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The employees of a Pennsylvania medical marijuana company have signed a labor contract with their employer, making them the first cannabis workers in the state to unionize. The three-year agreement between employees and management of Pennsylvania Medical Marijuana Solutions was recently ratified, making about 30 production and laboratory operations workers in a Scranton manufacturing facility members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 Keystone State.

Pennsylvania Medical Marijuana Solutions is a subsidiary of Vireo Health, a cannabis company licensed to operate in 11 markets with legal cannabis. Kyle Kingsley, the CEO of Vireo Health, said in a press release that the firm supports its employees’ right to unionize.

“As a socially responsible business, Vireo is deeply committed to its employees and is proud to be a union employer,” Kingsley said. “We believe that a unionized workforce is key to our company’s success and look forward to partnering with UFCW to support legislation, such as legalizing adult-use cannabis, that will help create thousands of new middle-class jobs across the Keystone State.”

Vireo Health also has plans to open three medical marijuana dispensaries in the state by the end of the year, which will create up to 20 more union jobs for retail workers.

“This is a fantastic contract for our members and a great win for the future of all workers in the cannabis industry,” said UFCW 1776KS president Wendell Young IV. “I am very proud of the role that UFCW has played in helping to bring collective bargaining to the cannabis industry and help create good-paying jobs in Pennsylvania. I want to thank our union bargaining committee and Vireo Health for their hard work on this contract.”

“The UFCW offers cannabis workers and business owners, along with patients and coalition allies, the opportunity to work together to accomplish shared goals,” the union writes on its website. “By crafting and supporting targeted legislative efforts, along with negotiating the best contracts for workers, we are giving workers a voice in the workplace and beyond!”

Unionization a National Trend

Vireo Health also has subsidiaries in New York and Minnesota with workers who have unionized. Nationwide, about 10,000 workers in the cannabis industry are covered by a union contract, mostly on the West Coast, where cannabis has been legal the longest.

“We looked at the cannabis industry and said the union could use its political power to bring forward the good players out of the black market, and bring some credibility and establish a legitimate industry,” Jim Araby, of Northern California’s UFCW Local 5, told Rolling Stone earlier this year.

Nikki Kateman of UFCW Local 338 in New York said that unions can help create a more socially equitable cannabis industry.

“Our members live in communities that have been disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs,” said Kateman. “We want to right the wrongs our members have experienced.”

The U.S. cannabis market is projected to hit $30 billion in annual cannabis sales by 2025, according to a new report from an industry expert.

The “U.S. Cannabis Report 2019 Industry Outlook” from New Frontier Data in Washington, D.C., also reports that more than 38 million American adults consume cannabis at least once per year. That includes both marijuana purchased legally as well as on the black market. 

The report estimates a compound annual growth rate in legal marijuana sales of 14 percent between now and 2025. 

And These Are Conservative Estimates

In a press release on the new report, New Frontier Data CEO Founder and CEO Giadha Aguirre de Carcer said the $30 billion estimate has been arrived at using conservative figures. He noted that strong foreign investment and a steady increase in domestic consumption contributed to New Frontier Data raising its forecast to $30 billion.

Aguirre de Carcer also noted that expansion in the domestic market has happened as more states legalize marijuana. Michigan voters legalized adult-use marijuana in the fall of 2018. Illinois lawmakers did the same in 2019.

However, he also warned of potential issues, saying that “it is critical for stakeholders to understand how regulatory uncertainty, lack of accepted standards, and international market pressures may have a material and lasting economic impact in the currently flourishing U.S. cannabis market,” Aguirre de Carcer said.

So Who Is Using Marijuana And Why?

In addition to the more than 38 million American adults consuming cannabis at least once a year, the report also found that 36 percent of marijuana users report using cannabis daily, with 59 percent saying they use it once a week.

The biggest demographic group of cannabis consumers — about 45 percent of all cannabis consumers — were those between the ages of 25 and 44.

The expected growth gives an indication of how cannabis is being used. The annual sales of medical marijuana are expected to grow to $13.1 billion by 2025. The annual sales for recreational marijuana are expected to grow to $16.6 billion.

The entire report can be downloaded from New Frontier Data here.

They Also Offered New Information On Hemp

New Frontier Data also released a report on the hemp industry. With Congress making hemp legal in 2018, which has led to a flood of hemp-derived CBD products hitting the market in 2019, the industry as a whole has flourished, with many athletes, celebrities and numerous brands jumping into the market.

Given the trend, it's no surprise that the popularity has impacted the amount of land used for growing hemp. New Frontier Data reported that almost half a million acres are now devoted to growing hemp, compared to just 100,000 acres in 2018.

The report also found that Colorado leads the nation in hemp cultivation, with more than 80,000 acres of processing land area. The report found that Oregon, Kentucky, Tennessee and Montana are ahead of other states when it comes to hemp program expansion.

That said, California is set to become the top hemp-producing state as “thousands of acres have already been planted this year,” the report stated.

From food and drink to health and wellness and beyond, there’s one plant we can’t seem to get enough of: cannabis. It seems like every consumer product nowadays is taking part in reefer madness.

Home cooks are taking edibles to new heights. In places like Denver and California, you can take cooking classes specifically centered around food made with Mary Jane. The editors of Vice’s “Munchies” even put out a cookbook last year called Bong Appétit: Mastering the Art of Cooking with Weed. And it’s only one of many.

But marijuana culture today isn’t all based around the stuff you (er, people you know) smoked in college. Cannabis, long known for its medicinal and therapeutic purposes, is a hot commodity in food tech and other consumer products nowadays. Far more than just a way to get high, cannabis in its various forms has been used medically throughout history and in modern times as a treatment for pain and nausea, and has been found anecdotally or in limited studies to treat glaucoma, epilepsy and anxiety, among other conditions and symptoms. Businesses have caught on, and not a moment too soon.

The food products that utilize marijuana are a far cry from the old classic pot brownies (not that there’s anything wrong with those!). Thanks to modern science, producers are able to separate the two main chemical compounds found in marijuana: THC and CBD. THC has therapeutic benefits, but it’s best known as the part of weed that gets you high. This is because it’s a psychoactive compound. CBD, on the other hand, is not psychoactive — it can (supposedly) provide many of the anti-anxiety, analgesic benefits of the plant without producing a high. For obvious reasons, this gives marijuana a new appeal. It’s now possible to reap the benefits of the plant without experiencing intoxication, so you can lessen anxiety or pain while still functioning normally.

It’s worth noting at this point that many of the health benefits of CBD and cannabis in general are not scientifically proven in statistically significant, peer-reviewed studies. This is for a number of reasons, most significantly that marijuana is still a Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law in the U.S., making legality an issue in its study.

But what CBD and other cannabis products lack in evidence, they make up for with enthusiasm. Companies and consumers alike are eager to try CBD in various products, from food to oils to skincare, in hopes of treating anxiety, sleeplessness and other woes. If you live in a place where CBD products are legal, you’ve probably seen them everywhere. Newsweek reported that CBD sales are estimated to grow 40-fold in the next four years, reaching a value of $23 billion. The big business of marijuana and CBD — California-based Arena Pharmaceuticals is the biggest publicly traded cannabis company in the world — is only growing.

You can already find CBD candies and oils at major national retail chains like CVS and Walgreens, and in states and municipalities where it’s legal, green connoisseurs can order CBD-infused lattes and cocktails. Even retailers like Sephora, Neiman Marcus and Barneys are selling curated displays of CBD-infused beauty and skincare products. The aforementioned Newsweek article reports that big names like Coca-Cola and Molson Coors Brewing are among the hordes of companies already working on their own CBD products. Clearly, the lack of scientific evidence isn’t diminishing anyone’s desire for herbal refreshment.

Except for the FDA, that is. The legality of marijuana and CBD is a confusing and often contradictory topic, and a hard one to keep track of because it’s changing all the time at the federal, state and municipal levels. But what can be ascertained is that because so much of the CBD industry is operating outside of any kind of government oversight, legally or otherwise, the quality of products can vary widely. This is something about which the FDA and independent doctors and pharmaceutical experts have raised concerns. Apart from companies making unfounded claims about the effects of their products, the actual ingredient makeup may be inconsistent, with some products containing less CBD than their labels claim. Little regulation and nascent standards of quality mean consumers might not always know what they’re getting.

But given the broad interest in CBD, that’s unlikely to remain the case forever. The FDA may have started cracking down on extralegal CBD product sales, but in the grand scheme of things, that only means that the agency recognizes the significance of the compound. CBD probably isn’t going away anytime soon, and among the food, drug, health and cosmetic industries, the race to do it best and biggest has already begun.

Utah is the latest state whose school districts are taking a zero tolerance stance on vaping at school.

Following a string vaping incidents, illnesses and even deaths in teens, vaping has been at the center of controversy for months, with many health organizations urging students to no longer use vaping products.

To enforce the ban, school districts have installed specialized detectors in school bathrooms. The detectors are able to sense cigarette smoke and vapor from vapes. They are reportedly able to detect excess noise that might indicate fighting or bullying. When detection is made, a notification is sent to school administrators who can step in immediately.

“This was driven by our parent groups coming to us wanting us to do something,” Wasatch High School Assistant Principal Adam Hagen told 2 KUTV. “We were seeing an escalation in the number of vape cases.”

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, more than 20% of high school students are using vape products with the first reports of illness due to vaping beginning around March. Since then, at least 1,000 illnesses due to vaping have been reported and 18 people have died.

Research is being done to determine what exactly is causing illnesses and deaths but many health officials believe it may be due to the heavy metals used for the heating coils in some vapes. Additionally, contaminants have been found in vapes that could contribute to illness, including Vitamin E Acetate. It’s also been noted that illicit market vape products are more likely to cause harm than legal vape products.

Here is a rundown of the districts that have installed vape detectors and some early results according to 2 KUTV:

• Wasatch School District spent nearly $40,000 to install 40 sensors. They installed them in every bathroom of the district’s one bathroom and two middle schools. So far, at least 20 students have been suspended after getting caught vaping.
• Nebo School District purchased two detectors to use in a pilot program. So far, the sensors have not picked anything up.
• Grand School District spent more than $7,000 on sensors that were installed in April. So far, the district reports that the sensors have not actually worked. Administrators also said that two vapes were found at a school, both of which reportedly contained meth.

Other School Districts across the country have also recently installed vape detectors including districts in New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois and Massachusetts.

“We had some pretty traumatic experiences last year in which two students were ambulanced to the hospital for some sort of vaping or activity that led to that. It kind of brought a heightened sense of awareness to things,” said Principal Derek Morrison of Chicopee Comprehensive High School in Massachusetts.

President Donald Trump’s administration made a move last month to ban flavored e-cigarettes which tend to be popular among youth. First Lady, Melania Trump, also spoke out about her concerns on children having access to e-cigarettes.

“I am deeply concerned about the growing epidemic of e-cigarette use in our children,” she tweeted last month. “We need to do all we can to protect the public from tobacco-related disease and death, and prevent e-cigarettes from becoming an on-ramp to nicotine addiction for a generation of youth.”  

California’s hopes of reinvigorating the state’s longtime “compassion programs,” which for decades provided medical cannabis to the sick for free, now rest in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The bill in question, SB-34 or the “Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary Compassionate Care Act,” would create a mechanism to exempt compassionate cannabis programs from the hefty cultivation and excise taxes that the state started levying on all cannabis producers under new adult-use regulations in 2018. It would also allow licensed retailers and delivery services to facilitate donation programs for medical patients.

Under SB-34, the cannabis donated to medical patients would still face all the other burdens that marijuana products in California face, such as being in the track-and-trace system and passing strict lab testing standards. However, operators of those compassionate cannabis programs say the bill is a good start towards making their operations more feasible again. The programs currently have to pay about 25% taxes, despite the fact that they bring in no revenue.

The bill passed the California State Assembly and State Senate in early September. The vote was unanimous in both houses. The bill has now sat on the governor’s desk for over two weeks. Newsom has until mid-October to either sign the bill into law or veto it.

“We don’t know what the Governor will do, but we are making a strong case to him that SB 34 is critical to ensure people can continue to access their medicine,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Scott Weiner, told Cannabis Now in a statement. “Without a tax exemption, compassion programs will continue to shut down, and low-income people will either not get their medicine or be forced onto the illicit market. We need to ensure access.”

Last week, Wiener joined San Francisco medical cannabis activists at one of the greatest landmarks of the medical marijuana movement: Dennis Peron’s Castro Castle, where activists worked to pass California’s medical marijuana law, Proposition 215, back in 1996.

As Weiner took the mic, a small dog started barking with the applause. Weiner told the dog to bark at the governor and get him to sign the bill.

“An entire generation of activists” risked their own safety to provide medicine to people who were getting sick and dying of AIDS, Wiener told the crowd. “We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.”

Weiner went on to note that activists such as Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary, the bill’s namesakes, built the political momentum that led to legal cannabis. They did so by giving away cannabis to those in need for free, proving through generosity that they could not be equated to “drug dealers” and that cannabis could be healing.

Weiner said that he doubts any Californians who voted in favor of legalization realized they would be creating roadblocks to access to medicine for sick, low-income people.

The way California NORML explains how California’s compassionate programs came to face extinction: “Due to an oversight in how Proposition 64 [California’s adult-use legalization bill] was drafted, these not-for-profit donation programs that have been serving medical cannabis patients for decades are now being forced to pay taxes meant for businesses, which are forcing these charity programs to shut down.”

Cal NORML told Cannabis Now in an email they haven’t had any assurances that the governor will sign the bill and people should continue to contact his office.

Last year, a similar bill sponsored by Weiner passed both houses of the state legislature and landed on the desk of then-Gov. Jerry Brown. Brown vetoed the bill out of a concern that it would encourage illicit market distribution of cannabis.

One of the oldest compassion programs in the state belongs to its oldest dispensary, Berkeley Patients Group. BPG Vice-President Etienne Fontan has been a first-hand witness to giving sick people free marijuana for 20 years, but suddenly he says it’s harder than it’s been in a long time.

“We have dealt with years of setbacks post-Prop 64 for patients and the need for compassion is needed now more than ever,” Fontan told Cannabis Now. “We spent 20 years compassionately giving in our community and with cancer rates at 1 in 2, it’s a necessity for low-income patients in dire need, today.”

In reality, the delays in the governor’s signature are just making it harder for Fontan to provide for as many people as possible.

“We cannot await another politician’s cruelty, we need the governor to sign this legislation to put patients’ minds at ease so they can focus on their healing instead of worrying where they will have to go to find their medicine,” he said. “Berkeley Patients Group has the word ‘patients’ in the name for a reason and we will always stand for those who are most in need and we need the laws and politicians to reflect the will of the voters but also the compassion that Prop 215 was created for.”

Ricardo Monreal, the Senate leader of Mexico's ruling party MORENA, said lawmakers will vote on a bill to legalize adult-use marijuana by the end of October, according to Marijuana Moment.

“We’re thinking that we’ll bring the law out, approve it, at the end of October,” Monreal said. “That’s the schedule we have.”

The chamber is almost finished with creating a new reform bill that is based on open-session debates and public forums, and the Chamber of Deputies will be invited to weigh in on the bill, Marijuana Moment reported. 

Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled five times that the country’s ban on recreational cannabis is unconstitutional. Mexican law states that when the court rules in the same direction five times, it becomes a binding precedent. 

Last year, it said that the government must legalize the drug by October, Marijuana Moment reported. 

Last week, Mario Delgado Carillo, the chairman of the Political Coordination Board of MORENA, Chamber of Deputies, filed legislation to legalize and regulate cannabis, suggesting the government should run the market to avoid industry monopolization by big companies.

If cannabis investors were waiting for a sign that the beleaguered industry is turning the corner, Tuesday wasn’t that day.

Pot stocks came under pressure after U.S. cannabis operator MedMen Enterprises Inc. announced the termination of its all-stock takeover of PharmaCann LLC. The sector’s growing pains were also evident in Canada, as Aleafia Health Inc. ended a five-year supply agreement with Aphria Inc., citing a failure to meet obligations under the deal.

These developments come on the heels of a turbulent period in the cannabis space. Regulatory woes, disappointing earnings, ongoing problems getting pot stores up and running, and an emerging health crisis linked to vaping are casting dark clouds across the industry.

Legalizing cannabis has been “an unprecedented undertaking,” said David Wood, a Calgary-based partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, in a phone interview.

“We haven’t really chosen to compete with black markets by regulating them before. There’s no playbook here,” he said.

It’s a far cry from a year ago when exuberance carried investors into the cannabis sector after Canada became the first developed nation to legalize recreational use of the drug. Constellation Brands Inc.’s $5-billion bet on Canopy Growth Corp. fueled optimism that not only is legal pot here to stay, but will be a valuable commodity in the pharmaceutical and consumer-packaged goods industries.

Since then, cannabis company valuations have tumbled.

The closely-watched Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF is down about 50 per cent over the past year and individual stocks have suffered similar, if not more outsized, downturns. Canopy, for example, is down 28 per cent since it received its investment from Constellation and 59 per cent from its peak a year ago.

In fact, MedMen directly cited the decline in Horizons’ cannabis-focused ETF as one of the “market developments” that led the U.S. cannabis operator to call off the PharmaCann deal on Tuesday.

Investors bought into the cannabis hype, rather than acknowledging its legalization was about ensuring public safety and not industry profits, according to Laurence Booth, finance professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business.  

“Fundamentally, cannabis is an agricultural product,” he said in a phone interview.  “We don’t go this crazy for wheat or soybeans.”

With the growing popularity of medicinal marijuana and legal hemp-based products such as CBD oils and creams, colleges and universities are seeing the wisdom of preparing students for this burgeoning industry.

Medical marijuana is now legal in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and recreational usage is permitted in 11 states. Because of these changing mores and the continuing destigmatization of cannabis, colleges and universities are seeing new opportunities for education.

The U.S. cannabis market, if legalized, could be worth $28 billion today and $41 billion by 2028 “on a pre-tax basis,” according to an analyst from Barclays. If taxed at the same level as tobacco, a $41 billion cannabis market could be worth nearly $28 billion in tax revenues.

Schools across the country, including Doane University in Nebraska, Minot State University, the University of Denver, Vanderbilt Law School,  and the University of California, Davis, are offering a variety of cannabis-focused four-year undergraduate degree programs, certification classes and even graduate degrees. Course topics include medical research, legal issues, dispensary operations and more.

Northern Michigan University’s Medicinal Plant Chemistry program was the first U.S. undergraduate major in the study of cannabinoids. Besides tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis, there are at least 113 different cannabinoids that exhibit various effects, notes associate professor Brandon Canfield, who launched the program in 2017.

Students who graduate from the program’s bio-analytical track can work in botanical medicine, and those on the entrepreneurial path might start their own medical marijuana facility.

“It is, essentially, a chemistry degree but with different emphases on business and entrepreneurial disciplines,” Canfield says.

According to Hemp Industry Daily cannabis businesses are watching this educational trend because there is a shortage of people highly knowledgeable about advanced cannabis business, technology and legal/compliance topics.

But four-year schools don’t have a monopoly on these studies. Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Illinois, is one of a few two-year schools to join the trend. About 100 students at Oakton are enrolled in the program, where they learn about marijuana policy, the history of the plant, dispensary operations and which strains of marijuana could help with various medical issues. OCC also offers a Cannabis Dispensary and Patient Care certificate program, which trains students for jobs in medical marijuana dispensaries.

And, before anyone thinks this industry is merely a pipe dream, employment opportunities for this new field are growing as fast as, well, weeds. National and international brands are making, including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Constellation Brands, Scotts Miracle-Gro, Molson Coors Brewing—and even Estée Lauder, which has launched a line of beauty products containing cannabis.