The battle for social equity in cannabis, as in every other industry, includes achieving pay equity.
Generally speaking, pay equity means employees get paid the same amount for substantially similar work.
Los Angeles-based cannabis multistate operator MedMen Enterprises appointed Edward Record as chief executive officer, effective immediately.
The cannabis industry hit a possible milestone in March when Bright Green Corp., a Florida company with “conditional” approval from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to grow marijuana for research purposes, applied to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
But the move also highlights the lofty – some say unrealistic – financial ambitions of such companies.
From writing standard operating procedures and vetting raw materials to starting in-house labs and conducting retail audits, cannabis business owners lean on best practices for quality control.
Regulators in state-legal marijuana markets require that cannabis businesses have their products tested by independent and state-accredited laboratories before they’re distributed to retail outlets for sale to consumers.
Cannabis testing and quality control is no simple feat.
Consider the plant itself: Cannabis contains a super sticky, resin lipid that is harder to work with than coffee, tobacco and most other natural products, said David Vaillencourt, CEO of the GMP Collective consulting firm in Colorado.
While cannabis has enjoyed greater social acceptance in recent years, quality control will be critical to sustaining that growth and winning over the institutions that have yet to embrace a regulated marijuana industry.
Something’s going to give, and soon. That’s the forecast from many cannabis industry observers for federal marijuana reform. The real question is how.
The absurdity of federal marijuana policy in the United States is perhaps best symbolized by the placement of cannabis on Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, according to industry observers.
Marijuana has become part of the hype and hoopla running up to Sunday’s Super Bowl.
But it’s not because the league suspended any players for failing or missing testing for such banned substances as marijuana, as it has in past seasons with star players such as Josh Gordon, Von Miller and Santonio Holmes.
The 2018 U.S. Farm Bill unleashed large supplies of CBD distillate, which can be turned into a rare, intoxicating cannabinoid: delta-8 THC.
Delta-8 THC has been most popular in states where traditional delta-9 cannabis is prohibited or highly restricted, a difference experts attribute to availability and access.
BioHarvest Sciences, a company that biosynthetically created grape and pomegranate extracts to sell to food ingredient companies and consumers, claims to have done the same with cannabis.
