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Missouri tops $12 million in marijuana sales during opening rec weekend

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The numbers are in: Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services today offered the first glimpse into just how well the Show-Me State’s first weekend of recreational cannabis sales went.

On Friday, Feb. 3, Missouri’s 198 operating dispensaries combined to sell more than $3 million in recreational marijuana and nearly $2 million in medical cannabis. On Saturday, rec sales eclipsed $3.3 million and medical sales dipped to $1.3 million. Consumers in the Show-Me State scaled back on Sunday, buying close to $2.2 million in adult-use marijuana and about $900,000 in medical product.

The weekend saw a grand total of $12.7 million in weed sales, $8.5 million coming from recreational buyers and the other $4.2 million coming from medical cardholders.

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After a big weekend, stores settle into a normal groove

Last week state officials suprised nearly everyone by giving stores the green light to go ahead with adult-use weed sales on Friday, rather than wait until Monday, as was expected. That kicked off a busy weekend for consumers, who went looking for their nearest store, and retailers, who saw an early surge in sales.

By Monday morning, things had calmed down. A tour of St. Louis-area stores found a smattering of curious customers served by budtenders still catching their breath.

The waiting room at Root66 South Grand sat empty shortly after the popular store opened at 10 a.m. Monday. But the weekend was another story, according to budtender Patrick O’Donnell. After serving some 40 paying customers each day during the medical–only era, the Root66 location — one of three Root66 stores in St. Louis — saw upwards of 200 paying customers on Friday, Saturday and Sunday this weekend when state authorities turned the switch to rec.

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“Absolutely insane,” O’Donnell said. “We had lines of people from the time we opened to pretty much the minute we closed.”

Root66 employees found out late last Thursday night that Missouri could start rec sales last Friday instead of today, O’Donnell said. They learned the dispensary had the green light for adult use at 6 a.m. Friday, and met the exciting day with mixed feelings.

They’d slowly been loading up the dispensary, a converted former McDonald’s restaurant, for weeks. Even so, the early start had Root66 out of stock for nearly one-third of its preroll menu.

Customers packed the store’s waiting rooms by the dozen over the weekend, with some 20 to 25 people waiting at a time. Thankfully, lines didn’t get long enough to leave customers outside in the freezing St. Louis cold.

No lines, no waiting on Monday morning

customer-shops-in-root-66-store-in-missouri
St. Louis resident Deion Harris stopped by Root66 Monday morning to reload on “Fruit by the Foot” pre-rolls. (Photo: Chris Kudialis for Leafly)

Local resident Deion Harris visited Monday morning to load up on Root66’s popular “Fruit by the Foot” pre-rolls, after burning through the inventory he bought on Friday. Three half-gram joints, sold for $14, was enough to get through one evening, Harris said. But he tripled his order on Monday morning.

“I’m really glad this day is here and that we can all buy legitimate cannabis,” he said. “It’s still mostly cheaper on the street, but you’re definitely getting what you pay for here.”

Viola in St. Louis: Yes, it’s actually open

viola-store-in-st-louis
Pro tip: It’s already open. Despite its Coming Soon sign, the store owned by ex-NBA stars is already serving the people of St. Louis. (Photo: Chris Kudialis for Leafly)

Former NBA stars Al Harrington and Larry Hughes announced just two weeks ago they’d be opening downtown St. Louis’ first dispensary and the city’s only Black-owned weed store. Built right across a small crosswalk from a hulking new Major League Soccer stadium and just down the road from St. Louis’ hockey and baseball stadiums, Viola STL couldn’t have found a better spot for reaching the tens of thousands of sports fans that grace the area nearly every night.

Fast forward two weeks after Harrington and Hughes’ announcement, and a giant sign above Viola’s front entrance still says “Coming Soon.” But guess what: It’s actually open.

The door is unlocked and leads to a waiting room, and then a shopping area where a staff of three smiling budtenders stand ready to serve customers.

The weed for sale is from the grow houses of rival dispensaries: Good Day Farm, Prosper Cannabis and Illicit. But there’s no doubt the much ballyhooed store is already up and running, if not thriving.

“We’re going to have our own flower in here very soon,” said Managing Partner Dan Pettigrew. “We’re really excited to become a big part of this community and Missouri’s industry.”

Good Day Farm: ‘It’s been a fun craziness’

good-day-farm-budtender-at-work
Good Day Farm’s Brand Manager Luke Gerau shows off the company’s smorgasbord of edibles behind a display table where customers can lift glass coverings to smell samples of popular flower terpene profiles. (Photo: Chris Kudialis for Leafly)

Staffers at Good Day Farm St. Louis spent more than a month building up the store’s inventory for an expected rush of pot buyers on Monday—only to have them show up on Friday. Good Day Farms saw over three times as many paying customers during its first weekend of rec than a typical medical-only weekend. They expect to see that trend to continue in the days ahead.

“The early start was a blessing in disguise because it staggered out the rush and made us more accessible,” said Luke Gerau, Good Day’s brand manager. “We got a ton of customers and it didn’t require anyone having to wait in long lines.”

As part of Good Day expanding its team (200 employees across its 19 dispensaries in Missouri) the number of budtenders at the St. Louis store at any given time expanded from three to five. On Monday morning, the beefed-up staff offered extra assistance to a pair of customers who had the shopping floor all to themselves.

The customers, brothers from St. Louis in their 30s, asked not to be identified. But they smiled as they walked out of the dispensary with eighths of Blueberry Headband and Poison OG flower.

“Enough to get us high,” one of them cracked.

Laurie Gregory, Good Day’s chief marketing officer, said the majority of the products flying off the store’s shelves are flower goodies like pre-rolls and eighths, but added that concentrates and edibles each make up about 15 of total sales. The company also grows and sells Titty Sprinkles, one of Missouri’s most popular strains whose grower donates a portion of proceeds to breast cancer research groups.

“It’s been a crazy few days,” Gregory said, “but it’s a fun craziness.”



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What is Vivek Ramaswamy’s Position on Cannabis? – Cannabis | Weed | Marijuana

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What is Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis? “You don’t hear me talk about the war on drugs. I’m not a war on drugs person,” Ramaswamy said when he appeared at a Free State Project event in New Hampshire last June.

Vivek Ramaswamy is an American entrepreneur seeking the Republican nomination to run for President of the United States.

Ramaswamy told the crowd he was “probably the only person in the modern history” of the Republican Party to talk about decriminalizing drugs for people with PTSD and other mental health problems.

Psychedelics,” he said specifically. “From ayahuasca to ketamine… That’s gotta be part of the solution.”

But what is Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis? He told Fox News:

We got to catch up with the times. It’s not a popular position in the Republican Party, but I’d just, again, I guess I’m going to speak the truth. Whether you vote for me or not is your choice. I think the time has come to decriminalize it.

Later, a spokesperson from his campaign said:

The current state-level ‘legalization‘ farce contributes to the culture of lawbreaking. It’s literally against the law. For us to pretend otherwise only undermines the rule of law in this country. For that reason, Vivek favors the federal legalization of marijuana.

What is Vivek Ramaswamy’s Position on Cannabis?

Vivek Ramaswamy's Position on Cannabis

What is Vivek Ramaswamy’s Position on Cannabis? Decriminalization or legalization? Once upon a time, those meant the same thing. And indeed, in America, this may still ring true.

Vivek isn’t shy about wanting to rule by executive fiat. Suppose he’s the next U.S. President and unilaterally deschedules cannabis. Not a rescheduling, a complete descheduling.

As far as the federal government is concerned – cannabis is not its business.

Is that decriminalization or legalization? For operators in legal states, it certainly helps their tax situation. And why would the financial system fear a plant the government has delisted as a controlled substance?

Is that legalization or decriminalization? Or are those terms synonymous?

If a Ramaswamy Administration removed cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act entirely, there would be a few implications.

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Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis could empower state-level regulations. If the federal government takes a literal hands-off approach, you could argue that’s not legalization.

But is legalization ideal? Should Washington D.C. force states like Idaho to legalize? Suppose people in Idaho want to consume cannabis legally. There are 23 other states they can move to, including next-door neighbors.

Even if all 50 states legalized – isn’t it better to have local regulation of a competitive and complex modern industry? Think of the supply chain: cultivation, production, packaging, distribution, sales, marketing, and everything in between.

Do you want D.C. bureaucrats in charge of all that? Isn’t that how lobbyists capture the process and rig the rules against the little guys?

When The Feds Do Get Involved

Of course, some will argue Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis can’t be entirely hands-off. Somebody is going to have to regulate interstate commerce and international trade.

Imports and exports are federal jurisdiction and always have been. Of course, Vivek’s brand of governing may detest interstate regulation. A Ramaswamy Administration may create a free-for-all for all industries, not only cannabis.

One can hope.

And, of course, FDA bureaucrats will want to control aspects of cannabis, especially if it’s used in food products or marketed as a medical treatment. In a sense, descheduling and taking a hands-off approach empowers the existing bureaucracy.

But Vivek can use the stroke of the Presidential pen and tell the FDA to buzz off. Such is the state of the American “republic.”

Of course, if Vivek Ramaswamy becomes President, he won’t be able to decline the tax revenue. Who can, really? Except for maybe Ron Paul.

So, the federal government may tax cannabis. And so Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis matters a great deal. 

But there’s something else. And it involves Vivek’s policy on the Federal Reserve Bank.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Position on Cannabis & Money Could Change the World 

Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis and money could change the world. And here’s how.

Experts must control money. That’s what the experts say. That’s why supply and demand don’t determine interest rates. You can’t trust free markets, they say. You need a central planning committee of experts.

But when the hell has that ever worked? This is not the 1920s, this is the 2020s. We have evidence of central planning, and the results are far worse than any of the theoretical excesses of free-market capitalism.

But suppose the experts are right about one thing. The price of money is too volatile to leave to a truly random process. That there should be a more market-based approach to price stability.

As in, leave it to the experts, but not the boardroom suits. Leave it to the people who are actually buying and selling in the market on a daily basis.

Like Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis, his proposal for the Federal Reserve is a breath of fresh air—a novel idea in an age of corporate-state shallowness.

What is a Government Gold Standard?

Vivek Ramaswamy's Position on Cannabis

A country on a gold standard exchanges its currency for gold at a fixed rate, say, $35 an ounce. And vice versa. So, if the market price of gold goes beyond $35, people bring in their dollars to exchange for gold.

This process means the number of dollars in circulation decreases, so the value of the dollar increases. This continues until the market price of gold is back to $35.

If the market price drops below $35, the same process works in reverse. Historically common, it’s not without its flaws. Governments tinker with the mechanism like a curious 12-year-old who takes apart the television to see how it works (and ends up breaking it in the process).

A gold standard keeps the value of the money constant relative to the market price of gold. Economists have all kinds of critics and rebuttals as to why that wouldn’t work today in the “modern” economy.

To their credit, relying on gold as the sole commodity backing the government currency does run into problems. Especially when governments are always trying to cheat the system.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s position on cannabis stems from listening to the people and the real experts (i.e. not “public health”). He is responding with the correct answers. He has – more or less – done the same with the subject of the Federal Reserve and the money.

What is a Commodity Bundle Standard?

Vivek Ramaswamy's Position on Cannabis

Vivek Ramaswamy should combine his positions on money and cannabis. 

Vivek wants a commodity bundle standard to help solve the problem of using government currency. In this system, the market defines the U.S. Dollar as a collection of commodities. This collection or bundle is valued by what’s in it.

For example, suppose you had one million dollars. You take it to the bank and demand your bundle. It could consist of a few pounds of gold and silver, but it’d mostly be a claim on commodities (i.e. 100 pounds of grade A beef, 10 barrels of crude oil, 1,000 board feet of lumber).

Likewise, anyone who brings in a bundle (the claim on commodities) gets a million dollars. This keeps the bundle’s price at a million dollars and, thus, a stable purchasing power, assuming nobody is messing with the bundle.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Position on Cannabis & Money Could Change the World 

Vivek Ramaswamy could combine his positions on money and cannabis by including 1,000 pounds of industrial hemp biomass and 500 grams of premium-grade cannabis flower in the commodity bundle.

Regarding “changing the world,” you’ll have to refer to some of our past posts on the subject

The main takeaway: eliminating the elite’s ability to create money out of thin air and charge interest on it can only be construed as a step in the right direction. 

In fact, it’s the first step. 





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Regulating Cannabis like Fish – Cannabis | Weed | Marijuana

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Regulating cannabis like fish? Excuse me, what? According to Leah Heise, the cannabis industry can learn much from commercial fishing.

An accomplished cannabis exec, Leah’s been the CAO of Ascend Wellness Holdings, the CEO of Women Grow, CXO of 4Front Ventures and President of Chesapeake Integrated Health Institute.

While at Ascend, Leah focused on growing the business from 73 employees to more than 1300 in less than 18 months, taking the company from $19M in revenue in 2019 to a $1.6B market cap in 2021.

Leah is also a medical cannabis patient, having discovered the herb after being hospitalized over 35 times for pancreatitis.

Leah Heise is a cannabis expert. Her expertise is unparalleled, unlike the so-called “experts” in the media who spew drug war propaganda.

So when she says the cannabis industry has much to learn from commercial fisheries, our ears perk up.

Regulating cannabis like fish? Say what?

Regulating Cannabis from Stigma 

Regulating Cannabis like Fish
Leah Heise

Having experience in the regulatory landscape, Leah knows what’s working and what’s doomed to fail. And unfortunately, most legal states have been regulating cannabis from a position of stigma.

“We do everything by piecemeal, by litigation. It’s very costly to the system and there’s just a better, more streamlined way to do it,” says Leah. “And I think that potentially regulating it similar to a commercial fishing industry may be the way to do it.”

Of course, Leah points out that there are other options, and this is just one of many ideas. But, she says, “These regulators need to understand the things they are regulating.”

“They’re doing it from a place of stigma and lack of education,” Leah says. “We have to turn back one hundred years of stigma and propaganda.”

Whether it’s racial stigma or false beliefs that cannabis will rot your brain, Leah emphasizes education. From scientific papers proving cannabis’ efficacy to patient stories to studies that associate legal cannabis with fewer cases of domestic abuse and alcoholism.

“The industry and the plant need a rebrand,” says Leah. “It’s not Cheech and Chong. It’s everyone; it’s diverse. Anybody could be using this, from your great-grandmother to your child, depending on what they have. It’s not going to make their brains die or reduce IQ.”

Regulators Need Education

Simply put, the public (and many regulators) are uneducated on cannabis. Drug warriors amplify its alleged harms while marginalizing its medical and therapeutic benefits.

But how would regulating cannabis like fish help? Leah admits that if the feds get involved, a strong regulatory body needs to be created.

“Or just let the states do it,” she says. “We don’t necessarily need another layer on top.”

But suppose the federal government does step in and institute national cannabis regulations. What can we learn from the commercial fishing industry?

Regulating Cannabis like Fish

What can the cannabis industry learn from commercial fishing? How does one regulate cannabis like fish?

“Fisheries is a highly regulated industry,” says Leah. “Because the government’s trying to balance the interests of the environmental groups with the interest of the commercial fishing industry.”

Yes, they are separate products, but both are natural and come from the Earth. Likewise, generations of people work in the industry, whether it’s multiple generations of fishermen (and women). Or the legacy farmers in the cannabis industry (especially in black and brown communities).

With the commercial fishing industry, there’s the problem of overfishing. “In an effort to save the planet, and the fisheries themselves, the federal government has stepped in,” says Leah.

And she sees opportunities for the cannabis industry and its regulators to learn from the commercial fishing industry.

Commercial fishing regulators don’t regulate from a place of stigma. “I haven’t seen a single state,” says Leah, referring to legal cannabis states, “where there’s not a massive lawsuit. And even with Schedule III, there’s going to be lawsuits.”

Learning from the Commercial Fishing Industry

Leah prefers a more comprehensive way of regulating cannabis, which borrows from the successes of the commercial fishing industry.

“They design things called fishery management plans,” she says. “Scientists in the government will come forward and say, ‘okay we’re starting to see Atlantic sea scallops start to collapse. We’re seeing a decline in the number of new pollock. And we need to come up with a fishery management plan to work this.’”

Leah says the commercial fishing industry has councils with different stakeholders, from environmental groups to commercial industries to recreational groups.

“They come together to regulate themselves,” says Leah. “It speeds up the process and really eliminates a lot of the issues in terms of getting sued, because stakeholders at least feel like they have a voice.”

“Nobody walks away happy,” Leah adds. “Which is kind of what happens with any real decent negotation, right? Everybody’s giving a little.”

Leah thinks having a board of stakeholders would prevent things like canopy caps or taxing inside the supply chain. Things that ultimately hurt the industry and only empower illicit markets.

The problem, says Leah, is that current cannabis regulators “aren’t holistically looking to see what the impacts are,” of the various regulations they’ve instituted.

Regulating Cannabis like Fish – Unintended Consequences?

Regulating Cannabis like Fish

Is there any state already doing this? What are the odds D.C. will create cannabis regulations that embody the principles of the commercial fishing industry?

One of the biggest problems, says Leah, is the lack of money on the enforcement side. From her regulator days, Leah recalls:

We were handed often times very dense regulations to enforce. But we weren’t given the money that we needed to be given to it, to hire the people, and train the people we needed to actually enforce those regulations.

The result is cannabis operators openly flaunting the rules because paying the fines is sometimes cheaper than observing the regulations.

There’s also debate on how heavy cannabis regulations should be. Should we regulate it like alcohol? Or should we consider cannabis a vegetable no more dangerous than a carrot?

“I think that the polarization that exists in this industry exists in the country,” says Leah, so there’s no easy answer.

Unintended Consequences

Bill Gates & Justin Trudeau

But one thing to watch out for is the unintended consequences of regulation. Leah recalls visiting Africa, particularly Botswana, about a year ago.

“The Gates Foundation had contributed billions of dollars worth of mosquito nets,” Leah recalls.

They thought that giving people mosquito nets would eliminate malaria. But what they didn’t understand is that [the Bostwanans] needed food. So what the people did was they used the nets to fish with. But the nets were covered with pesticides. It killed off all the fish. And you still have malaria, and you have no food, and it’s because there wasn’t really a holistic decision in that instance. [The Gates Foundation] wasn’t informed enough to answer what the real primary need was.

Unintended consequences are an unavoidable fact of life. In Canada, for example, the government legalized cannabis from a position of stigma and propaganda. The result is a thriving black market catering to consumer demands the legal market can’t fulfil.

With that in mind, we asked Leah how likely, on a scale of one to ten, would the United States legalize and regulate according to rational and holistic principles? Will authorities regulate cannabis like fish?

If ten is the ideal and one is stigma and propaganda, what’s the verdict?

“I think it’s going to be less than 5,” says Leah. And like the situation in Canada or the more restricted US legal states, the consequences of regulating from stigma suggest a robust illicit market.

“You can decide to go the legal route or you can decide to go the illegal route,” says Leah. “But you’re not going to make it go away.”





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SAFER Banking Act Passes Senate Committee – Cannabis | Weed | Marijuana

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The SAFER Banking Act has passed a critical Senate Committee hearing with a vote of 14-9. The renamed bipartisan bill would allow banks to work with cannabis businesses without penalties from the federal government.

The U.S. cannabis industry has long been waiting for SAFER Banking to pass the Senate. Alongside 280E tax burdens, the lack of access to essential banking services has unnecessarily handicapped the industry.

With SAFER Banking passing the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, this marks the first time Senate members have voted in favour of cannabis banking reform. The House of Representatives has voted for the bill seven times before.

But now what? What’s the next step in reforming cannabis banking in the United States?

SAFER Banking Act Passes Senate Committee

SAFER Banking Senate Committee

While the SAFER Banking Act passing a Senate Committee is undoubtedly good news, it’s not the end of this lengthy saga.

After passing the Senate Committee, the SAFER Banking Act will head off to the Senate and the House for more debates, amendments, and votes. Assuming this goes smoothly, the bill will eventually land on the President’s desk, where everyone expects him to sign it.

The recent Senate Committee vote clears the path for the bill to make it to the Senate floor. Passing the bill would mean cannabis businesses in legal states would no longer have to operate as cash-only enterprises. Handling massive amounts of money in cash is inconvenient but also dangerous. Cannabis operators have been vulnerable to theft and fraud.

Hence, industry stakeholders applaud the Senate Committee for decisively voting for SAFER Banking.

 “[It’s] a historic step towards final passage of a critical policy building block for the cannabis industry,” said Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA) President Kaliko Castille.

MCBA has been committed to ensuring that the House and Senate not only pass the SAFER Banking Act but also contain provisions to aid minority entrepreneurs who have been the primary targets of the drug war.

“The committee’s approval of the SAFER Banking Act gives hope to thousands of compliant, tax-paying businesses desperately trying to access the basic financial services other businesses take for granted,” said National Cannabis Industry Association CEO Aaron Smith. “This uniquely bipartisan legislation has the potential to save lives and help small businesses; it’s time for Congress to get it to the president’s desk without further delay.”

What Next?

SAFER Banking Senate Committee

The Senate Committee’s passing of the SAFER Banking Act may have been influenced by recent cannabis news coming from Washington, D.C.

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services officially recommended that the DEA move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III in the federal Controlled Substances Act.

That change wouldn’t affect banking, but it would relieve operators of the burdensome 280E tax. The potential rescheduling gave a shot in the arm to pot stocks. Perhaps it also lit a fire under the butts of American Senators.

SAFER Banking would give the U.S. cannabis industry better access to financial services, including depository services, electronic payments, lending, and other access to capital. 

Even Canadian cannabis companies will benefit from banking reform in the U.S. Currently, Canadian banks take the same drug-war mentality despite the herb’s legal status north of the 49th. Canada’s oligarch banks have a significant presence in the American economy that they don’t want to compromise.

Advocates are hopeful the Senate will eventually pass the SAFER Banking Act, as it has bipartisan support among Republicans and Democrats.

The United States has legal cannabis in 23 states, the District of Columbia and two territories. Every state has a medical cannabis program except Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and South Carolina.

Three in four Americans live in a legal cannabis state. At this point, federal cannabis legalization seems less of a question of “if” and more of a matter of when. 





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