I really fought myself on putting together a festivus post of all that went wrong for the cannabis industry in 2021. Instead, I want to focus on the positives for 2022 as the industry continues to mature and expand across the U.S. and abroad. As 2021 comes to a close, here’s what I’m looking forward
Ask any good lawyer the question, “is cannabis corporate governance important?” The answer will be a resounding yes. So why is it often ignored? Why do so many cannabis businesses treat governance as a box to tick on a checklist just once? Here’s a fact pattern our cannabis attorneys have seen time and time again:
California cannabis taxes continue to plague the industry. California cannabis taxes are undoubtedly high (although not the highest in the country). The truth is that that’s not changing anytime soon. A few weeks ago, I did an interview with KCRW where operators bemoaned the current California cannabis tax situation. Their complaints are warranted given the
On the 25th anniversary of Prop. 215, I was recently interviewed on KCRW to give my take on how California (and specifically the City of Los Angeles) has done when it comes to legalizing and licensing cannabis businesses. I’m a pretty tough critic of California in general if you read any of my writings on
Cannabis licensing has a pretty standard trajectory by this point in time. States tend to start out with medical programs and later adopt recreational programs. What usually happens is that the recreational cannabis market swallows up the medical market. The majority of medical operators will seek out and get authorization to sell recreational cannabis, and
As we anticipated, AB-45, California’s comprehensive legislation that finally regulates (and legitimizes) industrial hemp products is now law and takes effect immediately. Governor Newsom signed the bill into law this week. Pretty huge step in the right direction for California’s booming hemp products marketplace. How far has California come on the hemp spectrum when it
We wrote a couple of times about the Department of Cannabis Control’s (DCC) proposed emergency regulations. See here and here. Under those regulations, some interesting changes were proposed around the definitions of owners and financial interest holders, alongside restrictions on license stacking on “contiguous” premises (among other things). On September 15, 2021, the DCC submitted
I’ve preached before on the blog about how often our firm gets pulled into M&A deals where the parties have screwed up reporting the transaction to cannabis regulators on both the state and local levels. In California, in particular, changes of ownership have been a painful affair where the Bureau of Cannabis Control (“BCC”) routinely
Many people ignore or just don’t want to believe the fact that, until recently, California was a bit of a villain when it comes to the manufacture, distribution, and sale of industrial hemp derived products, namely hemp CBD in food, beverages, dietary supplements, animal products, and cosmetics. However, AB-45 is going to change all of
On September 8, 2021, the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) published proposed emergency cannabis regulations. These emergency regulations harmonize the previous regulations that were ported over from the prior three agencies into one combined set, and they modify some of those rules and add also new ones. The DCC also published a revised set
