Mississippi’s Initiative 65 Easily one of the biggest legislative surprises of the 2020 was the passing of Mississippi’s Initiative 65, a medical cannabis bill with an extensive qualifying conditions list. In arguably the reddest and most socially conservative state in America — where only one Democrat has served as Governor since 1992, and where Republicans
California has a population of nearly 40 million, six years of cannabis licensing, but only has about 1,200 licensed dispensaries. These stores are mostly spread out in highly populated areas like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and so on. The problem is that many California cities still prohibit cannabis licensing, even in places where a majority
Cannabis M&A (short for mergers and acquisitions) in California is much more complicated and problematic than in other states. The biggest reason for this is that licenses are not transferrable, which all but eliminates the possibility of asset sales. In turn, this means that deals are much more complicated for both buyer and seller, and
California publishes quarterly data concerning its “enforcement” efforts against the illegal cannabis market. Over the last couple of quarters, I’ve gotten in the habit of analyzing this data (see here for Q3 2023, and here for Q2 2023). I’ve been blogging here since 2018 and my opinion is that the state is doing very, very
Cannabis regulation efforts are usually sold to voters or legislators with the express promise that a state will be able to milk the new industry for all it’s got through cannabis taxes. Don’t believe me? Well, look no further than California’s landmark Proposition 64, also known as the Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana
We are helping build out another cannabis banking program here in Oregon. My law firm has done a series of these for credit unions (“CU”s) and other financial institutions (“FIs”) going back to 2014. We have also handled a good bit of hemp banking work– mostly in 2019 and 2020 before that industry cratered. In
The wait is (almost) over! During the September 12, 2023 Cannabis Control Board (CCB) meeting, the CCB announced that New York’s full, adult-use cannabis license application portal will open on October 4, 2023. The CCB meeting covered a number of other important topics, but we’ll save those for another post. For anyone planning on applying
Earlier this week, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta announced yet another cannabis enforcement program: the Cannabis Administrative Prosecutor Program (CAPP). CAPP is the newest of California’s ever-growing list of acronym enforcement programs, alongside EPIC (previously CAMP), UCETF, alongside countless other county and local agencies. Will the new enforcement program make a dent in the illegal
It’s pretty easy to write about everything that’s going wrong in today’s cannabis industry. Today, I want to change gears and talk about some of the strategies we’ve seen work for distressed cannabis businesses in the past. Yes, some of these strategies may seem obvious at first. But pulling them off correctly – especially in
California’s cannabis industry is a mess. Between the rampant illegal market, onerous taxation, unnecessarily complicated regulations, debt defaults, and a host of other factors, things have never been worse. Businesses big and small are imploding. Without federal bankruptcy protection, the best tool available to insolvent and nearly insolvent companies is gone. So we’re going to
