You may not know who Arjan Roskam is, but you’ve probably smoked his ganja. Arjan’s been breeding some of the most famous marijuana strains in the entire world—like White Widow, Super Silver Haze, among others—for over 20 years.
He opened his first “coffee shop” in 1992 in Amsterdam and has since crafted his skills into a market-savvy empire known as Green House Seed Company, which rakes in millions of dollars a year.
He’s won 38 Cannabis Cups and dubbed himself the King of Cannabis.
In this well-researched VICE doc, the crew joins Arjan in Colombia to look for three of the country’s rarest types of weed, strains that have remained genetically pure for decades. They trudge up mountains and crisscross military checkpoints in the country’s still-violent south, and then head north to the breathtaking Caribbean coast. As the dominoes of criminalization fall throughout the world, Arjan is positioned to be at the forefront of the legitimate international seed trade.
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CORPORATIONS AND MARIJUANA: LEGAL WEED GOES MAINSTREAM
Americans could learn from Canada, as the New York Times explains in When Cannabis Goes Corporate. Canada’s free-for-all approach prompted complaints from police and local governments, so Canada adopted a regulated system for growth and sales. Enter Tweed Marijuana, one of the companies licensed to grow medical marijuana in Canada.The new rules allow prescription holders to buy from approved, large-scale, producers. More informal growing operations suffer. But the changes have spawned an industry of more legitimate producers with bigger business models. And that should mean more sales.
Canada expects to collect taxes on over $3.1 billion in annual sales. The figures stateside could be vastly better. In Washington State, where even recreational marijuana is now legal, the Liquor Control Board hired Prof. Mark Kleiman of UCLA to research the state’s marijuana market. He estimated Washington’s medical and illicit consumption generated approximately $1.2 billion in sales annually.
Medical marijuana neon sign at a dispensary on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Colorado too voted to legalize marijuana even for recreational use. Already, Colorado gets $2 million from marijuana taxes. And while there are rules in Colorado and Washington, both states seem well on their way to regulating and profiting from the industry. Medical use is far more prevalent, now numbering 20 legal medical marijuana states and D.C.
Yet in the Feds’ view, regardless of state legality, marijuana is a controlled substance and illegal under federal law. As more states have clashed with federal law, this mismatch has become more contentious. The Department of Justice issued a response suggesting that it will lay off the raids and prosecutions.
But the feds will lay off only if the states create “a tightly regulated market” with rules that address federal “enforcement priorities” such as preventing interstate smuggling, diversion to minors, and “adverse public health consequences.” Those phrases seem imbued with discretion. This memo to U.S. attorneys makes clear that the DOJ can still prosecute growers and sellers.
To be sure, this is much bigger than a tax problem. And yet the tax problems of the industry are huge and are thought to be one of the industry’s major impediments. Section 280E of the tax code denies even legal dispensaries tax deductions. The main culprit is Congress, not the IRS. The IRS has said it has no choice but to enforce the tax code passed by Congress.
How big is the industry’s problem? “The federal tax situation is the biggest threat to businesses and could push the entire industry underground,” the leading trade publication for the marijuana industry reported. One answer has been for dispensaries to deduct expenses from other businesses distinct from dispensing marijuana. If a dispensary sells marijuana and is in the separate business of care-giving, the care-giving expenses are deductible. If only 10% of the premises are used to dispense marijuana, most of the rent is deductible.
Another idea is for marijuana sellers to operate as nonprofit social welfare organizations. That way Section 280E shouldn’t apply. The industry needs to operate more like other businesses. Sometimes such matters involve structural questions. To avoid trouble with the IRS, some claim that dispensaries should be organized as cooperatives or collectives.
The Marijuana Tax Equity Act would end the federal prohibition on marijuana and allow it to be taxed. The bill would also impose an excise tax on cannabis sales and an annual occupational tax on workers in the growing field of legal marijuana.
(Thanks to reporter Robert Wood and Forbes magazine for this post.)
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Never Fear, The Pot Will Appear: Everything You Need to Know About Washington’s Recreational Roll-Out
The moment in history has arrived – enabling citizens to walk into a store and LEGALLY buy a bag of marijuana! But hold on a sec…
If there’s any way you can wait a few days to buy your legal weed from a recreational store in Washington State, you should. Seattle’s first retail pot shop, Cannabis City, is going to be a mob-scene when the doors open at (high) noon – and then they’re gonna run out of marijuana. The same will be true with the other 23 stores given retail licenses by the state today.
Though Washington State made weed legal a year and a half ago with the passage of Initiative 502, it’s taken some time to fine-tune the details. State agencies have had to vet growers, deal with inspections (now there’s a fun job!), quarantine herb before it could be shipped, and grant licenses to retailers who then had to install security cameras, tinted windows, pot-tracking software(!) and hopefully a Slurpee machine! (Imagine if they ran these kinds of background checks for folks trying to buy firearms!)
Right off the bat, there will be extremely limited supplies for ganja, as only 79 growers got the permits (from over 7000 applications!), and most those harvests won’t come in until late this month. So if you were looking forward to the PowerPurpleKushBerryCrunch that won the Cannabis Cup, yer gonna be waiting a bit longer. But hey – all good things are worth waiting for – besides, that SuperChronicHydroponic stuff will put you on the couch for days on end. Moderation, man! Prices will start high (up to $400 an ounce – ouch), but like Teslas, Furby dolls and the Galaxy S5, come down over time. Besides, would you rather pay $25 for a legal gram, or go black-market style, potentially rooming in the tank with Big Bubba while funding Mexican cartels and an over-crowded and money-sucking prison system?
Oh – and those Reefer’s Peanut Butter cup brownies you were so excited to try – that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon either. No edibles have so far been given the green light in Washington, as the process for licensing kitchens has been painfully slow. (Part of the debate has been a good one, with lawmakers wishing to make sure THC-laden edibles and sodas are not targeted to kids and that labels are clear enough even for Maureen Dowd to understand.) While I like the idea of child-resistant packaging, it’s hard enough for non-stoned adults to open a damn aspirin bottle, so I do hope they don’t make things too difficult…
Within a month or so, things will be running as smooth as the cool-kids have it goin’ on in Colorado, with varied and plentiful products, and more tax dollars than ever to blow on items like roads, infrastructure, and, hopefully, drug education and teacher’s salaries. Unlike Colorado, a major hurdle in Washington that has never been addressed is the way medical marijuana dispensaries will be treated. As of now, the myriad of retail regs are not being applied to these long-standing dispensaries, causing hell and havoc for many card-carrying marijuana patients who are truly in need and benefit greatly from the medicinal uses of weed.
The good news for those who do have marijuana cards – the strange gray-area they currently reside in allows them to purchase edibles of all-kinds – including licorice chews, gourmet chocolates and marijuana-infused hard candies. Not that I’ve tried any…
When it comes to the marijuana movement, it’s important to keep the mellow in mind, and visualize the Big Picture. As of this very moment: two States have legalized weed, and 20 more are scheduled to vote on the issue in the next two years. Like marriage equality, it’s going to happen – we just need the naysayers, Bible-thumpers and right-wing fundamentalists to come to their senses or, more likely, succumb to the will of the people – and the democratic process.
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HERSHEY SUES EDIBLE MARIJUANA CO. OVER EDIBLES (AND REEFERS PEANUT BUTTER CUPS)
(Washington Post)
The Hershey Co. has filed a trademark suit against an edible marijuana company for selling weed-infused snacks with packaging that mimics some of Hershey’s signature candies.
In the lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Denver, Hershey claims that the Colorado-based medical marijuana manufacturer Tincture Belle is selling products that look suspiciously like its Reese’s, Heath, Almond Joy and York Peppermint Pattie brands.
Not only are the products packaged in similar colors as the Hershey originals, the candy-making giant contends, their names are also reminiscent of their analogs: Hashees, Hasheath, Ganja Joy and Dabby Patty.
Hershey says that the packaging is not only a clear trademark violation, but also a safety risk to consumers — especially children — “who may not distinguish between Hershey’s candy products and defendants’ cannabis- and/or tetrahydrocannabinol-based products.”
Although recreational and medicinal marijuana sales are legal in Colorado, the burgeoning edible pot industry has raised some safety concerns.
In April, a Denver teen plunged off a balcony after eating six times the recommended amount of a marijuana brownie. And another man was accused of killing his wife in a hallucinatory episode after eating marijuana candy and rolling a joint, according to CBS News.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s own encounter with a caramel-chocolate flavored candy bar prompted her to argue in her column for greater regulation of the edibles industry.
It appears that Tincture Belle’s Web site and Facebook page are down. But according to the Associated Press, the products can be found in Colorado’s pot shops and medical marijuana dispensaries.
According to Tincture Belle, their pot products are gluten-free, vegan, sugar-free, GMO-free and peanut-free — although they do come with a hint of imitation.
(Thanks to Abby Philip for original post in Washington Post)
