WeedLife News Network

Wells Fargo just shouted "sell!" -- but investors bought cannabis stocks instead.

What happened

A funny thing happened in the cannabis market today. Analysts at investment bank Wells Fargo initiated coverage across the sector, warning of overvaluation among marijuana companies and suggesting investors turn their attention to hydroponics suppliers instead -- but marijuana stocks leapt higher anyway.  

As of 12:35 p.m. ET, shares of Tilray ( TLRY -6.97% ) are gaining 4.6%, and both Aurora Cannabis ( ACB -4.41% ) and Canopy Growth ( CGC -6.76% ) are up 7.1% each.

City attorney asked to analyze current guidelines

Upon returning to its cannabis business ordinance Tuesday, the Chico City Council made the decision to ask City Attorney Vince Ewing to analyze what is currently in place and return with some new ideas.

The item was brought forward by Mayor Andrew Coolidge as a way to look beyond dispensaries toward manufacturing and production.

There are currently 24 proposed cannabis dispensaries going forward in the application process in Chico.

Ewing suggested to the council that it directs staff to look at all the options for potentially expanding the ordinance if desired.

“Dispensaries will capture the revenue of funds that are being spent by local people that are buying these retail products in and around the city,” Petersen said.

Oklahoma County authorities found two moonshine stills and a marijuana grow in the home of a Harrah man after a four-hour standoff Wednesday afternoon.

The negotiator KFOR spoke with, Michael Davenport, said the call started out as a suicidal person. After some time on the phone with the man, it came to a peaceful end.

“I don’t know if he’s a good guy, bad guy or any other guy, he’s a person in crisis and he needs some help and we’re all human beings,” said Davenport, a 10-year veteran negotiator with the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office.

There was a massive police presence in Harrah Wednesday afternoon during a standoff with 42-year-old Bryant Hodges. Hodges was barricaded inside his home where authorities would later find the moonshine stills and marijuana grow. Davenport said the original call came in from a family member who reported a suicidal man armed with a pistol.

At one point, Hodges allegedly opened fire at officers and nearly hit them. He struck two Luther police vehicles. Davenport worked to calm the situation down over the phone.

Brookfield Township Police confirmed a driver was arrested after a traffic stop lead to officers finding various suspected drugs on Dec. 9.

BTPD stated officers pulled over a vehicle driving from Farrell to Warren for a marked lanes violation.

Officers detected criminal indicators and a probable search cause was conducted on the vehicle, according to BTPD.

BTPD said the following were found inside the vehicle:

The driver was arrested for drug paraphernalia, BTPD confirmed.

State Sen. Mike McGuire said Wednesday he plans to introduce legislation early next year to eliminate the state cultivation tax paid by cannabis growers, a favored target of the industry.

“We need to take a close look at the overall tax rate and whether it is impeding the overall growth of the cannabis market,” he said.

“The bottom line is this: Cultivation taxes are crushing small farmers throughout the North Coast,” McGuire said, adding:

“Basing it off the weight doesn’t account for when the market collapses. It’s simply not sustainable.”

To reduce the financial burden on growers, the Healdsburg Democrat, who serves as assistant majority leader in the Senate, said he plans to seek abolition of the cultivation tax in exchange for a higher excise tax, which is imposed on point-of-sale-transactions.

Marijuana works best when done as a communal activity. Here are some basic guidelines to follow if you’re interested in getting invited to these kinds of things.

While natural and organic, there are still some guidelines to follow. Once you know them, it’s pretty easy to become a good smoking buddy, and the type of person people want around once joints get passed around. You don’t want to be that person in the group who hogs all of the weed or worse, burns it.

If you bring edibles, explain what’s in them

If you’re hosting a party and have prepared some edibles, it’s part of your hosting duties to explain to everyone what’s in them in terms of dosage. You don’t have to get too specific, just mention if they’re strong, or they’re light, or, if you haven’t tried them, to explain just that. It’s also important to make it clear that there’s weed in them by labeling them, preventing others from getting high unexpectedly.

Cornering the bowl is the practice of lighting the edge of it in order to avoid burning the middle of it and thus ruining everyone’s experience. By cornering the bowl you’ll ensure the person who smokes after you also gets a patch of green marijuana, which has better taste and will result in a better time.

Getting weed delivered? Or maybe even your food? No matter how cool your delivery guy or girl looks like, they’re doing their job, and you’re putting them in an awkward place by asking them to stick around and join you and your friends. Don’t ask someone on the clock to stay for a session because you want companionship.

Luxembourg has been widely anticipated to lead the recreational discussion in Europe, but now it seems they may be giving up the lead.

There is a very funny thing about the European cannabis discussion right now, particularly as the news of the German decision to proceed with recreational reform has emerged with the formal creation of the next coalition government. Namely that promising reform while entering power is fairly popular, if not an inevitable development at this point, nobody really wants to go first.

That honor, so far, within Europe (beyond Holland) will almost certainly go to the Swiss, who are powering forward with the nitty gritty details required to create a new market as of next year. However, Switzerland is famously not in the European Union. And within such countries, no politician, at least until the German decision to proceed with recreational, has quite known how to frame such forward progress in formal statutes.

That reality has been made even more clear during the last week as Luxembourg’s government, which promised as part of its platform in 2018 that it would legalize recreational use by 2023, has just taken a rather large sidestep. Namely, the country’s first foray into this discussion will be in fact just to allow adults the right to self-cultivate four plants.

For all the hullabaloo, in other words, this is a dramatic twist if not anti-climatic development in a situation now fraught with the inevitability of reform (even if not in Luxembourg first).

Luxembourg: The First Baby Steps

What is so ironic about all of this is the fact that for the past three years, officials in Luxembourg have made it very public that they were “studying” the Canadian model. What has developed is actually far more like the Dutch (at least so far) if not the evolving situation in other European countries (see Malta, which allowed home-grow this year and appears to be actually on the verge of greater reform by the end of the year, not to mention Italy, which appears to be backing into the same thing).

ASUI passed resolutions on medical marijuana and Boise State Professor Scott Yenor

ASUI passed a slew of legislation Wednesday and held its first meeting for spring semester senators, including supporting Boise State University countering sexism and legalizing medical marijuana. 

ASUI introduced and passed a resolution supporting Boise State University students and their petition to investigate Professor Scott Yenor for sexist comments. 

The petition comes after a video from the National Conservatism Conference in Florida surfaced in which Yenor commented that women should not be recruited into the fields of engineering, medicine and law as well as trade occupations. 

Following the video’s surfacing, Yenor has since taken to Twitter. saying that there should be no “special efforts to recruit women into fields where they don’t seem to want to be.” 

“BSU students are currently petitioning and protesting actively to have (Yenor) investigated for sexist grading and sexist evaluations of fellow faculty and staff,” Director of Safety, Health and Wellness Abbey Rode said.  

Kentucky is ending 2021 on a high note. At least when it comes to the economy, according to Governor Andy Beshear.

The Bluegrass Governor told 44News, by the end of the year, new capital investments in the state will near $11 Billion. That is roughly double the annual investment Kentucky sees in a normal year.

“When you look at two of our biggest jobs and/or investments across the Commonwealth, this year, there is Pratt Paper in Henderson,” Gov. Beshear told 44News Anchor Jessica Hartman. “I am so proud of this investment.”

Announced in July, Pratt Paper plans to build two large facilities on a piece of land that was annexed into the City of Henderson for the $400 million project. The first of the two mills will produce 100% recycled paper product and create 320 jobs.

“That is their biggest investment in their history and it will be the most sophisticated recycled paper mill in the world when it is built,” continued Gov. Beshear.

Cannabinoids (CBD) can reduce tumor growth, reduce tumor invasion and can also increase the potency of certain drugs used to treat Cancer.

The town of Hartford will be holding an informational meeting on cannabis legislation next week.

The Hartford Selectboard and Hartford Community Coalition want to hear from you in a town hall scheduled for Monday.

They say the state legislature and Vermont Cannabis Control Board are in the process of developing ordinances and policies for a regulated market for cannabis.

The meeting will be held at the Hartford High School auditorium starting at 6 p.m.

Not every part of the industry sees business heat up during the holiday season. For some, like those in cultivation and packaging, it marks a wind-down on work and profits.

The holiday season is underway and so too are sales. The cannabis industry is no exception, with December sales expected to be strong once again.

Data firm LeafLink reports that sales jumped 33% the week leading up to Christmas 2020 (December 21-December 24) compared to the previous four weeks. Christmas Eve saw a 61% increase compared to the previous four Thursdays.

Grasshopper co-founders on the tool you need to streamline bulk cannabis packing processes.

Often the best inventions and innovations are born out of necessity—which is exactly what sparked the creation and development of the Grasshopper. Grasshopper Co-founders Luke Daly and Jesse Bloomfield shared why they had to build the tool they needed—because it didn’t exist yet.

A proposed $10,000 fee for licenses to grow, store or sell cannabis was flagged as possibly problematic by Red Bank’s borough attorney last week.

At the council’s workshop meeting last week, community planning Director Shawna Ebanks suggested an amendment to a recently enacted cannabis ordinance to create a licensing procedure and fee.

Environmental regulators found no evidence that the pesticides used on an Encinitas hemp farm impacted the health of its neighboring residents, but the investigation prompted by the neighbors’ complaints did find the hemp farm operator was misusing pesticides.

In the investigation, released in November, the county found hemp farm operator Cultivaris Hemp used unregistered products and maintained inadequate pesticide records. But it also concluded that those violations were unrelated to the health complaints. The department also said these violations were uncommon.

The county’s Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures, which enforces pesticide laws in the county, is considering issuing a fine or warning letter to Cultivaris Hemp.

Following standard procedure, the department also referred the investigation to the district attorney after the state classified it as a priority investigation because it involved the well-being of at least five people. The state can classify an investigation as a priority regardless of its outcome. The Environmental Protection Unit of the District Attorney’s Office could prosecute or refer it back to the department.

In 2021, home delivery of cannabis rolled out in Massachusetts as the state’s industry surpassed $2 billion in gross sales and hit the fifth anniversary of recreational legalization.

Montgomery city leaders are taking steps to bring a medical cannabis dispensary to the capital city.

On Tuesday, council members unanimously approved an ordinance authorizing the operation of a medical cannabis dispensary within city limits. The law recently passed in the legislature allows for five dispensaries across the state. City leaders say they want to make sure Montgomery is one of those possible destinations.

”Dispensaries are looking for cities to be proactive in saying ‘we’re open for business,” Councilman CC Calhoun said. “It’s an opportunity to create economic development and an opportunity to create jobs. They’re not looking to bring dispensaries into a city that’s not willing to say, ‘hey, we’re willing to do business.’ It’s taxable.”

Pecos Valley Production (PVP), a New Mexico medical cannabis company, has announced that their most recent fundraiser and partnership with the Anita Salas Memorial Fund generated an unexpected and philanthropic amount of money. During the month of October, PVP focused on raising money by educating their medical cannabis patients and ultimately asking them for a donation at checkout. Patients received entries into raffle baskets and mystery bags for their contribution efforts.

Additionally, PVP ran an internal contest throughout their stores to see which store could raise the most money. The reward for the winning store was $500 and was spread throughout the employees at the victorious location.

Because of PVP’s efforts during the fundraising campaigns, the Anita Salas Memorial Fund received a $12,000 check from them that is sure to help this longtime organization focus on education, awareness and fundraising.

The Anita Salas Memorial Fund is a nonprofit 501(c)3, that helps pay for women’s breast or cervical cancer treatment, or related bills such as transportation, lodging or medications for treatment.

The women the fund supports are moderate to low income, underinsured or uninsured. The funds go directly to the bills, not the women. There is only a 5 percent administration fee. So 95 percent is used for direct breast and cervical cancer services for women in New Mexico; with nominal amounts going toward more fundraising.

Last month, Shango continued its battle against breast cancer armed with generous donations from the company, its customers and its employees in three states. Shango began supporting breast cancer charities five years ago at its dispensary in Portland, Oregon, and has since expanded its fundraising efforts to communities in Nevada and California.

“Shango believes in building long-term relationships with purposeful local charities,” said Shango Controller Julie Dubocq. “

We seek out charities in the same communities as our dispensaries. This helps us get to know the people who work for each charity and become directly involved in its mission and fundraising.”

However, despite Shango’s strong commitment and good intentions, it’s not always easy to find charities that will actually accept its donations. Many local and national breast cancer charities refuse money raised by cannabis companies and/or from the sale of cannabis products.

“Cannabis companies are respected, successful businesses, cannabis sales generate significant tax revenue in the majority of states and medical benefits of cannabis are now widely recognized,” Dubocq said.

The pandemic has been associated with an increase in public health spending, rising mental health issues and a record number of overdose deaths, according to a report from the philanthropic arm of UnitedHealth Group.