So … 2020: Politically speaking, is the new year a high or a low point for cannabis companies? On one hand, 33 states and the District of Columbia have legalized weed in one way or another. And 11 states and D.C. have even legalized it for recreational use.
A good company website is so much more than a digital brochure. It is the first impression for most of your customers, and a direct representation of your company. It is the method in which most people research products and services before buying. The cannabis industry is tech-savvy and demands a fast and efficient sales experience, which often starts with your website. Whether you're selling cannabis products or marketing to the industry, here are five key elements to consider before starting your website project.
People use their smart phones to track just about everything – health, banking, grocery lists – so why not cannabis? There are a growing number of cannabis-focused phone apps available, delivering news items, strain reviews, locations of shops, and even weed-themed games.
All companies face cybersecurity threats, but the legalized cannabis industry’s storage of personally identifiable information and reliance on seed-to-sale tracking software can place it firmly within hackers’ crosshairs.
To be sure, despite currently being prohibited from storing cash in banks, some cannabis entities do process valuable personally identifiable information (PII).
Ontario will allow private cannabis retailers to sell their products online or by phone for in-store pickup, in a significant move that chips away at the Ontario Cannabis Store’s monopoly on online cannabis sales.
The province’s fall economic statement is proposing amendments to the current legislation around cannabis retail in order to “ensure consumers’ preferred cannabis products are available” and “wait times reduced” at the 25 retail stores that currently operate across the province.
New cannabis technologies have the potential to transform the industry as advanced cultivation techniques and testing practices improve.
New cannabis technologies, including quality control and contamination testing along with other health and safety practices, are key to building and maintaining consumer trust in the legal cannabis industry.
When New Jersey lawmakers debated earlier this year whether to legalize recreational use of marijuana, the Garden State’s police organizations were adamantly against it.
The cops said that legal weed might lead to an explosion in the numbers of impaired drivers operating under the influence. And the police would be caught flatfooted trying to tell whether drivers they pulled over were high or not.
“With alcohol, if you have over 0.08% in your blood, there’s the presumption that you’re intoxicated,” said Christopher Leusner, head of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police.
“There hasn’t been a blood test or a breath test that can determine if you’re impaired by marijuana.”
Now there is.
It’s a breathalyzer device developed by Hound Labs in Northern California. It’s portable and can run tests for both alcohol and marijuana. It just may change the minds of many of those reluctant police officers, including in Pennsylvania as lawmakers consider several proposals to legalize recreational marijuana use.
Intrinsic Capital Partners, a Philadelphia growth equity fund, is so convinced of a “potential massive market” for the device that it led a $30 million Series D financing round to bring it to market in 2020.
Mike Lynn, a veteran emergency department physician from Oakland, Calif., developed the Hound in collaboration with researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco.
Lynn also happens to be a reserve deputy sheriff.
“It’s about creating a balance of public safety and fairness,” Lynn said. “I’ve seen the tragedies resulting from impaired driving up close. And I have a good idea how challenging it is at the roadside to know whether someone smoked pot recently. But I believe if someone is not stoned, they shouldn’t be arrested.”
Blood tests for marijuana can return a positive result even if someone has used cannabis within the last three weeks.
Lynn claims that his device can detect whether someone has smoked or ingested a marijuana edible within the last three hours.
A Canadian start-up, called SannTek, has a device in development with similar capabilities.
The Hound is comprised of a base station and a hand-held device that together will retail for about $5,000 a unit. The entire machine will be manufactured in the United States, Lynn said. Each test also will require a $20 onetime use cartridge.
“We have spoken with law enforcement agencies and large employers, and from our perspective, there’s a huge, untapped market and unmet needs for something like this,” said Howard Goodwin, principal at Intrinsic Capital Partners.
Dick Wolf, the creator of TV’s Law & Order, is also an enthusiastic Hound backer. So is Benchmark, the Silicon Valley venture capital powerhouse that put up seed funding to Dropbox, Snap, Uber, and WeWork.
“It’s a game changer,” said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively on marijuana legalization.
“I’ve been saying for years it’s only a matter of time before someone developed the technology and got the science right,” Hudak said. “That time apparently is now. And they’re going to make a hell of a lot of money selling it to law enforcement agencies across the U.S. and Canada.”
Goodwin said about 50 million drug tests are conducted each year. He believes the market for a THC breathalyzer may be worth well above $10 billion annually.
About 30 states have legalized cannabis. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are among the dozens with medical marijuana programs. The governors of both states support legalizing it for recreational use. And polls in both states show the majority voters would support full legalization.
But traditionally, law enforcement has been resistant to legalization.
Leusner, the head of the New Jersey police chiefs group, said prosecuting marijuana DUIs is costly and time-consuming.
Marijuana DUI cases hinge on blood test results. Traces of THC metabolites, the drug’s byproducts, can remain in the body for up to a month. Proving impairment is notoriously difficult. There is no “per se” standard, or legal threshold, of what constitutes intoxication. Often, cases get thrown out of court.
Officers who are qualified drug recognition experts and trained to spot stoned drivers can spend up to two days in court on the stand. “That’s expensive,” Leusner said.
John Adams, Berks County’s district attorney, serves on Pennsylvania’s statewide medical marijuana advisory board.
“DUI under marijuana is a huge, huge problem. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been against legalization,” Adams said. “I’ve heard about the breathalyzers. If the technology is out there, it would be a great tool. It would alleviate some of our fears.”
Police have depended on the skunky stench of burnt marijuana to provide probable cause to search a car or conduct a field sobriety test on a driver. But a recent court ruling in Pennsylvania maintained that the smell alone isn’t sufficient reason to initiate an arrest.
In addition, cannabis consumers in many states are slowly trending toward edibles — from pot brownies to infused beverages and lozenges — and, until the recent scare, vaping.
So both the Hound and the SannTek breath analyzers appear to be arriving at the perfect moment.
The Hound breathalyzer, which is about a billion times more sensitive than a standard alcohol breath test, can detect the incredibly low concentrations of THC that are transported through the bloodstream and subsequently exhaled.
“We wanted to be able to detect THC in people who have recently used it — either eaten the stuff or smoked a joint,” said Lynn. “Those are the people we want to discourage before they go to the workplace or get behind the wheel.”
Lynn said he envisioned the device nearly eight years ago when a car drove past him trailing a cloud of weed smoke. But the technology did not exist to create an affordable device.
“I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be.”
In about eight months, Lynn’s team was able to detect THC in the breath of smokers. It took five more years to consistently and accurately measure levels with a machine with a cost in reach of most police departments and employers.
“We could measure small amounts quickly, but it took considerably longer to do the science and complete the clinical studies,” Lynn said.
Though Lynn envisions the nation’s police departments as his first customers, he believes that businesses will adopt the Hound.
“Employers have the same fundamental problems as law enforcement,” Lynn said. “They need to maintain a safe workplace, but not have to worry about what their employees do in their free time. Someone can go home, smoke pot just like I’d enjoy a glass of wine, and not test positive.”
“Employers are facing a workforce now that has close to full employment,” Lynn said. “They don’t want to be firing valuable workers, especially for something that’s legal in most states.”
Following the relaxation of cannabis laws safety in the workplace and on the roads is of major concern.
Currently, the medical cannabis segment accounts for the majority of the overall industry, largely because of the growing adoption of alternative treatments. Medical researchers have highlighted that cannabis can be effectively used to treat ailments such as cancer, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and chronic pain. However, as the industry continues to advance, cannabis safety on the roads and in the workplace is becoming a major concern.
The recreational segment is expected to eclipse the medical segment and overall, the number of consumers in legal US states and Canada is rapidly growing as the recreational market continues to mature. Notably, many recreational consumers are purchasing a variety of cannabis-based products such as flower, concentrates, extracts, and edibles.
Most recreational consumers are interested in products that are packed with THC, delivering a potent effect. In particular, concentrates and extracts have become increasingly popular because of their immediate delivery and potent THC content. However, producers have faced backlash from political officials and law enforcement agencies over the plant’s potential abuse.
Regulators are concerned about the possibility of driving while under the influence. Companies and even parents have expressed their concerns over the potential abuse of cannabis. In efforts to co-operate with regulators, businesses, and parents, many companies have developed innovative technology.
Some companies are developing technologies for law enforcement agencies in efforts to reduce potential criminal activities that spawn as a result of cannabis use.
Innovative technologies such as THC breathalysers have become popular for law enforcement in legal regions. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana can significantly impair judgement, motor co-ordination, and reaction time.
The advancement of THC breathalysers is expected to reduce the number of consumers who drive under the influence, and as a result, regulators are hoping to reduce the number of dangerous incidents.
Avis Bulbulyan, Chief Executive Officer of Siva Enterprises, said: “When looking at how tech would impact the cannabis industry, it’s important to understand the needs of the industry.
“Generally, this industry is no different than many other industries and it has all of the same business needs that most businesses have. The Schedule One nature of cannabis along with the general misunderstanding of cannabis as a plant for so long has led to a greater need for compliance and transparency when setting up these businesses.”
Some of the people rushing to emergency rooms thought the CBD vape they inhaled would help like a gentle medicine. Others puffed it for fun.
What the vapors delivered instead was a jolt of synthetic marijuana, and with it an intense high of hallucinations and even seizures.
More than 50 people around Salt Lake City had been poisoned by the time the outbreak ended early last year, most by a vape called Yolo! — the acronym for “you only live once.”
In recent months, hundreds of vape users have developed mysterious lung illnesses, and more than 30 have died. Yolo was different. Users knew immediately something was wrong.
Who was responsible for Yolo? Public health officials and criminal investigators couldn’t figure that out. Just as it seemed to appear from nowhere, Yolo faded away with little trace.
As part of an investigation into the illegal spiking of CBD vapes that are not supposed to have any psychoactive effect at all, The Associated Press sought to understand the story behind Yolo.
The trail led to a Southern California beach town and an entrepreneur whose vaping habit prompted a career change that took her from Hollywood parties to federal court in Manhattan.
When Janell Thompson moved from Utah to the San Diego area in 2010, the roommate she found online also vaped. Thompson had a background in financial services and the two decided to turn their shared interest into a business, founding an e-cigarette company called Hookahzz.
There were early successes. Thompson and her partner handed out Hookahzz products at an Emmy Awards pre-party, and their CBD vapes were included in Oscar nominee gift bags in 2014. In a video shot at a trade show, an industry insider described the two women as “the divas of CBD.”
Indeed, Hookahzz was among the first companies to sell vapes that delivered CBD, as the cannabis extract cannabidiol is known. Now a popular ingredient in products from skin creams to gummy bears, cannabidiol was at that time little known and illegal in some states.
The partners started other brands that offered CBD capsules and edibles, as well as products for pets. Part of Thompson’s pitch was that CBD helped treat her dog’s tumors.
By autumn 2017, Thompson and her partner formed another company, Mathco Health Corporation. Within a few months, Yolo spiked with synthetic marijuana — commonly known as K2 or spice — began appearing on store shelves around Salt Lake City.
Synthetic marijuana is manmade and can be manufactured for a fraction of the price of CBD, which is typically extracted from industrial hemp that must be farmed.
Samples tested at Utah labs showed Yolo contained a synthetic marijuana blamed for at least 11 deaths in Europe — and no CBD at all.
Authorities believed that some people sought out Yolo because they wanted to get high, while others unwittingly ingested a dangerous drug. What authorities didn’t understand was its source.
Investigators with Utah’s State Bureau of Investigation visited vape stores that sold Yolo, but nobody would talk. The packaging provided no contact information.
By May 2018, the case was cold. But it was not dead.
That summer, a former Mathco bookkeeper who was preparing to file a workplace retaliation complaint began collecting evidence of what she viewed as bad business practices.
During her research, Tatianna Gustafson saw online pictures showing that Yolo was the main culprit in the Utah poisonings, according to the complaint she filed against Mathco with California’s Department of Industrial Relations.
Gustafson wrote that while at Mathco she was concerned about how Yolo was produced, that it was excluded from Mathco’s promotional material and that the “labels had no ingredients or contact listing.”
Justin Davis, another former Mathco employee, told AP that “the profit margins were larger” for Yolo than other products.
Gustafson’s complaint asserted that Mathco or JK Wholesale, another of the companies that Thompson and her partner incorporated, mixed and distributed Yolo. Financial records in the complaint show Thompson’s initials as the main salesperson for Yolo transactions, including with a company in Utah. The records also show Yolo was sold in at least six other states, including to an address in South Carolina where a college student said he vaped a cartridge that sent him into a coma.
The former bookkeeper also tipped the Utah Poison Control Center about who she believed was behind Yolo, according to her complaint.
Barbara Crouch, the poison center’s executive director, recalled getting a tip in late 2018 and passing it along to the State Bureau of Investigation. SBI agent Christopher Elsholz talked to the tipster, who told him she believed the company she had worked for distributed Yolo. Elsholz said the company was in California and therefore out of his jurisdiction, so he passed the tip to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
The DEA offered to help but took no law enforcement action, spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said. Spiked CBD is a low priority for an agency dealing with bigger problems such as the opioid epidemic, which has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the end, it wasn’t the synthetic marijuana compound in Yolo from Utah that caught up with Thompson. It was another kind of synthetic added to different brands.
By the time of the Utah poisonings, vapes labeled as Black Magic and Black Diamond had sickened more than 40 people in North Carolina, including high school students and military service members. Investigators were able to connect Thompson to that outbreak in part based on a guilty plea from the distributor of the spiked vapes, who said a woman that authorities identified as Thompson supplied the liquid that went into them.
Prosecutors also linked her to dealers charged in New York, where she pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to distribute synthetic marijuana and a money laundering charge. The only brand federal prosecutors cited was Yolo.
U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman called Thompson a “drug trafficker” who used JK Wholesale to distribute “massive quantities” of synthetic marijuana as far back as 2014. She faces up to 40 years in prison.
Reached by phone the week before she pleaded guilty, Thompson declined to discuss Yolo and then hung up. In a subsequent text message, Thompson said not to call her and referred questions to her lawyer, who did not respond to requests for comment.
While Yolo was Thompson’s project and she was the exclusive salesperson, her business partner and former roommate was involved in its production, according to the workplace retaliation complaint.
Thompson’s business partner and former roommate, Katarina Maloney, distanced herself from Thompson and Yolo during an August interview at Mathco’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California. Maloney has not been charged in the federal investigation.
“To tell you the truth, that was my business partner,” Maloney said of Yolo. She said Thompson was no longer her partner and she didn’t want to discuss it.
In a follow-up email, Maloney asserted the Yolo in Utah “was not purchased from us,” without elaborating.
“Mathco Health Corporation or any of its subsidiary companies do not engage in the manufacture or sale of illegal products,” she wrote. “When products leave our facility, they are 100% compliant with all laws.”
Maloney also said all products are lab tested. She did not respond to requests for Yolo lab results.
The 1st of November 2019 will mark the one year anniversary of the legalisation of medical cannabis in the United Kingdom. A year after Charlotte Caldwell's tireless campaign to obtain life-saving medication for her son Billy catapulted medical cannabis onto the public agenda, the cost of prescriptions has dropped substantially while the number of scripts written has increased, but more needs to be done before it can be more widely offered by the National Health Service (NHS).
The average price of a month's supply of medical cannabis imported through Logist has dropped from £750 to £550, reducing the average monthly prescription cost by 27%, while the average price per gram has also fallen by 25%. The reduction in cost is a combination of increased volume (meaning the costs associated with importing products is lower per prescription) and the increased availability of different products.
The type of medical specialist consultants writing prescriptions for medical cannabis has also diversified to include pain, oncology and neurology. There has also been a broadening in the delivery method for medical cannabis requested by specialist consultants to include different cannabis oils, pills and flowers, which is largely a result of the greater range of products available. Since February, Logist has imported approximately 1.5kg of flower to the UK.
The vast majority of medical cannabis has made its way to the UK thanks to Logist, a joint-venture formed between specials importer IPS Pharma, and Grow Biotech, the UK's leading medical cannabis market access specialists.
Looking forward to the near future, Chief Operating Officer of Grow Biotech, Hari Guliani, said, "Over the next twelve months we expect the UK's medical community as a whole to take on the challenge of understanding how cannabis might help their patients. We are expecting leading consultants to publish papers on the impact they have seen on their patients, as well as evidence gathered through MHRA-approved trials. This will significantly improve the data available to regulators, policymakers and NICE."
At present, it is only available on the NHS in extremely limited circumstances and is only obtainable through a prescription written by a specialist consultant in the private sector. NICE (The National Institute of Health Care Excellence) has advised that more clinical trials need to be undertaken in the UK and overall costs of medication need to be reduced before medical cannabis can be prescribed by NHS consultants. However, new medical trials are now underway and prices associated with the import of medical cannabis are falling dramatically, giving hope to the thousands of patients who are still struggling to access life-changing medication.
Another major change which cannot be overlooked is funding for the UK's young medical cannabis industry. Ben Langley, Chief Executive Officer of Grow Biotech explained that, "We have seen a massive increase in funding for UK businesses operating within the medical cannabis space, especially from North America. In addition to the £5m Grow Biotech has raised over the last two years, there have been notably well received fundraises for Emmac Life Sciences PLC (£11m raised in March 2019) and for Oxford Cannabinoid Therapeutics ($10m in April 2019). This trend is likely to accelerate as European medical cannabis gradually establishes itself as an attractive asset class for global capital and European equity exchanges start to open their doors to cannabis companies."
Both Ben Langley and Hari Guliani are available for comment and interview.
About Grow Biotech
Grow Biotech exists to unlock the medical potential of cannabis for those who need it.
Grow Biotech's market access team launches medical cannabis producers' businesses into new markets, creating long-term value for them. The company's R&D team creates new technologies for medical cannabis producers to create better, more cost-effective, medicines.
About IPS Pharma
IPS Pharma is a pharmaceutical importer, distributor and manufacturer with over 18 years' experience in unlicensed and licensed medicines.
