Welcome to Season 3 of the Cannabist Show. Featured guests: Bloom Farms founder Mike Ray and Ben Gelt of the Organic Cannabis Association.
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT
• Tax laws don’t allow many marijuana companies to write off charitable donations, motivating the industry to donate regardless.
• Making sure that your industry association encourages best practices and giving back.
• Recruiting people looking for passion over profits, finding the right fit.
• Potential issues with lab testing commercial cannabis.
• Creating standards for cultivation.
TOP MARIJUANA NEWS
Brands want to cash in with 4/20 munchies jokes. Marijuana advocates say it’s time to grow up: When you and your buds get the munchies on April 20, the high holiday for marijuana users, a small army of marketing professionals are working to ensure that in your haze, you’ll reach for their brand of blazed, er, glazed doughnuts. Or Totino’s Pizza Rolls. Or Burger King. Or any other brand of junk food – even from a wholesome, family-friendly company – that suspects its biggest fans may be spending the day more flame-broiled than a Whopper. 4/20, as the holiday is known, is when brands want you to get baked (goods). They want you to have a huge (ice cream) bowl or a (burrito) roll. In other words, it’s the day when corporate-sanctioned pot puns fly high on Twitter. –Report by The Washington Post’s Maura Judkis
Colorado marijuana DUIs down 33 percent from first three months of last year: The number of citations for driving while under the influence of marijuana dropped by 33.2 percent in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the same period last year, but the number of people using marijuana and then driving continues to be a concern for Colorado officials. “We’re still troubled by fact that marijuana users are still telling us they routinely drive high,” Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman Sam Cole said Monday. “We’re pleased with the awareness, but we’re not so pleased with the behaviors that are actually happening.” –Report by The Denver Post’s Hayley Sanchez
QUICK HIT
Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) joins veterans, servicemembers and aspiring recruits to call on Congress and President Barack Obama to move forward with immigration reform at the U.S. Capitol November 12, 2014 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)
“The DEA has lost its moral authority”: U.S. Rep. Jared Polis in exclusive 4/20-week interview: In his eight years on Capitol Hill, Colorado congressman Jared Polis has doggedly championed cannabis legalization. Polis pulled no punches in an exclusive marijuana-focused interview with The Cannabist in Denver just days before 4/20. Here’s what he wants to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “I would point out the imperative — for Colorado but also states where over 60 percent of the American people live — that they get with the times, look at the data and allow the states the room to come out with the right way to regulate marijuana,” he said. “And that’s not where he is today, but the more he hears it, the more people he hears it from, the better, and he needs to catch up from the age of Reefer Madness to the 21st Century.” –Interview by The Cannabist’s Alicia Wallace
POT QUIZ
Test your current-events knowledge about the “Martha Stewart” of edibles, a midwestern state legalizing possession of CBD, a new poll with some surprising numbers and more.
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