person’ still existing, the rich still having the
ability to form a producer cartel through expensive licensing requirements, a limited number
of licenses still limiting the number of people able to sell it, expensive and discriminatory
licensing fees still keeping the non-wealthy out of the production and retail economies, and
industrial hemp still over-regulated to the extent that our forests still keep getting cut down
because hemp paper is made artificially expensive and hemp ethanol still having no chance of
competing with non-renewable energy?
Third question. Do you ever see a day when the premise that cannabis should be regulated
like a hard drug itself would be challenged, eliminating not just some of the problems with
cannabis over-regulation, but all of them at once? What would it take to get to that day? How
much money would it cost? What is the likelihood of there being a lawyer in Canada who is a
cannabis activist interested in launching a challenge like that pro-bono?”
Jack: “I am so sorry I don’t know the answers to your questions so I can’t assist at this time.”
It appears to me that currently, all the pot activist lawyers and the remaining pot activists with enough money to afford lawyers are unable or unwilling or not interested in making legal arguments that involve questioning whether or not cannabis is a hard drug deserving of tight regulations. They all seem satisfied with arguing about which level of government has the power to determine what kind of tight regulations cannabis users and dealers and growers will suffer under.
It seems to me that the survival of humanity is dependent on removing the red tape around industrial hemp to allow it to compete with non-renewable energy (12) and also dependent on allowing everyone to participate in the re-emerging herbal healthcare industry (to deal with soul-destroying, life-destroying poverty) and also dependent on setting legal precedents that render the ability to scapegoat harmless groups of people impossible. None of that will be achieved making jurisdictional arguments that keep hard-drug pot regs in place, or focusing on removing excise taxes, or fighting for tokenism within the industry. These self-limiting tendencies within the remaining pot movement are as disappointing as any shitty decision to come out of the court system.
I don’t know exactly how our movement will move towards bringing these more substantive issues into the law courts and the courts of public opinion. All I know is that my role remains to create awareness on these issues, and to encourage the readers of Cannabis Culture and the viewers of Pot TV to share this information, create more of it, and support the groups and the people who are spreading it around. Perhaps one day someone in a position to call bullshit in an effective way will do so – raising awareness about these issues increases the likelihood of that happening.
1) H.L. Mencken, “In Defense Of Women”, 1918
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1270/1270-h/1270-h.htm
2) R. v. Malmo-Levine; R. v. Caine, 2003-12-23
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2109/index.do
3) “The majority compared cannabis users to animal abusers and pimps (para. 109)
cannibals (para. 117) and those who commit incest (118). Unlike animal abusers,
exploiters of vulnerable people and those who desecrate corpses, cannabis users are a
large minority of people who produce no identifiable harm. Clearly, the Supreme Court
had it out to get us from the beginning. Why else did they ignore comparisons with
homosexuals and alcohol dealers in favor of comparisons with those who eat dead
people?”
“What I learned from going to the Supreme Court of Canada self-represented on pot
dealing charges,” David Malmo-Levine, October 15, 2009
https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2009/10/15/what-i-learned-going-supreme-
court-canada-self-represented-pot-dealing-charges/
4) Case in Brief: Murray-Hall v. Quebec (Attorney General)
https://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/cb/2023/39906-eng.aspx#criminallaw
5) Murray-Hall v. Quebec (Attorney General), Supreme Court Judgments, 2023-04-14, 2023
SCC 10 Case number: 39906
https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/19829/index.do
6) Ibid.
7) Ibid.
8) “Chronic Adolescent Marijuana Use as a Risk Factor for Physical and Mental Health
Problems in Young Adult Men,” Jordan Bechtold, University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine, Theresa Simpson and Helene R. White, Rutgers University, Psychology of
Addictive Behaviors, © 2015 American Psychological Association, August 3 rd , 2015, Vol.
29, No. 3, 552–563, p. 557
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/adb-adb0000103.pdf
9) “Associations Between Canada’s Cannabis Legalization and Emergency Department
Presentations for Transient Cannabis-Induced Psychosis and Schizophrenia Conditions:
Ontario and Alberta, 2015-2019,” Callaghan, Sanches, Murray, Konefal, Maloney-Hall,
Kish, The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 2022, pp. 1-10
10) Recreational cannabis legalization has had limited effects on a wide range of adult
psychiatric and psychosocial outcomes, Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2023,
Stephanie M. Zellers Open the ORCID record for Stephanie M. Zellers, J. Megan Ross ,
Gretchen R. B. Saunders , Jarrod M. Ellingson , Tasha Walvig
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/recreational-
cannabis-legalization-has-had-limited-effects-on-a-wide-range-of-adult-psychiatric-and-
psychosocial-outcomes/D4AB5EB78D588473A054877E05D45F16
11) “Supreme Court upholds Quebec’s right to ban growing cannabis at home,” APRIL 14,
2023
https://stratcann.com/news/supreme-court-upholds-quebecs-right-to-ban-growing-
cannabis-at-home/
12) Hemp Can Still Save the World, David Malmo-Levine, January 29, 2020
Home / Canada
Cannabis firm Entourage Health frets about future amid CA$123.1M annual loss
B
May 2, 2023
Canadian cannabis company Entourage Health Corp. reported a net loss of 123.1 million Canadian dollars ($90 million) for its 2022 fiscal year amid declining revenue.
Entourage, previously known as WeedMD, warned in a regulatory filing about “material uncertainty that may cast a significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
The Aylmer, Ontario-based company said it “has sufficient cash on hand to service its liabilities and fund operating costs for the immediate future with the additional sources of funding actually received in February 2023, as well as additional funding expected during 2023.”
“However, there is uncertainty as to how long these funds will last,” the filing noted.
Entourage announced in November that it was laying off more than a third of its staff, ending its cultivation operations and sourcing cannabis from Hexo Corp.
The company’s total revenue for 2022 was CA$54.5 million, down nearly 1.3% from the previous year, according to a late Monday news release.
Meanwhile, Entourage’s annual selling, general and administrative expenses were CA$30.3 million, up from CA$28.7 million in 2021.
The company attributed the increased expenses primarily to its restructuring effort.
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“Despite encountering revenue stagnation in 2022 because of a product shortfall last spring, initial indications imply that the partnership with Hexo, our third-party supplier, is positively impacting overall operations,” Entourage Chief Financial Officer Vaani Maharaj said in a statement.
Entourage’s cost-saving measures are expected to save CA$12 million per year, according to Maharaj.
“The infusion of CA$30 million in financing from (key investor and creditor Liuna Pension Fund) and deferred debt payments has strengthened our company’s liquidity and provided additional support for our operations and growth initiatives,” she said.
Home / Canada
Cannabis firm Entourage Health frets about future amid CA$123.1M annual loss
B
May 2, 2023
Canadian cannabis company Entourage Health Corp. reported a net loss of 123.1 million Canadian dollars ($90 million) for its 2022 fiscal year amid declining revenue.
Entourage, previously known as WeedMD, warned in a regulatory filing about “material uncertainty that may cast a significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
The Aylmer, Ontario-based company said it “has sufficient cash on hand to service its liabilities and fund operating costs for the immediate future with the additional sources of funding actually received in February 2023, as well as additional funding expected during 2023.”
“However, there is uncertainty as to how long these funds will last,” the filing noted.
Entourage announced in November that it was laying off more than a third of its staff, ending its cultivation operations and sourcing cannabis from Hexo Corp.
The company’s total revenue for 2022 was CA$54.5 million, down nearly 1.3% from the previous year, according to a late Monday news release.
Meanwhile, Entourage’s annual selling, general and administrative expenses were CA$30.3 million, up from CA$28.7 million in 2021.
The company attributed the increased expenses primarily to its restructuring effort.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Despite encountering revenue stagnation in 2022 because of a product shortfall last spring, initial indications imply that the partnership with Hexo, our third-party supplier, is positively impacting overall operations,” Entourage Chief Financial Officer Vaani Maharaj said in a statement.
Entourage’s cost-saving measures are expected to save CA$12 million per year, according to Maharaj.
“The infusion of CA$30 million in financing from (key investor and creditor Liuna Pension Fund) and deferred debt payments has strengthened our company’s liquidity and provided additional support for our operations and growth initiatives,” she said.
Home / Canada
Cannabis firm Entourage Health frets about future amid CA$123.1M annual loss
B
May 2, 2023
Canadian cannabis company Entourage Health Corp. reported a net loss of 123.1 million Canadian dollars ($90 million) for its 2022 fiscal year amid declining revenue.
Entourage, previously known as WeedMD, warned in a regulatory filing about “material uncertainty that may cast a significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
The Aylmer, Ontario-based company said it “has sufficient cash on hand to service its liabilities and fund operating costs for the immediate future with the additional sources of funding actually received in February 2023, as well as additional funding expected during 2023.”
“However, there is uncertainty as to how long these funds will last,” the filing noted.
Entourage announced in November that it was laying off more than a third of its staff, ending its cultivation operations and sourcing cannabis from Hexo Corp.
The company’s total revenue for 2022 was CA$54.5 million, down nearly 1.3% from the previous year, according to a late Monday news release.
Meanwhile, Entourage’s annual selling, general and administrative expenses were CA$30.3 million, up from CA$28.7 million in 2021.
The company attributed the increased expenses primarily to its restructuring effort.
“Despite encountering revenue stagnation in 2022 because of a product shortfall last spring, initial indications imply that the partnership with Hexo, our third-party supplier, is positively impacting overall operations,” Entourage Chief Financial Officer Vaani Maharaj said in a statement.
Entourage’s cost-saving measures are expected to save CA$12 million per year, according to Maharaj.
“The infusion of CA$30 million in financing from (key investor and creditor Liuna Pension Fund) and deferred debt payments has strengthened our company’s liquidity and provided additional support for our operations and growth initiatives,” she said.
Race to the bottom is on big time
Australia's medical cannabis industry continues to experience brisk growth in patients and sales, and experts say the market could even surpass Canada’s medical sector this year.
Australian patients generally access medical cannabis via two government-regulated programs: the so-called Special Access Scheme Category B (SAS-B) system or from an Authorized Prescriber, typically a physician.
According to Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) data, the number of SAS-B patient approvals for medical cannabis increased sharply every year from January 2018 to January 2022.
Patient approvals rose from 25,160 in 2019 to 57,710 in 2020 and almost 122,000 in 2021.
However, that number dropped to 117,000 in 2022.
Industry sources say SAS-B approvals declined last year partly because of reforms implemented in late 2021, which effectively pushed some patients to pick an alternative pathway for securing medical cannabis - through an Authorized Prescriber (AP).
“The TGA approval data shows that the Australian market is continuing to grow rapidly, with an increasing number of patients accessing medicinal cannabis via an Authorized Prescriber, rather than via the SAS-B pathway,” Rhys Cohen, global partnerships and engagement adviser at the Victoria, Australia-based Penington Institute, a drug policy organization, told MJBizDaily International Editor Matt Lamers.
“This is probably due to a combination of the November 2021 reforms, which made it easier to become an AP, and ongoing growth in the number and size of medicinal cannabis clinics, which prefer to use the AP pathway.”
Iv’s man got Tuckered out
ORGANIGRAM FILES JUDICIAL REVIEW OF HEALTH CANADA’S EXTRACT-EDIBLE DECISION
Avatar photoCALEB MCMILLAN·APRIL 24, 2023
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Organigram has launched a judicial review of Health Canada‘s extract-edible decision. On March 31st, 2023, the licensed producer filed a notice of application with the Federal Court of Canada for Judicial Review.
As a spokesperson for Organigram told CLN, “We remain of the view that the patent pending products are properly classified as cannabis extracts and compliant with the Cannabis Regulations.”
ORGANIGRAM FILES JUDICIAL REVIEW
Organigram Judicial Review
Earlier this year, Health Canada caught the already fledgling Canadian cannabis industry by surprise when they announced certain products were dangerous.
Although “dangerous” wasn’t a word they used, we must infer it from their alleged commitment to public health and safety.
Suppose Organigram’s Edison Jolts are actually “edible cannabis products erroneously being classified and marketed as cannabis extract products,” as Health Canada told CLN. In that case, there is a clear and present danger to Canadian cannabis consumers.
Except, there isn’t.
Whether something is a “chewable extract” or an “edible” is irrelevant. Consumers bought Edison Jolts based on THC content, price, and availability. The only “public health and public safety risks” are the fantasies conjured by federal bureaucrats.
Organigram told CLN they launched Edison Jolts after “significant research, development and regulatory work.”
While the LP couldn’t provide additional details, there must be enough to warrant a Judicial Review in Federal Court, which is now underway.
WHAT IS A JUDICIAL REVIEW?
Organigram Judicial Review
Some bureaucrats, like those in the Canadian territory of the Yukon, believe they are above the law. That trained legal professionals should defer their expertise to government midwits.
But centuries of legal tradition beg to differ.
The Notice of Application that Organigram filed sets the grounds for the legal challenge. It likely outlines Health Canada’s alleged errors while requesting the Federal Court to review the decision and reconsider the ordinance.
Judicial review is a power the Federal Court has to review (and disregard if necessary) the various rules and regulations of regulatory bodies, tribunals, and government departments.
The idea behind a judicial review is to ensure these agencies act within the confines of their authority, procedural fairness, and the rule of law.
And indeed, if the Federal Court’s Judicial Review agrees with Organigram, it wouldn’t be the first time Health Canada overstepped their legal bounds.
For example, Health Canada approved dangerous pesticides for use in food production. An advocacy group challenged them, and the Federal Court agreed. Health Canada needs to reconsider their decision.
Or consider a pharmaceutical for a rare genetic disorder. Health Canada said it was good to go. The Federal Court said, you better check again.
Federal Court documents are public (unless there’s a Confidentiality Order). Because of this, Canadians could see how the Trudeau government based its covid travel restrictions on politics rather than science.
While monopolistic courts of ultimate-decision making aren’t immune from criticism, they retain a powerful balance against the petty tyranny of Western bureaucrats and politicians. Organigram having to file a judicial review over cannabis products people are voluntarily buying is a perfect example.
DO WE NEED HEALTH CANADA?
Organigram Judicial Review
Organigram is filing a request for judicial review concerning Health Canada’s extract-edible decision.
Which begs the question: do we even need Health Canada?
The famous Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”
And that’s undoubtedly true in cannabis, where the people who once threw you in a cage for it are now profiting from it and helping write the rules.
But the cannabis industry – or any industry, for that matter – doesn’t require these large, extensive bureaucracies. We already have laws on the books to regulate goods and services.
Tort and criminal law provide security, while contract, property, and commercial law facilitate cooperation and exchange. Politicians don’t need to get involved.
We need rules and regulations to live together peacefully. But with the freedom to fail, succeed, take risks, and act on opportunities.
The Western legal tradition of common law promotes rules and regulations that minimally infringe on civil and economic liberties.
The rules and regulations created and imposed by the centralized state allow specific individuals to exercise political power over others. It masks the exploitative actions of Health Canada under the guise of “public health and safety.”
But as Organigram is finding out, Health Canada’s definition of words changes depending on how they feel.
A better system would place accreditation and regulatory agencies in a free market where a third party guarantees your cannabis. And where that third party’s reputation relies on approving quality.
Health Canada approved a dangerous pesticide for use on food crops. The decision required a federal judge to intervene. If Health Canada was a private accreditation company, given this history, would you trust them with regulating cannabis?
If there’s any lesson in Organigram filing for a judicial review, it’s this.
FOOTNOTE(S)
https://mises.org/library/state-or-private-law-society
https://environmentaldefence.ca/2022/02/04/court-orders-health-canada-to-re-consider-objections-to-approval-of-dangerous-pesticide/
https://medunikcanada.com/en/press-room/244-medunik-canada-once-again-receives-notice-of-compliance-from-health-canada-for-ruzurgi-amifampridine-following-review-ordered-by-court-ruling
https://www.sasktoday.ca/north/local-news/federal-court-documents-reveal-travel-ban-not-based-on-science-5700885
Home / Cultivation
Experts sound alarm over global spread of dangerous marijuana viroid
Bonno
April 24, 2023
Image of a cannabis plant infected with hop latent viroid next to a healthy plant
The cannabis plant on the left is infected with hop latent viroid; the plant on the right is healthy. (Photo courtesy of Zamir Punja)
The dangerous and infectious hop latent viroid that’s been on the radar of many marijuana growers since its discovery in 2018 has spread beyond North America and is threatening to spiral out of control and cause billions of dollars in industry losses, experts are warning.
Researchers are calling the viroid – which is surfacing across the world – “a hidden threat” and the “biggest concern for cannabis and hop growers worldwide.”
“It’s an all-out crisis,” said Av Singh, a Canadian cannabis cultivation adviser also working as the chief science officer of Green Gorilla, a Malibu, California-based manufacturer and online retailer of hemp-derived CBD oils, topicals and pet products.
“I think we’re not recognizing how big of a crisis it is.”
Zamir Punja, a professor of plant biology for Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, said hop latent viroid (HpLVd) is the No. 1 plant pathogen that the cannabis industry needs to be concerned about.
“You can’t adjust anything, such as environmental controls, to fight it,” Punja said. “It’s either there or it’s not.
“And once it’s there, and it’s not recognized, then you just automatically spread it.”
Growers can take preventive steps to curb the spread of the viroid, which can be transmitted from plant to plant through a variety of ways, according to experts.
But it’s hard to stop and might never be eliminated, experts said.
Oussama Badad, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Growmics, a plant research company in Carbondale, Illinois, said the viroid “remains a mystery.”
“The problem is the cannabis industry for the past 20 years at least was based on clones only,” Badad said.
“So everybody is shipping clones from here to there, and nobody was testing, or nobody was aware of any methodology to test for this virus.
“What we did was basically spread it all over the planet. Anybody receiving any plants from the United States, especially from California, has the viroid in their grow.”
Small and stealthy
Experts warned the viroid is stealthy. It’s also very small, asymptomatic and waiting for an opportunity to infect a plant.
The most likely form of transmission is from the everyday trim tools used for vegetative propagation and grafting or human hands.
When the viroid attacks, the plant pathogen moves quickly from the roots to the leaves to the flower in two to three weeks, Punja said.
It is most problematic in hydroponics – rather than outdoor grows – because the viroid can move through water and more easily infect roots that tend to be matted together.
Hop latent viroid doesn’t outright kill the plant.
But a grower can see an infected plant struggling to grow normally because the plant is shorter and the trichomes are underdeveloped or stunted.
The result: lower THC and CBD levels, which can drop as much as 40%.
“It’s almost like the plant just doesn’t have that energy to put into those trichomes,” Punja said.
It’s most noticeable when the plant flowers, Punja said.
He and other researchers suggest it’s that part of the growing cycle where the viroid might become more virulent, perhaps because of the stress the hydroponic plant is undergoing during the 12-hours-on, 12-hours-off lighting change that occurs during the flowering stage.
As a precaution, growers should have their plants tested, down to the roots, Punja said.
But even then, there are no assurances.
“Unfortunately, one test is not enough,” Punja said. “What we’re finding is that the first test will be negative.
“Three weeks later, again negative. Then three weeks later, positive.”
It’s unavoidable
The viroid is likely to be in the soil of grows, researchers said. It’s also in the water of a hydroponic grow. And it’s definitely in the roots.
In addition, the pathogen is in the seed, not on the seed. It also can spread to one’s hands as a grower handles plants, moves them, stacks them, hangs them.
Even one infected plant brushing up against another can transfer the viroid.
Any sort of sap-sucking insect that makes a hole in the plant, especially at the roots, can create a pathway to infection.
The insect itself does not carry the viroid from plant to plant, as far as researchers know now, Punja said.
The viroid also could be airborne. “Other viroids are,” Singh said. “So it may not be that big a stretch to say that it would be in the pollen.”
The viroid is likely to be present in most commercial licensed cannabis production facilities in the United States and Canada.
The frequency of infected plants is estimated to be in the range of 25%-50% in both countries, according to Punja.
Testing by clone cultivator Dark Heart Nursery on 100 cannabis growers in California from August 2018 to July 2021 found that one-third of plants in 90% of those grows were infected.
That finding supports projections that the viroid affects more than 30% of all cannabis plants in the United States.
“This translates into more than $4 billion in annual losses for U.S. growers who were expected to produce more than 7 million pounds of legal cannabis in 2021,” Jeremy Warren, director of plant science for Oakland-based Dark Heart, told MJBizDaily via email.
The viroid is believed to have been first identified at Glass House Farms, which has 5.5 million square feet of total cannabis greenhouse space in Ventura County, California.
Glass House cultivators noticed their plants looking stunted, with a lack of terpenes and cannabinoids, according to company President Graham Farrar, who said he began working with Phylos Bioscience, an Oregon-based cannabis biotech firm, and Dark Heart in 2017 to determine what was really going on.
“It’s actually hard to identify that it’s infected, because the plant looks fairly healthy,” Farrar said.
“If you have six plants and one of them is funky, you think it’s the plant.
“But when you have 10,000 plants, like in our facility, and they’re being fed the exact same nutrient recipe and it’s automated in the same greenhouse and it’s the same strain, then all of a sudden, 10% or 20% of your plants are not producing the way they should, you don’t just say, ‘That’s a bad plant.’
“You start kind of digging into it.”
An RNA sample from an infected plant from Farrar’s grow was examined in a lab, and sequenced, where the lab identified the genome matching the viroid.
“I’d be surprised if (the viroid) is something that ever is gone,” Farrar said. “I think it’s probably something that we’re going to have to live with.”
How to fight it
Help is on the way from multiple sources.
Dark Heart has developed a genetic test to differentiate infected plants from uninfected ones.
The company also helped develop a patent-pending cleaning process to eliminate the viroid from infected specimens.
The Dark Heart lab team has demonstrably eliminated the viroid in 31 strains so far, according to a news release.
In May 2021, Colorado-based Front Range Biosciences introduced a method of cleaning infected plants using tissue culture.
And last month,, Biomerieux, a French diagnostics solutions company, developed a kit to test for the presence of the viroid.
“The solution is good biosecurity SOPs (standard operating procedures) and testing,” Farrar said.
“The viroid is tough, and it is persistent. The latent part is both a blessing and a curse,” he continued. “Right now, it’s nice that it doesn’t wipe out an entire greenhouse.
“But the latent part also makes it particularly hard for testing. If there’s a hope to get rid of it, that would be CRISPR genetic engineering or using selective breeding to breed plants that are resistant to it. So that’s a potential down the road.”
For now, so-called “living soil” can work as a sort of health insurance, Singh said.
“You are trying to optimize the health of the plant. You may not necessarily get as high a yield. You may not get high potency.
“But you have a more robust plant that can definitely keep some of these viruses and viroids more latent or asymptomatic.”
Glass House would like to assist growers in dealing with this viroid crisis.
“I definitely think we’d like to help people get to the point where they can test at a frequency and at a cost that’s affordable,” Farrar said.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to eradicate the viroid, but at least we can keep it at a very low level so that it doesn’t have a negative impact.”
Home / Canada
Canadian cannabis sales shrink 7.5% to CA$365.7 million in February
Bonno
April 21, 2023
February sales of regulated recreational marijuana in Canada declined roughly 7.5% from January, totaling 365.7 million Canadian dollars ($270 million) for the month, according to new retail sales data released Friday by Statistics Canada.
February was three days shorter than January, and Canadian cannabis sales typically slow during the first months of the year because of seasonality.
Adjusted to equalize the number of days in each month, February cannabis sales would have increased roughly 2.4% over January.
On an annual basis, retail cannabis sales in Canada increased 12.8% over February 2022.
Adult-use marijuana sales through licensed stores declined on a month-over-month basis in every Canadian province and territory tracked by Statistics Canada, as follows:
Ontario: CA$141.8 million (-8.5%).
Alberta: CA$65 million (-5.9%).
British Columbia: CA$55.9 million (-7.9%).
Quebec: CA$45.1 million (-9%).
Saskatchewan: CA$17.5 million (-8.5%).
Manitoba: CA$16.7 million (-2.4%).
Nova Scotia: CA$8.5 million (-6.1%).
New Brunswick: CA$6.1 million (-5.8%).
Newfoundland and Labrador: CA$5.6 million (-7.7%).
Prince Edward Island: CA$1.7 million (-2.3%).
In Yukon territory, February sales declined 6.5% on a monthly basis to CA$788,000.
Cannabis sales for the Northwest Territories and Nunavut were not reported.
Imagine clinging onto a law that is so widely ignored you need to put up a sign at the annual "let's break the law" 4-20 event reminding people the law still exists haha
??
Home / Retail
As Canadian medical cannabis slump continues, survey says cost an issue
Bonno
April 21, 2023
The high cost of medical cannabis poses major obstacles for Canadian patients, even as recreational marijuana prices remain low, a new survey of thousands of Canadians suggests.
The finding comes as a slump in consumer spending on regulated medical cannabis in Canada continues, with Statistics Canada data showing sales worth 101 million Canadian dollars (roughly $75 million) in the fourth quarter of 2022.
That CA$101 million figure represents a 3.8% decline from the same quarter in 2021 and a 34% tumble from the fourth quarter of 2018, when Canada legalized recreational cannabis.
It equals 7.5% of legal recreational cannabis spending in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The Medical Cannabis Access Survey released this month by a group of Canadian university researchers and medical marijuana patient groups surveyed 5,744 respondents over five months in 2022, mostly “daily consumers of medical cannabis with more than 10 years of experience.”
Study is ‘one of largest’
The online survey did not use a random sample, so its findings cannot be generalized to the Canadian population as a whole.
However, the large sample size makes the study “one of the largest to examine Canadians’ medical cannabis use and experiences in the past decade,” according to the report.
Some Canadian cannabis companies are focusing on patients covered by employee benefit plans as a strategy to grow their share of the higher-margin medical marijuana market.
However, few survey respondents had their medical cannabis covered by such plans.
“Despite over half of individuals with current medical (cannabis) authorization having some form of private health insurance, only 6% reported being successful in receiving reimbursement for medical cannabis-related expenses,” the survey noted.
The survey found that median out-of-pocket spending on medical cannabis was CA$125 per month, and 39% of respondents spent more than CA$200 per month.
Those costs are "a travesty," said Dr. Michael Dworkind, a palliative care physician and medical director of Sante Cannabis, a Montreal medical marijuana clinic and one of the groups behind the survey.
"In our socialized health care system, people should not be paying for their drugs," Dworkind told MJBizDaily.
Dworkind said he has patients who spend CA$250 per month on medical cannabis.
"They have to give up eating," he said. "These are people who lose their jobs because they're disabled - car accidents, work accidents and so on.
"It's tragic that this is a huge barrier."
The survey also found that respondents who earned less than CA$35,000 per year spent roughly CA$50 more per month on medical cannabis than higher-income respondents.
Among the 3.5% of respondents who had used medical cannabis in the past but no longer did, the most common reason given for stopping was the cost (48%).
In Quebec, where Sante Cannabis is based, the provincial government's Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC) recreational cannabis retail monopoly keeps prices low to compete against the illicit market.
Dworkind said some patients buy cannabis from SQDC's recreational stores "instead of going to the licensed producers who (Sante Cannabis is) aligned with, who give us research and development dollars so that we can stay alive."
"Our doctors are paid on Medicare, but everything else is paid through our licensed producers," Dworkind explained.
"Research money is dried up," he continued.
"Five years ago, we were getting significant amounts of money for our research.
"Now they say, 'Our budgets can't handle it.'"
Medical cannabis program is gouging folks so they turn to Legacy to save big.
Regardless of the cost challenges reported by survey respondents, "the majority of individuals in this study supported the continuation of the medical cannabis program in Canada," according to the report.
"Individuals reported that being able to claim medical cannabis-related expenses on tax forms, receiving compassionate pricing from licensed sellers, and being allowed higher possession limits were important aspects of the medical cannabis program."
Respondents also suggested that medical cannabis should be made available through pharmacies, according to the report.
"Being able to consult a pharmacist about dose and product, discuss possible interactions with other medications, and obtain medical cannabis in a timely manner were all reasons provided for allowing medical cannabis to be distributed through pharmacies in Canada."
Major Canadian pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart announced it was exiting its medical cannabis distribution business in late March.
Doomed?
Ganja glut? With excess weed, growers seek interstate sales
Bonno
April 19, 2023
TUMWATER, Wash. (AP) — The email went out to legal cannabis growers around Washington state, alerting them that another of their colleagues had gone under.
“Liquidation sale,” it said. Attached was a spreadsheet of items up for grabs: LED grow lights for $500 apiece. Rotary evaporators for hash oil, $10,000.
Across the Columbia River in Oregon, where the state’s top marijuana regulator recently warned of an “existential crisis” in the industry, it’s an open secret some licensed growers have funneled product to the out-of-state black market just to stay afloat.
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California’s “Apple store of weed,” MedMen, is teetering with millions in unpaid bills, while the Canadian cannabis company Curaleaf has shuttered most of its cultivation operations in California, Oregon and Colorado.
Along the West Coast, which dominated U.S. marijuana production long before states began to legalize it, producers face what many call the failed economics of legal pot.
There is vast supply, thanks to great growing conditions and a wealth of expertise, but any surplus remains officially trapped within each state’s borders due to the federal ban on marijuana. Prices have plunged and producers have struggled.
“I’m at rock bottom,” said Jeremy Moberg, who owns CannaSol Farms in north-central Washington and, like many licensed growers, complains that the state’s 37% cannabis tax leaves virtually no profit margin for producers. “I’m tired of running a failing business.”
No one in the industry expects a fractured Congress to help out anytime soon by legalizing the drug, allowing pot businesses to deduct expenses or even just easing banking restrictions that frequently cut them off from loans or credit.
Instead, some are pinning their hopes, however faint, on President Joe Biden’s administration clearing the way for marijuana trade among states that have legalized the drug. That would allow the West Coast — with its favorable climate and cheap, clean hydropower for indoor growing — to help supply the rest of the country, they argue.
In Senate testimony last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department will soon announce a new marijuana policy — one that would hew close to the “Cole Memorandum” of 2013, which made clear the feds would not interfere with state efforts to regulate marijuana as long as certain law enforcement priorities were met.
Drug policy experts say they do not expect the new policy to go as far as permitting interstate commerce.
Nevertheless, lawmakers in Washington state last week approved a “trigger bill” — modeled after ones already passed in Oregon and California — authorizing the governor to enter into interstate cannabis trade agreements should the feds allow it.
Twenty-one states have now legalized the recreational use of cannabis by adults. Sales just began in Missouri, are expected to begin in July in Maryland and totaled $300 million in the first year of New Mexico’s program.
How states have set up their markets has implications for how their industries are doing now — and how they might fare should businesses be allowed to sell out of state.
Washington and Colorado were the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012. Many of the early regulations Washington adopted to keep the Justice Department at bay — including restricting the size of growing facilities and banning out-of-state investment — remain in place.
That has helped some smaller growers thrive. But it could hamstring those hoping to compete in an interstate marketplace alongside larger, more efficient producers from Oregon or California, who operate under fewer limits.
A large selection of marijuana is on display at Preserve Oregon, a shop in Salem, Ore., on Jan. 31, 2023. Along the West Coast, which has dominated U.S. marijuana production from long before legalization, producers are struggling with what many call the failed economics of legal pot...a challenge inherent in regulating a product that remains illegal under federal law. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky)
A large selection of marijuana is on display at Preserve Oregon, a shop in Salem, Ore., on Jan. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky)
In Oregon, where sales began in 2015, large growers have achieved some economy of scale that could give them a leg up in a broader market. But in the meantime, the state’s oversupply is considered the nation’s worst.
In February, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission reported marijuana businesses were sitting on about 3 million pounds (1.36 million kilograms) of unused cannabis, as well as 75,000 pounds (34,000 kilograms) of concentrates and extracts.
Steve Marks, then the commission’s executive director, said Oregonians already buy as much weed as they can use. Federal inaction poses “an existential crisis” for Oregon’s industry, he warned.
“Cannabis in Oregon is like corn in Iowa,” said TJ Sheehy, an analyst for the commission. “If you put a box around Iowa and said you can only grow corn in Iowa to sell to Iowans, you’d have exactly the same dynamic.”
Contributing to the glut in Oregon and to a lesser degree in Washington is that the states licensed so many growers. The initial idea was to ensure enough supply for the legal market, bringing down prices to compete with the black market. Oregon, with a little over half of Washington’s population, has hundreds more licensed growers.
The oversupply has been terrific for cannabis consumers.
When legal sales began in Oregon, a pound of cannabis might have gone for $3,000 wholesale; today, that same pound might be $100 to $150, said Isaac Foster, co-founder of Portland Cannabis Market, a wholesale distributor.
In Washington, which has some of the highest cannabis taxes in the country, the prices consumers pay in pot shops are still cheaper than illicit weed. The state is raking in half a billion dollars a year in taxes, money it devotes to health care and government operations.
Three-quarters or more of cannabis users in Washington, Oregon and Colorado — all among the earliest legalization states — reported they bought marijuana products from legal retail outlets in 2021, according to the International Cannabis Policy Study, based at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
With such cheap prices, keeping the industry sustainable is a challenge.
Moberg, of CannaSol Farms, is down to seven employees — a drop from more than 30 in 2014 and 2015 as Washington’s pioneering industry launched amid tight supply and high prices.
Hey GoSingMeASong,
Smart money wait for more dilution before going all in.
HOW WILL GERMAN LEGALIZATION AFFECT AURORA?
CALEB MCMILLAN·APRIL 18, 2023
ALL ABOUT CANNABIS
How will German legalization of cannabis affect Canadian licensed producer Aurora?
Aurora Cannabis claims it is the second-largest medical cannabis producer in Germany. With the Germans posed to legalize by the end of the year, many expected big wins for the LP.
However, German news was less than optimal. With German officials bowing to European Union pressure, the first wave of German legalization will be low-scale, nonprofit social cannabis clubs.
Meaning, whatever traction Aurora hoped to get from Germany’s recreational legalization is now bust.
But where does that leave the large Canadian LP? The cannabis corporation may have the best balance sheet among its Canadian peers, but that’s not saying much.
HOW WILL GERMAN LEGALIZATION AFFECT AURORA?
german legalization and aurora
Aurora Cannabis ended Q2 2023 with a net loss of $67.2 million and $310 million in cash. The company has repeatedly screwed over shareholders by raising equity capital and diluting wealth.
The result has been a steady drop in stock prices. In fact, Aurora Cannabis’ current market cap is $385 million. That’s a 99% fall from their all-time highs.
So how will German legalization affect Aurora’s stock price? On the surface, a low-scale German effort appears like bad news. Germany’s population is twice the size of Canada’s. An Aurora presence in Germany could have helped boost revenues.
However, establishing a presence in Germany would have meant investing capital. Which begs the question: what capital? Investors may not stand for another round of dilution.
Meanwhile, Aurora Cannabis focuses on medical cannabis products. Where gross margins are higher than in recreational markets.
Aurora Cannabis’ losses in the last four years have totalled $1.2 billion.
WHY GERMANY?
How Will German Legalization Affect Aurora
Ever since an act of Parliament created Canada’s licensed producers, they’ve been eyeing up the German cannabis market.
But why? How does German recreational legalization or its current medical market affect Aurora and the other LPs?
On the surface, it’s pure economics. At one point, Germans were paying up to $18 per gram for medical cannabis, compared to the $8 average in Canada. Prices are down to 3$ with no traction. Only dillution.
Second, as mentioned, Germany has about 46 million more people than Canada. As well, German insurance claims on cannabis are more common than in Canada. This is part of what led to Aurora’s acquisition of Germany’s most prominent cannabis distributor.
What About Germany's Pilot Project?
Germany will launch a regional pilot programme as part of the two-phase legalization plan. In select cities, the government will assign a commercial company to supply cannabis through dispensaries. This pilot will be a test to assess broader commercial sales within the country.
So how will Germany’s legalization pilot project affect Aurora Cannabis? Will Aurora be the commercial supplier?
The details of this test pilot programme are not yet known. But you can be sure Aurora executives are rubbing their hands at the prospect.
And can you blame them? They’ve spent millions trying to capture the European market.
As mentioned, Aurora’s German investments involved acquiring Europe’s largest medical cannabis distributor, Pedanios GmbH. They’ve also bought over 3,000 pharmacies.
Aurora has put significant money into the European markets. But given their emphasis on medical cannabis, it doesn’t seem likely they’d supply Germans with recreational cannabis.
However, the “public health” model of cannabis legalization is about selling pharmaceutical-grade cannabis. It could be that the German government, like the Canadian government, is eyeing these medical producers as commercial suppliers of recreational cannabis.
If that’s true, German legalization may breathe some life into Aurora. German legalization may give the company a second chance it doesn’t deserve.
FOOTNOTE(S)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/aurora-cannabis-inc-nasdaq-acb-154136098.html
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/aurora-cannabis-and-its-subsidiary-pedanios-gmbh-both-receive-eu-gmp-certification-1010933798
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/aurora-strengthens-leadership-position-in-germany-with-eu-gmp-certification-at-preeminent-local-cannabis-production-facility-857178301.html
https://www.fool.ca/2017/07/03/why-are-canadian-marijuana-producers-rushing-to-invest-in-germany/
Better wait a few more weeks…
They will soon be « discounted ».
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS QUEBEC HOME-GROWING BAN
The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a home-growing ban in the French-speaking province of Quebec.
Federal law permits Canadians to grow up to four plants per household, but the Quebec government prohibits it.
Janick Murray-Hall challenged the ban in 2019. Quebec’s Superior Court ruled that, indeed, it was unconstitutional. But the Quebec government continued to appeal.
Last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada disagreed with the Quebec Superior Court ruling and sided with the government.
Accordingly, legalization is about public health and safety, not your individual rights. Therefore, the Quebec government’s prohibition meshes well with the stated goals of federal legalization.
DETAILS OF SUPREME COURT UPHOLDING QUEBEC HOME-GROWING BAN
Details of Supreme Court Upholding Quebec Home-growing Ban
On what justification would the Supreme Court uphold the Quebec home-growing ban? Simple: cannabis legalization has nothing to do with your rights.
The Supreme Court said we shouldn’t interpret the law permitting home cultivation as “a positive right to self-cultivation.”
The ruling reads:
It is true that, in everyday language and even in the speeches of some parliamentarians, the creation of exceptions or exemptions under a scheme of criminal offences is often described as a ‘legalization effort,’… However, this way of speaking is incorrect and falsely suggests that positive rights authorizing particular conduct have been granted to the public.
At least now, we have it in writing. Legalization is not about your right to bodily autonomy. It is a privilege that Parliament or the courts can take away should they deem it counter to the goals of “public health.”
Or, as the ruling reads:
The Quebec legislature saw the possession and personal cultivation of cannabis not as a social evil to be suppressed, but rather as a practice that should be prohibited in order to steer consumers to a controlled source of supply.
In other words: you’re too dumb to make decisions for yourself. The Quebec government doesn’t trust you to get high on your own supply.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
So it goes in a province that also bans certain edibles based on the value judgements of one man.
In reality, banning home-growing likely has more to do with money. Quebec has the Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC), a government agency that has complete control of the cannabis market in Quebec.
While other provinces like Ontario or British Columbia will use government wholesales but permit private retail stores, in Quebec, everything is done through the SQDC.
It’s little wonder the Quebec government doesn’t want anyone home-growing and legally gifting their cannabis. It would cut into their monopolistic profiteering.
THE SUPREME COURT IS A JOKE
dispensaries
Canada’s Supreme Court upholding the Quebec home-growing ban is another example of this institution’s uselessness.
Upon hearing the ruling, the lawyer representing the appellant told the Canadian press, “There is certainly some disappointment, but it is the decision of the highest court, it’s a constitutional decision and we don’t have much choice but to rely on this.”
And while that’s what you’d expect to hear from a professional lawyer who likely doesn’t want to be disbarred – some of us don’t have to worry about offending Supreme Court justices.
In fact, it’s about time this sacred institution faced some scrutiny.
Judicial activism is a charge often lobbied at Canada’s Supreme Court. And for good reason. Whenever the Court uses its power to influence policy instead of interpreting the law, they engage in judicial activism.
And since adopting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the be-all, end-all of individual Canadian rights, our system has rewarded judicial activism. Meanwhile, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, the foundation of Canada’s democracy, has been lost.
Even among conservatives and libertarians, people cling to the Charter as the source of our freedoms.
But in doing so, we permit an unelected elite council of nine to rule over 38 million people and make “expert” opinions regarding their rights.
OUR ONE REMEDY: THE NOTWITHSTANDING CLAUSE
Supreme Court Upholds Quebec Home-growing Ban
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the home-growing ban in Quebec. The lawyer for the appellant said it’s a constitutional decision and “we don’t have much choice” but to accept it.
Except we don’t.
For one, Parliament itself can amend the Cannabis Act to clarify that home growing is a protected right of all Canadians.
But suppose the Supreme Court upends this legal framework enacted by a democratically elected legislature (as they’re fond of doing).
Suppose the Supreme Court makes a narrow, selective interpretation of the Charter that says: no matter what the House of Commons votes for, the Quebec government has a right to ban home-growing.
In that case, Parliament still has the notwithstanding clause.
At least, for now. Lately, there’s been concerted efforts by the far-left to eliminate this democratic remedy to Supreme Court absolutism.
And with today’s “I Support the Current Thing” social cult, the campaign to remove the Notwithstanding Clause may get some traction.
Especially when it’s conservative parties using it to undo leftist damage.
THE SUPREME COURT QUEBEC HOME-GROWING BAN TYPICAL OF PAST DECISIONS
The Supreme Court siding with Quebec for their home-growing ban is typical of past decisions made by this body.
Look no further than Dr. Brian Day’s Cambie Surgery Centre. For 14 years, he’s been engaged in legal battles over his for-profit surgery clinic.
Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear his case that they should have private health services read into the Charter‘s Section 7 right to life, liberty, and security of the person.
But the Court said no. If the Soviet health care system has left you suffering, even dying, Canada is a country where you have a right to end your life but no right to pay for the services that can heal you.
The Supreme Court isn’t a nonpartisan, “neutral,” transparent decision-maker. It’s an unelected council of ideologically-possessed individuals.
And I mean that in a positive way.
THE MYTH OF THE LEGAL OBJECTIVITY
Supreme Court Upholds Quebec Home-growing Ban
After all, as legal scholar John Hasnas has pointed out, “The stability of the law derives not from any feature of the law itself, but from the overwhelming uniformity of ideological background among those empowered to make legal decisions.”
For centuries, that uniform ideology was the Greco-Roman, Germanic, and Judeo-Christian worldview. Especially the parts that recognize and celebrate the individual and the power of forgiveness and redemption.
Now? It’s far-left theories that use mob mentality to achieve their anti-liberal goals.
It’s about the benevolent state and belief in the power of governments to displace or even outperform civic institutions and free markets.
Or, even worse, the belief that state and society are one of the same. So one comes to think of oneself as part of the “government.”
Where decisions that are clearly about money and power become about “public health and safety.”
Where the Supreme Court upholds a home-growing ban in Quebec but permits private health care. Unless you’re an English-speaking Canadian. Then you can’t get private health care but feel free to grow up to four plants per household.
It’s true: Canada is broken.
Easy. Close the shop.
That is what we as Capitalist do when cost of production is more than the money you are takin in…
Suckers pay Simon while Legacy is killing it… lol
IS THE CANNABIS RECESSION HERE?
Bonno
15 APRIL 2023
Is the cannabis recession here? According to a new study exclusive to Forbes, cannabis industry employment has declined, a first in history.
The 2% reduction comes after six years of double-digit growth. It can hardly be considered a sign of a cannabis recession. However, broader economic trends point to a recession, even a depression, on the horizon.
And the cannabis industry will not be immune to it. In fact, we may already be witnessing signs of the cannabis recession.
IS THE CANNABIS RECESSION HERE?
Is the Cannabis Recession Here?
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
According to the Forbes study, the cannabis recession is less about employment numbers and more about lack of capital.
Venture capital funding is down 96% year over year. In both America and Canada, banks have also been no help.
For the first two years of the Biden presidency, venture capital was kept alive by beliefs that the Democrat-controlled White House and Congress would legalize cannabis. Or, at the very least, pass some cannabis banking regulation.
But when 2022 ended without either, investors started putting their money elsewhere. Cannabis stocks have dropped 50% to 70% year over year.
We’ve covered the covid-inspired cannabis bubble before. That’s where the industry saw an artificial boom fueled by the “end of the world” mentality and the fact millions of people were under a sort of “public health” house arrest.
So people turned to alcohol and other drugs, gambling or adult content to cope with the stress or just simple boredom. Fortunately, many consumers chose benign, nontoxic cannabis for recreation.
But that boom is now over. Coupled with the lack of reform in the United States, the cannabis recession is here. Investors are dropping off, and revenues are down.
Budtenders and trimmers are losing work not because of performance but because the company needs more financial capital.
The cannabis industry is cash-strapped.
THE NUMBERS
Is the Cannabis Recession Here
The Forbes study found that while most cannabis jobs are low-paying, there are enough to create massive economic value.
U.S. medical and recreational dispensaries accounted for $26.1 billion in legal sales. 31% of cannabis jobs are in farming, with retail stores making up 23%. The remaining work is in ancillary work, including marketing, distribution, legal services, manufacturing, and processing.
California experienced the most significant drop in employment – 13% from last year. That’s 12,600 fewer cannabis jobs than available last year.
This translated into an 8.2% drop in sales, the first time since the state legalized recreational cannabis in 2018.
However, California’s robust “illicit” legacy market – estimated to be 50% of the market – skew these numbers slightly. And because of California’s lack of legal stores and overproduction by legal growers, a price war has launched, resulting in wholesale cannabis prices dropping by 50%.
Colorado is down, too, with a drop in 28% of its cannabis workforce, or 10,481 workers. The state’s legal sales dropped from $2.2 billion in 2021 to $1.8 billion in 2022.
Oregon’s cannabis workforce is down by 21%.
However, we can explain many of these declines by neighboring states that have legalized. Consumers no longer have to go to Colorado or Oregon for legal weed.
And the numbers reflect this. Missouri just legalized and has hundreds of new retail stores. The same goes for Michigan, where cannabis jobs and revenue are growing.
Florida, too, which has the country’s largest medical cannabis market, saw 3,000 new jobs added.
But one wonders how much of this is sustainable in the long term. When the dust settles, will these new legal states maintain their current level of employment? Or will the cannabis recession come for them too?
CANNABIS RECESSION IN CANADA?
cannabis recession
Has the cannabis recession come to Canada’s legal industry? The Forbes study doesn’t address the Canadian market, but looking at the latest headlines tells the story.
For example, Canadian pot stocks have taken a beating.
Tilray’s stock fell nearly 60% in 2022. That’s down 93% from its all-time high. Considered an industry leader, Canopy has had a year-over-year decline of around 70%.
Canopy’s third quarter in 2022 saw the following:
$122 million decline in revenue
$1.83 billion operating expenses (up nearly 1000%)
Minus $2 billion in net income
Minus $5.38 in earnings per share, down from a positive number.
2022 also saw Aurora Cannabis decline by almost 80%. If you’d invested $1000 into Aurora in 2013 and cashed out right after legalization in 2018, you would have been $500,000 richer.
If you cashed out now? You’d have about $200.
Even ETFs have dropped. Marijuana Life Sciences, for example, saw a 46% decline in 2022.
Meanwhile, the Cannabis Council of Canada (C3) requests “immediate financial relief” from the federal government. They say excessive regulations, taxes, provincial distributor monopolies, and the general “stigma” of the industry have led to what is essentially a cannabis recession.
Is the cannabis recession here? It sure looks like it.
WILL WE SEE A CANNABIS RECESSION IN 2023?
Will We See a Cannabis Recession in 2023?
The economy is heading to a recession because of the Federal Reserve in the United States. Interest rates are market-based prices for the money itself. “Setting” an interest rate like it were a public policy is engaging in price controls.
And price controls lead to surpluses and shortages. In this sense, an oversupply of money.
Since the Dot Com crash at the beginning of the millennium, the Fed has forced interest rates down. This fueled the housing bubble, which the Fed reinflated as an “everything” bubble.
And then covid happened, and governments started handing out money as if it was the money itself that was important.
But you can’t eat pieces of paper. It’s not the money that’s vital, but its purchasing power. And since the creation of the Federal Reserve, the purchasing power of the American dollar has declined year after year with no end in sight.
An economic depression may result in a covid-like demand for cannabis. But it remains to be seen how effective this will be at boosting America’s cannabis industry.
As for Canada, like most of its economic issues, the problem stems from too much intervention from federal and provincial governments.
For farmers and operators to survive a cannabis recession, the government simply needs to get out of the way.
Biting the dust
Home / Cultivation
Canadian cannabis producer Phoena winds-down business, blames high taxes
Bonno
April 14, 2023
Canadian cannabis producer Phoena Group has been granted creditor protection and is winding down its operations, the company said in court documents.
The Vaughan, Ontario-based company – formerly called CannTrust – said it no longer has the financial footing to continue operating.
As a result, Phoena plans to immediately halt the cultivation of new plants, destroy cannabis inventory not yet released for sale and lay off 87 employees, although upward of 238 of its workers will be affected.
CannTrust was one of the leading cannabis producers in Canada until it became embroiled in a cultivation scandal in 2019, with nearly 600 employees at the time and 19 million Canadian dollars ($14 million) in quarterly sales.
In the initial application under Canada’s Companies Creditors’ Arrangement law (CCAA), Phoena listed many challenges facing the company, including over supply of cannabis products in Canada, competition from other producers, over-regulation and excessive taxation.
Geoffrey Morawetz, chief justice of the Ontario Superior Court, issued the order under the CCAA last week at the request of Phoena.
“The applicants have debt in excess of CA$5 million, are insolvent, and are facing a liquidity crisis,” according to the CCAA filing.
Phoena owes roughly CA$1.88 million to the federal government, including:
CA$911,893 to the Receiver General for Canada.
CA$870,506 to the Canada Revenue Agency.
CA$95,799 to Health Canada.
The company also said the industry faced “considerable initial over-exuberance,” resulting in the number of licensees rising from about 100 on the day of legalization in October 2018 to approximately 950 today – a roughly tenfold increase in competition.
Wind-down terms
Darren Karasiuk, a former Aurora Cannabis executive, is leading the wind-down as chief restructuring adviser.
As part of the wind-down, the company’s property in Fenwick, Ontario, is expected to be listed for sale, and inventory and equipment will be liquidated.
“I believe a liquidation and orderly wind-down of the Applicants is in the best interests of the Applicants’ creditors and other stakeholders,” Phoena’s interim CEO, Cornelis Pieter Melissen, said in an affidavit.
Melissen said overregulation has been an issue for the Canadian cannabis industry from the beginning, “and I am aware of a number of otherwise well-run cannabis businesses that have failed, or continue to struggle, due to factors such as excessive taxes, complex regulatory requirements, government delays in licensing, and limitations on dosage size, packaging and marketing.”
Selling below production cost did not help any.
“In addition, certain government purchasers/retailers have experienced internal purchasing, distribution and delivery issues, among other problems,” Melissen wrote in the affidavit.
The company’s court filing cited data showing that Canada’s federally licensed producers destroyed a record 425 million grams (468 tons) of unsold, unpackaged dried cannabis in 2021.
For the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2022, Phoena recorded a net loss of CA$24.8 million on sales of CA$13.2 million.
The federal government imposed CA$1.82 million in excise taxes that year, representing almost 14% of the company’s gross revenue.
In the first month of 2023, Phoena said, it lost CA$317,000 on gross sales of CA$1.2 million.
Phoena haunted by CannTrust past
Melissen said Phoena faced several additional challenges stemming from the time it was known as CannTrust.
In September 2019, Health Canada partially suspended CannTrust’s cannabis licenses at its facilities in Vaughan and Fenwick for noncompliance with federal cannabis legislation.
Earlier that summer, Canada’s federal regulator was notified of “unlicensed” growing taking place in several of CannTrust’s cultivation rooms.
Three of the company’s former executives were acquitted of all charges in late-2022 after the case collapsed.
The charges came from a nearly two-year joint investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) after a whistleblower alerted Canada’s cannabis regulator in 2019 about five “unlicensed” cultivation rooms the company had been operating since 2018.
CannTrust’s licenses were reissued by the federal government on Sept. 14, 2020, and Dec. 15, 2020, respectively.
In 2022, CannTrust Holdings exited court-supervised CCAA proceedings after completing a financing led by Marshall Fields International B.V., which is a subsidiary of Kenzoll B.V., a Netherlands-based private equity investment company.
Marshall was one of the investors that acquired 90% of the equity of CannTrust Equity, which owned CannTrust.
Before its regulatory issues, CannTrust was listed for trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.
POLITICSCory Booker Calls Marijuana A ‘Dangerous Drug’ And Says He’s Frustrated With ‘Non-Diverse’ IndustryPublished 7 hours ago on April 14, 2023 By Kyle Jaeger
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) says it’s been “frustrating” to see marijuana legalization fall short of equity goals, which he said is partly due to ongoing federal prohibition. And while he’s pushing for reform, he characterized cannabis as a “dangerous” drug that hasn’t been studied enough.
The senator, who has long advocated for equity-centered federal legalization and sponsored a bill to that end with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last year, discussed the prospects of drug policy reform at a panel at Tisch College on Monday.
Asked about which of his priorities could be achieved in the current Congress, Booker said that he believes that bipartisan lawmakers will be able to pass legislation to eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, and that marijuana “compromise legislation” is also something that “might happen” based on conversations with certain Republican colleagues.
However, while cannabis legalization is “something profoundly important to me,” Booker said that “what is really frustrating me is I thought that legalizing marijuana would have a democratizing force on our country, and it has not.”
He said he’s dissatisfied with the progress of expungements for people with prior cannabis convictions living in states where the plant is now legal, and also decried that the industry lacks critical diversity.
“Even the business side of this is not as fair and equal in terms of opportunity as you would think,” he said. “And some of that is because we have failed to deschedule it—and so if you’re a woman who gets a [cannabis] license, you can’t get the capital necessary often to hold on to that license to start a business or to fund the business.”
“So you have these multi-state operators funded by large hedge funds or large wealthy individuals who are not diverse, who are going around buying up licenses from desperate people in communities—where they thought they were going to help make sure that the very people who are disproportionately impacted by marijuana prohibition were now going to get an opportunity to help on the business side, but that has not happened,” the senator said.
“Marijuana business in the United States of America is overwhelmingly non-diverse, white male,” he said. “Women and minorities make up a tiny, tiny fraction—not in any way proportionate to the numbers in America, and so this is an issue I’ve been working on.”
Booker made similar points about his concerns with the equity shortcomings of cannabis reform last year as he and colleagues worked to advance a package of modest marijuana proposals including bipartisan banking and expungements legislation that ultimately did not come to pass.
But during his discussion on Monday, he also asserted that marijuana is “dangerous drug” that’s been understudied.
He said he shared the same concerns as an audience member who spoke about the risks of high-potency THC products. While Booker said that the status quo is untenable and will only lead to more discriminatory criminalization, “the question is what’s the right way to move forward?”
“This is a drug, and I think it’s a dangerous drug. I really do,” he said. “I think we haven’t studied it enough. I think what’s happening to the brain—I will tell you this, I think alcohol is a pretty damn dangerous drug as well.”
“If you have a child, or if you are younger than 25, and you’re drinking or smoking pot, you are damaging your brain in ways that will severely affect your mental health, the wellbeing of your brain,” he said. “The studies and the data now—when you get to be like my age, and what you’ve done to yourself if you’ve lived that way of regularly smoking drugs and smoking marijuana, I just think, why? Why would you do it?”
“But I will tell you this: I would rather a system that strictly regulates [and] enforces. There’s a lot more that I see being done in some jurisdictions to protect kids, especially from accessing this serious drug,” the senator said. “I would want a lot more research being done on alcohol and drugs and other things that we seem to have in our society that cause a lot more damage than we’re talking about.”
Booker, Schumer and other colleagues have held early meetings with bipartisan senators this session after failing to advance a so-called SAFE Plus package of cannabis legislation last year. The reform is now further complicated by the fact that Republicans hold control of the House.
The majority leader and other lawmakers are also scheduled to speak at an advocacy event inside the Capitol Building on the cannabis holiday 4/20 next week.
Meanwhile, Booker recently filed a bill alongside Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that’s meant to streamline the federal rescheduling of “breakthrough therapies” like psilocybin and MDMA in order to promote research and drug development.
.
Germany scales back cannabis legalization plans to focus on home cultivation
Under the scaled-back plan, adults will be able to grow up to three plants at home and buy weed in clubs of up to 500 members.
The announcement comes after months-long discussions with the European Commission on the feasibility of Germany's preliminary plan to legalize cannabis
Bonno
APRIL 14, 2023
BERLIN — German cannabis users will have to rely on home cultivation and cannabis social clubs for their supply rather than licensed shops or pharmacies as initially foreseen, according to a scaled-back cannabis legalization plan presented Wednesday by German health minister Karl Lauterbach.
The announcement comes after months-long discussions with the European Commission on the feasibility of Germany's preliminary plan to legalize cannabis. The outcome was long awaited by politicians, businesses and users who were itching to hear how far the Commission would tolerate Germany's ambitions.
After talking to the Commission, "we came to the conclusion that the draft [legalization plan] at that time would not take us any further in pursuing our goals," said Lauterbach at a press conference in Berlin.
« Under the scaled-back plan, seen by POLITICO, adults will be able to grow up to three cannabis plants at home and buy weed in clubs of up to 500 members, which must not be profit-oriented. Cannabis clubs already exist in Spain and Malta.
In addition, possession of up to 25 grams of cannabis is to be made legal. However, there will be a ban on advertising the drug, a limit on THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, a psychoactive substance in cannabis) for under 21-year-olds, and consumption will be restricted to specific areas.
Lauterbach said that home cultivation and cannabis clubs form the first of two pillars in Germany's push to legalize.
"Our goal with pillar one is that we don't have to notify Brussels [to check that national laws don't violate EU laws]," German agricultural minister Cem Özdemir added. A draft law on the legalization will be presented in April, he said.
The second pillar is regional model projects to build up commercial supply chains, which will take five years and will be evaluated constantly.
"This will be accompanied by a concerted effort by the German government to find supporters in Europe for this progressive, prevention-oriented cannabis policy," Lauterbach said.
But in response to the revised plan, German lawmaker Kristine Lütke from the business-friendly Free Democrats said she rejects "strict THC ceilings in cannabis clubs" for young adults "as they drive consumers to the black market."
Tino Sorge, from the opposition center-right CDU, said today's announcement is "nothing more than the admission that [Lauterbach's] old key points from the fall were simply not feasible."
However, Carmen Wegge from Lauterbach’s Social Democratic Party defended the plan, saying that "the German government is opting for the path that is safe in terms of European law."
Home / Cultivation
Germany might pivot to ‘cannabis legalization light’ amid EU pushback
Bonno
Berlin,
April 14, 2023
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Image of the Reichstag historic government building in Berlin
The German government might be having second thoughts about its plans to pursue full-fledged adult-use cannabis legalization in Europe’s largest economy.
According to German news reports, federal officials are considering a “cannabis legalization light” model amid concerns that nationwide legalization could violate European law.
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As a result, Germany might roll out a trial model like those adopted by other jurisdictions such as the Swiss city of Zurich, under which recreational cannabis sales would be confined to certain parts of the country for three to five years.
The Düsseldorf-based newspaper Handelsblatt reported that European Union legal hurdles, including resistance from neighboring France, are prompting German officials to rethink their plans.
Handelsblatt and other German news outlets reported the latest events, citing unidentified government sources in lieu of an official announcement.
However, the genesis of the latest development could actually be the center-left Social Democratic Party, a key member of the current coalition government that includes the Free Democratic and Green parties.
Last week, the Social Democratic Party issued a lengthy statement on cannabis reform and signaled that officials are prepared to scale back their ambitions.
The statement acknowledged that comprehensive legalization in Germany “is obviously not feasible in the short term” because of European legalities.
‘Practical’ moves to legalization
The party also said it supports Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s “practical” steps toward legalization, even if they fall short of comprehensive legalization.
“From our point of view, these can be model projects (also known as “trial” programs), decriminalization and self-cultivation,” according to the SPD document.
The party put forward ideas, such as:
Allowing home cultivation for a limited number of plants.
Limiting personal possession.
Investing profits, if any are allowed to be made, in addiction and prevention initiatives.
The statement acknowledged that limits on THC are understandable but noted that such caps could end up undermining the regulated market by driving consumers to illicit sellers.
In addition, the party said a central component of its revised plan is allowing so-called cannabis social clubs rather than traditional retail stores.
Such “cooperatively organized associations” would give people without their own cultivation opportunity access to legal cannabis, the document notes.
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Not surprised
Cannabis industry executives said they’re not surprised by the latest news, which has been the subject of speculation for months.
“We have been expecting this result – a ‘model’ project – for several months and are therefore not surprised,” Constantin von der Groeben, managing director of Berlin-headquartered cannabis company Demecan, told Bonno via email.
“Anything else would have been too difficult to align with EU regulation.”
Still, von der Groeben suggested that even a scaled-back initiative would be a major step.
A limited trial program “could be implemented more quickly,” he wrote.
“It might not even have to pass the Bundesrat (the second chamber in parliament). Legalization as early as January 2024, instead of the previously planned Q3 2024, would thus be possible.”
Early in the process
Germany has yet to produce a draft law, so experts say it’s too early to come to conclusions.
In October 2022, the German government published a blueprint for its plan to legalize and regulate adult-use cannabis.
More on this topic
European cannabis execs would welcome German trial legalization program
Germany unveils scaled-down recreational cannabis legalization plan
The proposed blueprint suggested:
Keeping cultivation within Germany.
Selling cannabis in approved stores and, possibly, pharmacies.
Allowing the home cultivation of up to three plants.
That blueprint was sent to the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, for approval to ensure compatibility with European Union and global drug laws.
That process is ongoing.
Germany’s changing plans have already caused one large Canadian cannabis producer to scale back its revenue forecast.
Tilray Brands has abandoned its pledge to achieve annual revenue of $40 billion (53 billion Canadian dollars) by the end of 2024.
Tilray acknowledged that federal legalization in the United States and Germany has not played out as the company had expected.
150 billions by 2025.
Plenty a suckers fell for that shit…lol
This doozy is from Hexo. An almost astronomical level of total fiction that shouldn't be legal.
Yet Canada's securities regulators did and said nothing. Why? Who? This will be one area of my my inquiry.
Source: Hexo filing courtesy @Porters6thForce
"The global cannabis market is estimated to reach $650 BILLION", Hexo said in a regulatory filing.
Why not just say $650 trillion?
Yet the @NBBAward and peter mansbridge gave the hexo founders a book award and cash prize!