Lifestyle

High Times, the venerable marijuana-focused magazine that’s undergone major diversification the past two years, is taking a big step beyond its media roots with plans to open stores in Los Angeles and Las Vegas that actually sell the stuff.

The company also named cannabis retail veteran Paul Henderson as president and interim CFO, charged with heading the dispensary initiative. Stormy Simon, a former president of Overstock.com, was recently named High Times CEO, and will focus on digital initiatives.

The one problem that comes with cannabis industry growth—it creates a whole lot of waste.

Washington State alone created almost 2 million pounds of plant waste in the first three years cannabis was legalized. All that waste has to go somewhere, right?

The laws around cannabis use have relaxed, and there’s a huge industry out there waiting to be marketed. Industry specialists talk about the way forward.

It is tough and expensive to have an ad flighted during the Super Bowl. This year, for the first time, an advertisement featuring cannabis came close, but was ultimately discarded because it was not consistent with TV network CBS’s advertising policy.

Each year we try to get ahead of the cannabis curve by predicting which strains are going to reach superstar status. We consider cannabis cup winners, keep tabs on famous breeder instagrams, and overall, keep a finger on the pulse of the industry.

Now that the 2020 ball has dropped, we’re looking toward the future to predict which strains may soar in popularity this year. Some you may have tried, others may be your next favorite. And with many of these strains new to the market, we’re still waiting to see how their terpene profiles shake out, which is why some are grayed out.

Cannabis may be known as the 'green industry,' but its reputation is not an exceptionally eco-friendly one.

The industry has a bad rap for its inability to rein in excessive energy consumption, water needs, and waste issues all along the production cycle.

MLB and the MLB Players Association are negotiating changes to the drug agreement that would introduce opioid testing. As part of the new drug agreement, MLB would also remove marijuana from the league's list of banned substances for minor-league players, according to The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal. Players on the 40-man roster are not tested for marijuana, but non-40-man roster minor leaguers are, and several are suspended for marijuana use each season. There were 13 such suspensions in 2019.

A study published last month in the Journal of Pain found a statistically significant reduction in migraine and headache symptoms and recurrences among patients who used cannabis for treatment.

Researchers concluded that headache and migraine severity were reduced by nearly 50% after using cannabis.

Authored by: Emily Price, Forbes

Lil Wayne just launched his own cannabis line: GKUA Ultra Premium. The line of high-potency cannabis products is “designed to provide consumers with the best high of their lives.”

Flower for the products is sourced from experienced growers, and the brand selects strands with the highest amount of THC available, allowing it to offer exceptionally potent products.

Despite a frigid, rainy morning, three Michigan cannabis stores were open for the state’s first legal adult-use sales beginning at 10:00 a.m. this morning.

All three were in Ann Arbor, a hot spot for dispensaries in the state, and also the city where the annual Hash Bash is held. 

At Exclusive Brands an estimated 2,000 people waited in a line that circled around the block and into nearby parking lots, even two hours after opening.

Edibles, extracts and topicals could bring in millions of consumers, many of them ‘canna-curious,’ but Canadian producers will face challenges.

Canadian Cannabis 2.0 is here! It’s been over a year since recreational cannabis was legalized for adult use in Canada, and with the edibles, extracts and topicals category recently legalized, the market is shifting into what many envision as a new wave of consumption. How will the introduction of these new products impact the market?

Let’s start with Cannabis 1.0.