Welcome to This Week in Cannabis News for April 14, 2023.
Here are the key cannabis industry news stories you need to know this week:
Marylandlawmakers have approved regulations for adult-use cannabis, paving the way for a new legal cannabis market in the state starting July 1. There are standard and micro licenses that will be available - but the state is trying to negate any large-scale retail chains - capping stores at 4 per standard license. As well, and this is interesting, Maryland will issue 50 onsite consumption licenses - but those licensees won’t be retailers or cultivators.
According to MJ Biz Daily, Connecticut adult-use sales are up 20% month-over-month from February to March, totaling over $22 million dollars. Of this increase, 43% of sales were from the newly-launched adult-use program which kicked off in January.
Phoena, formerly known as CannTrust, is shutting its doors this week.
In happier news, Mississauga is finally getting in on the cannabis action. Initially, Mississauga—located directly adjacent to Toronto and home of Toronto’s airport—opted out of cannabis retail way back in 2018. Now, they want in on the action.
But, not having cannabis retail has not meant Missisaugans aren’t accessing legal cannabis, in fact, I sat down with a cannabis retailer right on the border of the city last year and he shared their delivery approach to Mississauga. A link to that interview with The Cannabis Guys is below.
This week, Dutchie was in the news a bit - as Retail Brew took a look at Dutchie’s POS system, what it means for dispensary owners and operators, and even checked in with a Dutchie customer who may seem familiar if you’ve joined one of our webinars - Joe Khoury from MariMed in Massachusetts. The full story is linked below, as well as our webinar conversation Joe Khoury from a recent webinar about Dutchie’s integration with the cultivation software Trym.
And finally, because it’s finally baseball season - we wanted to end with this story. The Chicago Cubs have signed an official CBD partner. Mynd Drinks will be the official CBD partner of the Chicago Cubs - this after MLB allowed CBD advertising last June.
For this week’s Cannabis Expert, we are going to go a conversation with Jason Fowler, Dutchie’s Principal Account Executive for Enterprise companies. Jason was in Miami this week for Benzinga along with a team from Dutchie, and we wanted to connect with him about the general sense of the industry right now - and what he heard, saw, and learned in Miami.
