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As the global cannabis industry continues to expand in ways previously unimaginable, there is a growing demand for transparency throughout the cultivation and distribution processes – complete seed to sale observability. A handful of startups around the world are tapping into this need by offering blockchain-based solutions for cannabis businesses.

For the last few years, blockchain has been touted as a new and innovative technology that could shake up a number of industries such as music and streaming, education, financial institutions and payments, healthcare, cryptocurrency, and cybersecurity. Although blockchain is still on the fringe of becoming the next big thing, it’s comparable to how the internet slowly creeped into our lives and eventually underwent a rapid evolution that reshaped modern society.

The cannabis market seems to be taking root the same way, very slowly at first but now it is a global phenomenon that cannot be stopped, regardless of its legal status. Unlike other industries, however, those working in cannabis face many unique challenges regarding regulatory changes, payment systems, and supply chains. Blockchain has been embraced as an innovative technology that can help revolutionize the way cannabis companies conduct operations and handle business.

Are you a cannabis aficionado who would like to learn more this incredible plant, as well as gain access to exclusive deals on flowers and other products? If so, make sure to subscribe to The CBD Flowers Weekly Newsletter for the best of the best that this industry has to offer, or to the Delta 8 Weekly Newsletter for the the best deals on Delta 8 THC.

Challenges faced by the cannabis industry

Although 36 states already allow the use of medical and/or recreational cannabis, it remains federally illegal, which means industry stakeholders still face some unusual hurdles that people in other fields never even have to consider – supply chain issues, accepting payments, banking and business financing, tax structures, and constant regulatory changes are only a few of the many.

Let’s start with supply chain issues, which are different in the cannabis industry than others because legal cannabis businesses are stuck competing with the still-thriving illegal market. Take California, for instance, the largest cannabis market in the world which still has black/grey sales that often outpace the legal ones. With business owners bogged down by ridiculous regulations and sky-high licensing costs, it’s no surprise that unpermitted dispensaries and illegal grow-ops are still popping up all over the country.

A bill that would make hemp-derived CBD products legal as an ingredient in dietary supplements, foods and beverages has been proposed by three U.S. Senators.

Longtime hemp supporters Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats, and Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, authored the measure, the Hemp Access and Consumer Safety Act, which directs the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to update its rules to clear a regulatory gray zone.

In the absence of federal regulations from the FDA, CBD makers and consumers have been faced with inconsistent rules – or no rules at all – in individual states, creating problems for legitimate CBD vendors and endangering public health. The proposed act in essence would force the FDA to clear a path for legal over-the-counter CBD.

Feet dragging at FDA

“Every day that the FDA drags its feet to update its CBD regulations, hemp farmers are left guessing about how their products will be regulated, and real economic gains for workers and business owners in Oregon and across the country are left on the table,” said Merkley. “Hemp-derived CBD products are already widely available, and all we need is for FDA to issue clear regulations for them just like they do for other foods, drinks and dietary supplements.”

Critics have said while the FDA makes efforts at enforcement – primarily by issuing occasional warning letters to unscrupulous CBD vendors – that has come in the absence of significant research and meaningful progress on CBD rules. CBD stakeholders criticized an update from the FDA released in January, saying the report shows little has been done to advance the process of establishing a regulatory framework for the hemp compound.

17 states have legalized adult-use cannabis, though most continue to prohibit consumption in public or rented spaces.

For years, cannabis consumption lounges have been kept at bay, though lately pro-lounge legislation is becoming more prevalent in the legal cannabis marketplace.

The cannabis industry is nothing if not creative about regulatory loopholes along the way to financing. The entire vertical, in fact, has been built just about everywhere in the grey edges of the law. Companies who have raised cash through cannabis fundraising so far have literally paved the way for the industry itself—but the route if not the means has been just as tenuous. If not frequently outright ludicrous. This has been less than remunerative for many early investors in the market. First mover “advantage” in this industry is certainly not all it’s cracked up to be…and is often unbelievably expensive.

The Drug Enforcement Administration made a milestone announcement earlier this month with the news that the DEA will begin granting marijuana cultivation licenses to various third-party applicants, significantly expanding medical and scientific cannabis research in the United States.

The announcement came on May 14, with the Administration saying it “is nearing the end of its review of certain marijuana grower applications, thereby allowing it to soon register additional entities authorized to produce marijuana for research purposes.”

Delta-8 THC and New York are two topics that have been making headlines in the cannabis world lately. Delta-8 has been reported upon for being a controversial compound that is legal through a loophole, and New York has been in the news for making recreational cannabis legal. Now, the two are making headlines again, this time together, because New York has banned Delta-8 THC. 

New York police may soon have cannabis removed from their oversight.

Axel Bernabe, assistant counsel to Governor Andrew Cuomo, said at last week’s Prohibition Partners conference that he’d recommend alternatives such as using social workers when coordinating with the state’s nascent Cannabis Control Board, which will soon lay out a framework for legalized recreational marijuana. New York State recently decided to allow recreational use and the board will soon decide on the details.

“The interaction of law enforcement with individuals around drugs is a big, big part of the bill,” Bernabe said of the state’s new legislation, under which recreational sales are expected in about a year. Bernabe said he thought that other states’ use of social case workers to enforce rules for legal, licensed cannabis businesses is a good idea. He also questioned who would deal with cannabis-related street crimes, such as the selling of unlicensed, black-market marijuana.

“Who’s going to interact with folks on the street, or folks that are selling illicitly?” Bernabe said. “Do we want law enforcement to do it? Is it a new form of law enforcement?”

New York’s dilemma on how to reform is playing out across the U.S. as local governments start to re-think criminal justice systems that disproportionately incarcerate Black men for marijuana possession. These policy decisions could determine how much interaction minorities like Black people have with police.

The operation concluded on 4/20.

The Paraguayan National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD) recently celebrated 4/20 by announcing that more than 300 tonnes of cannabis had been destroyed as part of “Operation Omega IX.”

Alongside a unit of the Paraguayan Armed Forces, authorities allegedly destroyed 96 hectares of crops and incinerated 19 drug camps over five days in April, reports Diálogo Americas.

While that operation concluded on 4/20, two days later authorities destroyed another four tonnes of cannabis that was found ready for packaging in a rural area.

If the Mexican military is deeply corrupt and now effectively controls the national government under its incompetent President, we are in a new phase of our Latin American disaster.

This article was originally published by The Fresh Toast. Disclaimer:The views expressed in this article solely belong to the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Fresh Toast.

In 2018, the Mexican Supreme Court found the country’s marijuana laws unconstitutional and ordered Congress to draft new laws. Congress has had to request several extensions, but now it has failed to meet another deadline, just as it seemed close to agreement on new laws.

For Americans, this problem may seem familiar, but in Mexico, the stakes are much higher.

Photo by Jezael Melgoza via Unsplash

Marijuana, while mild in comparison to other drugs, still packs enough of a punch in some cases to bring on a wealth of misery.

Marijuana is legal in a lot of places. Rest assured, that means there’s a stoner bro sitting around in a frat house somewhere staring down at a 1000mg cannabis edible while his college buddies double dare him to eat that sucker all at once. And in the spirit of the party culture, he’s probably going to do it, too. Little does he know, it’ll be worse than the worst mistake he’s ever made.

Although most states require cannabis dispensaries to sell edibles with a limited amount of THC (usually 10mg per serving), it’s common to find these products packaged with 10 servings — the equivalent of 100mg of THC. For the newcomer to the world of edible pot, 100mg is going to put them on their backside in a matter of hours and will likely induce enough panic to swear them off drugs forever.

Photo by Sarah Pender/Getty Images

There’s nothing stopping a consumer from buying multiple packages of pot edibles and devouring it in one setting. There have been accounts of pot journalists, many of which believe documenting their drug use makes them the next Hunter Thompson, eating 500mg to 1000mg of THC and sharing their experience with their readers. You can find these articles all over the internet, and they are written in such a way that cautiously suggest that a person shouldn’t be afraid.

While consuming copious amounts of THC might be okay for some, it’s not the most practical move for most. Forget about all the stuff you’ve heard about pot users being more active, creative, and functional. Eating 1000mg of weed will almost assuredly lead to drooling fear, total inactivity, a loss of creative control and you won’t even be able to pronounce the word functionality.

That Mississippi’s medical cannabis program appears to have been sunk just prior to it starting hasn’t sat well with the state’s voters.

As we reported earlier this week, a voter-supported initiative to amend the state’s constitution to allow qualified patients with debilitating medical conditions to use medical marijuana has been cancelled due to a technicality with more wide-ranging ramifications.

Chism Strategies has carried out a poll since, gauging the mood of 905 Mississippi voters on the decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court to invalidate Initiative 65.

Here’s some of what it found.

The calls for impeachment may be a little rough – the Justices appeared to make their decision grudgingly and their personal views had to be put inside – this was purely a matter of law, as flawed as it was.

When California first passed Proposition 64 legalizing recreational cannabis, voters waited in eager anticipation for natural, quality products to purchase.

What they found instead was 84.3% of sampled cannabis tested positive for pesticide residue. 

The research, conducted by Steep Hill Labs, Inc., further concluded that 65% of cannabis samples submitted to their lab contained Myclobutanil, a pesticide that when smoked or vaporized is converted to Hydrogen Cyanide.

As the name suggests, the chemical is extremely toxic for humans to ingest. 

Discoveries like these underscore the importance of lab testing requirements for cannabis operators.

Rob Tankson. Photo courtesy of PrestoDoctor.

Nowadays, it seems like almost every appointment and meeting is virtual.

While the ease and convenience of platforms like Zoom have transformed everything from education to healthcare since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important to remember things weren’t always this way.

This is especially true for medical cannabis patients. 

In a big move for the psychedelic industry, a bill was recently passed by a second California Senate committee which would legalize the possession of numerous different forms of psychoactive drugs in the Golden State.

The legislation, which was sponsored by Senator Scott Wiener (D), advanced through the Public Safety Committee earlier this month, followed by a pass from the Health Committee one week later. If this bill fully passes, an extensive list of psychedelics including psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, ibogaine, LSD, and MDMA would be legalized for adults aged 21 and older.

“The war on drugs has been an abject failure because it is based on the false belief, the false notion, that criminalizing people, arresting them, incarcerating them for possessing, for using drugs, will somehow deter use and improve public safety,” commented Wiener before the vote took place. “It has done neither.”

“Instead we have spent trillions in the last half century on the war on drugs, more people are using drugs now, there’s more addiction, there are more overdoses—I’m talking about drugs generally, not psychedelics. And we have busted taxpayer dollars, and we need to move towards a more health-based approach,” he added.

The bill excludes the use of peyote, an endangered plant, to ensure its availability for traditional Native American spiritual practices, according to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, a global psychedelic research and education organization.

Patient-first biotech company Enveric Biosciences (NASDAQ: ENVB) is buying MagicMed Industries Inc., a privately-held biotechnology company focused on creating a library of novel derivative psychedelic molecules such as psilocybin, N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other molecular derivatives with applications across multiple indications, in an all-stock transaction. The deal has an approximate value of $30 million. 

Safe to say, the comments have no sources or scientific backing to support them. - by Jessica Campbell

The debate surrounding the legalisation of cannabis has always been one prone to fiery debate and controversy and given the nature of drugs to divide social opinion, the path to decriminalise cannabis here in Australia has been rife with obstacles. While American states have led the way in making cannabis-related products available to the public and change the deeply entrenched stigmas surrounding the drug, Australia has been much slower to adopt such changes. But while the ACT has since decriminalised cannabis, the quest to do so in Victoria has now seen an interesting (yet bizarre) argument come forward from Drug Free Australia. 

Best Marijuana Stocks To Buy? 3 To Watch Next Week

Could Top Cannabis Stocks To Invest In Rebound In May?

Are top marijuana stocks setting up for a rebound in the market? After 3 months of declines in market value, the best cannabis stocks to invest in have started to show signs of some upside in May. At the present time, cannabis legalization and reform are the biggest catalysts for the cannabis sector. As early as next week Senate leaders could reintroduce a bill to federally legalize marijuana.

Will This Federal Reform Bill Pass Through The House?

A crucial and important chairman has set a goal to reintroduce a bill to federally legalize marijuana. Along with this bill will be measures that promote social equity. This reintroduced legislation may come as soon as next week in the House. As well its language will have at least two important modifications in comparison to the previous version of the bill. The news arrives as advocates anxiously await the filing of a separate cannabis reform bill. Currently, this bill is being planned by Senate leaders.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler has stood in favor of supporting the MORE Act. The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act were passed in the chamber. This approval was a historic time in the House even though it was shut down in the Senate. According to an email thread from advocacy groups, it’s set to be refiled as soon next week with some new terms.

Different references that are familiar with the strategy shed some insight on the matter. They also said their understanding is that Nadler plans to introduce the revised legislation ahead of Congress’s Memorial Day recess. However, a spokesperson in the chairman’s office was not able to verify details by press time.

This new reform bill will not include language that was added just before last year’s House floor vote. Which would have stopped people with previous cannabis charges from obtaining federal cannabis permits. Which you would need to run a legal marijuana business

That was a controversial stipulation that surfaced at the last moment which advocates strongly stood against.

Cannabis started to gain a positive rep after the medical community began to pay close attention to its effective compounds, and now the Asian community has joined the weed “revolution.”

Certain things have taken the world by storm and still haven’t been embraced by the Asian community — not because they aren’t “good enough,” but because they are not culturally accepted. However, there has been a shift in the way Asians view, receive and utilize cannabis. To strengthen marijuana’s place in the Asian community, one must understand what led to this shift.

Asian Americans and the cannabis discourse

The Asian culture is a largely conservative space that had previously shunned cannabis and drug use. The pressure from the United Nations treaties, which the West promoted, birthed an era of cannabis prohibition in Asia, making it difficult for cannabis companies to penetrate the Asian market.

Photo by Mason Wilkes via Unsplash

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, expressed his belief that marijuana will soon be legalized in his state, while asserting that he still has concerns about allowing people to consume the plant.

The Louisiana state legislature was considering a bill that would have taxed cannabis as lawmakers there pushed for legalization. But that legislation was rejected in the state House on Tuesday, making it unlikely that cannabis will be legalized in the southern state this year.

However, Edwards suggested in a live radio interview on Wednesday that he believes marijuana will be legalized in the near future.

"In the past, as a legislator and as governor, I've been opposed to legalizing recreational marijuana," he said on the monthly program Ask the Governor broadcast on local radio. "I will tell you, I have come to believe that it is going to happen in Louisiana eventually."

"I'm not quite comfortable yet," the governor added, "but I understand we're likely to get there in the next several years."