PHOENIX  --  The Clarendon Hotel and Spa in downtown Phoenix is open for business. Hotel managers say it is "Arizona's first Cannabis-friendly hotel."

“We are a cannabis-friendly hotel and have a cannabis-friendly event company that is elevating and educating the community about cannabis,” says Daron Brotherton, the VP of Operations at the hotel.

The cannabis sleeping rooms are located on the west side of the hotel property where guests can partake in edibles, flower and vape which have been purchased at a local dispensary. Cannabis flower usage is allowed in designated areas only. To shop for cannabis, the hotel will offer a car service to drive guests to a dispensary where they can also rent pipes and bongs.

London-listed marijuana business Kanabo (KNB.L) has struck a deal that it says will make it Europe's biggest publicly traded cannabis company.

Kanabo said on Monday it had agreed terms to buy the European operations of Canada's Materia, a cannabis processor and supplier. Exact terms weren't disclosed but Kanabo said the deal would be paid for through shares and subject to performance-related goals.

"The only part that we’re not involved in now in the supply chain is cultivation," Kanabo's chief executive Avihu Tamir told Yahoo Finance UK. "Our belief is that cultivation will be a commodity like other agricultural products. We believe the value is in the last mile."

Pharmacologists at the University of Sydney in Australia have found tantalising clues as to why low-dose CBD products containing a full-spectrum of cannabinoids seem to have therapeutic impacts at relatively low doses.

The study shows cannabinoids in a cannabis extract interact to produce much higher concentrations of cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) in the bloodstream than when CBDA is administered alone as a single molecule.

In fact, the cannabis extract delivered 14-times higher CBDA concentrations in the bloodstream when administered orally to mice.

Low-dose CBD products appear to reduce anxiety and are anticonvulsant agents against seizures. But it remains unclear how these products produce these results.

"Our own preclinical studies show CBDA reduces anxiety and seizures. This result provides us with a pathway to explore why some cannabis extracts yield pharmacological effects in humans at lower doses”, said the researchers.

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/21/07/22112492/advocacy-coalit... York Cannabis United is calling on both the Cuomo Administration and New York State Legislators to uphold the promises made in the new law by swiftly appointing leadership to the Cannabis Control Board.

By Imani A. Dawson

To date, 19 states have voted to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. Where is the legality of recreation, marijuana production and distribution is booming, Billions of dollars Provides industry, tax revenue and work.

Meanwhile, 36 State and 4 territories Pots may be legal for some uses, but not all, as they have legalized medical pots and their numbers overlap to some extent with recreational aggregates. Two states And under federal law, cannabis is still completely illegal. In other words, you need to know from state to state whether you will be imprisoned for possessing marijuana. When you cross state boundaries, it’s a misleading patchwork of law and a legitimate minefield, and numbers continue to change.

As a nation, how will we tackle this issue at the federal level and create a fair competition for all?

Jason Flores-Williams is a Colorado-based lawyer. Jonathan wallA 25-year-old man awaiting trial on marijuana-related charges at Supermax Prison in Baltimore. Wall faces up to 15 years to distribute cannabis, which is perfectly legal in other states. Williams is trying to raise awareness of these disparities in the United States and is calling on the federal government to intervene and end the marijuana ban.

Jonathan Wall is awaiting trial in 2022 on marijuana-related charges.

It’s happened to the best of us. It’s late at night and we’ve totally underestimated the amount of marijuana at our disposal. We aren’t in a position to buy more at the moment. We look through our ashtray and our weed baggie and there’s nothing useful in sight. Then we spot the stems. Should we smoke them? Can we smoke them?

Sadly, it appears that weed stems are different from the usual bud you smoke. For starters, they don’t contain much THC, rendering them useless if you’re looking to get high. They also taste bad and woody, because there’s no plant in them, and they’re associated with a batch of negative side effects like headaches, sore throats and coughing fits, according to Healthline.

Still, just because you can’t smoke cannabis stems doesn’t mean you can’t find something useful to do with them. A lot of people find inventive ways of incorporating these parts of cannabis, using them to brew teas, to make tinctures, topicals and to even make stem butter. While there’s not much THC in stems, they are still a part of the cannabis plant, having many of the mysterious health benefits that experts and cannabis users love.

Before re-purposing your stems for any reason, it’s important to decarboxylate them, activating however small amount there is of THC and other cannabinoids. Once you’re done with this part of the process, you can infuse the stems into whatever you want.

Cannabis stems aren’t likely to get you high, but they could provide therapeutic and relaxing effects for you. There’s anecdotal evidence of cannabis stem teas treating nausea, anxiety, chronic pain, and more, all the while eliminating the unpredictable psychoactive effects of cannabis drinks. We even have a recipe for it.

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/21/07/22108497/cbd-can-reduce-...

This week, CV Sciences (OTCQB:CVSI) released the results of a preclinical study that suggests that CBD can reduce nicotine withdrawal symptoms in smokeless tobacco users.

The study, conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, San Diego and published on Springer Nature, found that CBD prevented nicotine-dependent rats from exhibiting withdrawal symptoms including increased pain sensitivity and weight gain during short-and long-term nicotine restriction.

The company also released its potential plans to develop the world’s first and only FDA-approved treatment for smokeless tobacco addiction. 

On July 12, 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 141 (AB-141), which creates the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC). The DCC will consolidate the three state cannabis programs – the Bureau of Cannabis Control (BCC), the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) CalCannabis Cultivation Licensing Division, and the California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) Manufactured Cannabis Safety Branch – under a single department in an effort to centralize and simplify regulatory and licensing oversight in California. Governor Newsom has appointed Nicole Elliott as the initial Director of the DCC.

The complexities associated with dealing with California’s three-headed cannabis regulatory monster – for example, determining which regulatory body to answer to, understanding how the various regulatory bodies play into vertical integration, and keeping track of each program’s frequent updates – sometimes impeded the success of entrepreneurs and businesses in the cannabis industry.

The creation of the DCC aims to eliminate these issues. AB-141 transfers the “powers, duties, purposes, functions, responsibilities, and jurisdiction” of the BCC, CDFA, and CDPH to the DCC.

“The state’s consolidation effort delivers on the commitment made by the Newsom Administration to listen to and work with California’s legal cannabis industry to streamline participation in the legal market by offering a central point of contact for licensed operators,” Lourdes Castro Ramirez, secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing (BCSH) Agency, said in a statement.

In addition to consolidating California’s cannabis regulatory bodies, the DCC will also increase licensing transparency within the cannabis industry. AB-141 will require the DCC to provide information on its internet website related to the status of every license issued by the DCC, including the county of a licensee’s address of record. Beginning January 1, 2022, AB-141 will require this information to include information on suspensions and revocations of licenses and final decisions adopted by the DCC. However, AB-141 will prohibit the sharing of personal identifying information, including home addresses, home telephone numbers, dates of birth, or social security numbers.

The North Carolina Senate keeps advancing a bill that would legalize medical marijuana here, as the state remains one of the few holdouts in the country without such a law.

Senators in the Finance Committee passed the bill Wednesday, after a brief discussion about the taxes and other revenue it might bring to North Carolina if passed. No one had a solid estimate, but based on other states, it would likely bring in tens of millions of dollars a year.

Plant Growth Regulators seem nonthreatening, but this cannabis should instill fear in you as a user. Heres why. Of course, you have heard about the negative impact of fungicides and pesticides on your bud, but that is not the only risk of contamination you will experience. There is another chemical scare brewing in the cannabis industry, and you’ve got to know how to identify it.

Plant Growth Regulators (PGR) weed is a novel substance in the cannabis sector, and it came to bear because of the desire for larger buds and yields. When consumer’s demand for cannabis goes higher, farmers start cutting corners by squirting the cannabis crop with damaging PGRs. So now metal contamination should be your sole concern as a cannabis consumer; you also need to be worried about the possibility of PGR in your weed.

What is PGR?

In the 1930s, American agricultural enthusiasts were faced with a chemical revolution. At this time, the farm industry in America had accepted the use of synthetic chemicals, which includes things like:

This was also a time when new chemical applications referred to as “Plant Hormones” and regulators were applied to pineapples to boost their flower production. Farmers in this American agricultural era started to adopt these methods with other crops, hence gaining popularity.

The plant growth regulators used on crops were aimed at controlling their growth in a particular way. For example, with cannabis, it meat that cannabis growers will have denser buds, larger yields, and bushier crops, which were a sign of abundant growth.

Aside from cannabis, the plant growth regulator can be sprayed on trees to keep them short and preserve them; there are also other ways of application on crops. PGRs are chemicals utilized to change the rate at which a plant grows or alters a part of the plant.

New York Cannabis United is calling on both the Cuomo Administration and New York State Legislators to uphold the promises made in the new law by swiftly appointing leadership to the Cannabis Control Board.

By Imani A. Dawson

On March 31st, Governor Cuomo signed the Marihuana Regulation and Taxation (MRTA) into law, conceived as one of the nation’s most equitable. The law has the potential to create the country’s largest legal cannabis industry and mitigate the harms experienced by Black and brown communities in the process.

Three months later, legalization has stalled in New York. Elected officials have taken no clear and public steps to create the promised cannabis industry grounded in social justice, economic equity, and environmental renewal. Every day that goes by without the administrative structure in place to implement the MRTA harms New Yorkers. The lack of transparency around selection criteria and lack of action around proposing candidates undermines this historic victory.

New York Cannabis United (NYCU), a coalition of New York cannabis advocacy organizations, businesses, farmers, aspiring entrepreneurs and people disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition, is calling on both the Cuomo Administration and New York State Legislators to uphold the promises made in the new law by swiftly appointing leadership to the Cannabis Control Board (CCB) and Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) leadership who represent the geographic and cultural diversity of New York state.

Dear Governor Cuomo and New York Lawmakers:

Chairman Bryan says he doesn’t intend on calling any additional hearings regarding medical marijuana. 

On Wednesday, the Mississippi Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee met to hear from a series of speakers as the lawmakers continue to gather information in preparation for a medical marijuana bill to implement a program in the state.

The committee heard testimonies from:

Sen. Hob Bryan

After each individual spoke in front of the senators, Chairman Sen. Hob Bryan stated that one of the goals he had in mind with holding the public hearings is to flesh out the issues and have some public conversation. Chairman Bryan feels as if the committee has accomplished this.

“I do not intend to call any additional hearings. I think the hearings we’ve had have been productive,” said Bryan. “Just speaking for myself, I think that I have gotten something out of every single presentation at every single hearing which is a pretty good track record.” 

Report from Brightfield Group details most popular CBD sweet edibles as well as consumers’ need to either take the edge off or charge through their day.

Market research firm Brightfield Group’s U.S. Cannabis Distribution Report: Cannabis Candy report revealed that, while cannabis candies are not to be consumed like candy, the industries share some similarities. Flavor innovation is thriving in both as well as the desire for both to either take a break or recharge with something sweet.

Of Brightfield’s list of top eight cannabis candies by share of shelf feature, three edibles are made by Smokiez in the flavors blackberry, sour blue raspberry and sour watermelon. Wana Wellness’ assorted hybrid sour gummies make the list, as are Kiva Confections wild berry Camino gummies, Kushy Punch hybrid raspberry gummies and Kanha blue raspberry gummies. Wyld CBD’s pomegranate 1:1 THC:CBD gummies also made the list.

Brightfield narrows cannabis candy positioning down to two types. Products that help folks unwind, according to Brightfield, are the most common – helping consumers with relaxation, sleep and stress relief, and claiming 68% of retail display space.

Of these, relaxation rules the roost, controlling nearly half of all cannabis candy space with a whopping 40% shelf share. Sleep is next at 19%.

The University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences has concluded a two-year pilot study to measure hemp cultivation possibilities in Florida. 

The project aimed to assess hemp suitability, develop management strategies and evaluate the invasion risk in Florida. The university monitored 50 different hemp varieties in outdoor and greenhouse growing environments.

Zachary Brym, an agronomy assistant professor at UF and hemp pilot project lead scientist, said that for now, the researchers were not able to identify one variety that would successfully flourish in Florida's climate. 

A new survey shows a majority of Floridians are in support of it, but organizations are still concerned it may not make the ballot in 2022. 

It's been nearly a decade since Colorado and Washington become the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana. Now, it's legal in 18 states, including the District of Columbia and Guam. Many hope the Sunshine State is next. 

"This is not a partisan issue. Across the political spectrum there is a majority of support," Suncoast NORML Chapter Executive Director Chris Cano said.

A recent survey by Public Policy Polling, shows 59% of Floridians support legalizing recreational marijuana compared to 31% of people who oppose it.

"Why is there this disconnect between public policy and what people want and it really does boil down to the other forces at work that our representative government have at play," Cano said.

Senator Jeremy Cooney of New York introduced a bill on July 20 that would build upon the state’s recreational cannabis law with a focus on getting cultivation up and running.

Several new doors are being opened in New York State due to the legalization of recreational marijuana. You can now take your stash with you when you travel on an airplane.

The Albany Times Union reports that Transportation Security Administration officials will no longer be looking for marijuana when searching individual passengers or their luggage. The Times Union spoke with a former New York State Police Colonel by the name of Bart Johnson about the discovery of marijuana in the luggage of New York travelers. Johnson told the Times Union, "We don’t seize it. We just look for threats — explosives, knives, guns; we don’t look for illegally possessed narcotics."The author of the Times Union article also spoke with Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple about deputies who are called on to respond to TSA checkpoint lines during searches. Apple tells the Times Union that they no longer issue tickets or make arrests for possession of three ounces of pot or less, per New York State law. Not only do the deputies not issue tickets or make arrests, they do not confiscate the marijuana either.

Similar experiences have been shared about travel in states like California and Colorado. With the legalization of recreational marijuana, it's likely you'll continue to see less regulations and less enforcement when it comes to possession of pot. In the years to come, New Yorkers will be able to walk into a store and purchase pot products and in several varieties. There's comfort in knowing you can bring your favorite strain on any plane. While some law enforcement agencies are looking the other way when it comes to pot on planes, you may want to call ahead or make sure your local airport allows it.