Cookies, among the most well-known American cannabis operators, is accused in separate lawsuits filed by current investors and a onetime business partner of using coercive “strongarm” tactics and bullying to force them to pay company executives “millions of dollars in personal benefits and kickbacks” as a cost of doing business with the brand.
Some marijuana multistate operators have weathered the perfect storm of macroeconomic headwinds, cannabis-specific challenges and legislative disappointments better than others, as evidenced by full-year and fourth-quarter results reported this spring.
Like most marijuana business owners he knows in California, Sebastian Maldonado’s vertically integrated cannabis company, Delta Boyz, has been burglarized repeatedly.
Maldonado, a Delta Boyz co-owner, estimates the company – which operates a store, distribution center and cultivation facility south of Sacramento, in Isleton – has suffered $1 million in stolen product over the past three years.
Cannabis businesses in California and on the East Coast are evading worker-friendly licensing requirements by obtaining state business permits after signing deals with “labor organizations” that appear to be illegitimate “company unions,” documents and interviews show.
New information and research about minor cannabinoids – among the 100-200 that have been identified – is helping treat different health and wellness conditions and allowing cannabis companies to sell a wider variety of products.
Cannabis companies have begun advertising on Twitter for the first time, but so far the results have been mixed.
Nearly 100 drivers and warehouse workers from Grassdoor’s Northern California operation in Brisbane joined Teamsters Local 2785.
A recent ruling from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration classifying a synthetic cannabinoid as a Schedule 1 drug has furthered the ire between the licensed cannabis industry and the largely unregulated cannabinoid sector, which has grown into a multi-billion market amid the proliferation of CBD and Delta-lineage products since the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill.
While some marijuana companies are exiting California’s difficult, regulated market – Curaleaf Holdings is among the most notable – others big and small are staying focused on the state and have plans to grow in 2023.
Matthew Huron, the CEO of Colorado-based Good Chemistry Nurseries, bred his first original strains as head cultivator for Elmar Lins Compassionate Care Co-op, a San Francisco Bay Area cooperative he founded in 2000, after his father and his father’s partner were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
Nalu Bio, a producer of synthetic cannabinoids, said it raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Intrinsic Capital Partners, a Pennsylvania-based investment firm focused on life science and technology businesses in the legal marijuana and hemp industries.
A trade association representing cannabis growers in California’s Mendocino County has asked the state government for an “urgent intervention” in the county’s licensing process, citing concerns that many farmers’ license applications won’t be processed by a July 1, 2023, deadline.
