Colorado’s governor expects marijuana sales to reach $1 billion by the end of the fiscal year. Since it became legal in January, the state has sold more than $69 million worth of recreational pot. Barry Petersen reports on how women aren’t shying away from taking part in Colorado’s new big business.
See the clip: Making the pot business women-friendly | CBS This Morning
Handblown glass pipes and bongs are displayed in antique cabinets at the Farm, a marijuana dispensary in one of two states that have legalized the drug.
The walls feature paintings by local artists. There are vaporizers, electronic cigarettes, rolling papers and more. That’s just in the front of the store.
In the back room, “budtenders” are selling gluten-free edibles, lollipops, salves and, of course, marijuana.
Jan Cole’s company grows and harvests its own marijuana strains, but the Farm depends on vendors to provide many of the products sold at the store. The business employs 103 people.
Behind the scenes, there are accountants, lawyers, janitors, Internet providers, soil companies, testing laboratories and more.
The cannabis industry isn’t just pot shops and warehouse grows. It’s an industry that could reach $2.57 billion in value this year, according to the Arcview Group, a San Francisco investment and research firm that focuses on the cannabis business.
The National Cannabis Industry Association has more than 500 members and will hold the first National Cannabis Business Summit in Denver for more than 800 people in late June.
Read more: Legal marijuana, a multibillion-dollar industry, still faces legal hurdles | Al Jazeera America
The governors of Colorado and Washington want federal authorities to keep their end of a bargain in which regulators said they would give guidance on banking the marijuana industry once law enforcement gave theirs.
In a letter last week to the heads of the four major banking regulating agencies — the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Controller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration — Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee jointly and gently asked for “follow-up inter-agency guidance” to bank examiners and the banks and credit unions about how to do business with legal marijuana.
“Banks and credit unions in Colorado and Washington are waiting for the Federal Banking Agencies to furnish instructions given to bank and credit union examiners before deciding whether and how to provide banking services to state licensed recreational marijuana businesses,” the governors wrote in the May 23 letter made public Tuesday.
via Colorado, Washington governors ask feds for promised pot bank guidance – The Denver Post.
Ron Kammerzell is at the center of Colorado’s experiment with marijuana legalization. As the director of enforcement at the Colorado Department of Revenue, Kammerzell has overseen the implementation of regulations on legalized marijuana sales following Colorado voters’ approval of Amendment 64, which legalized pot in the state, in 2012. Given all the attention surrounding Colorado’s growing marijuana industry, I reached out to Kammerzell to discuss how he sees Colorado’s experience going so far. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Read more: Colorado’s director of pot enforcement thinks legalization is going great | Vox.
Marijuana dispensaries characterize it as a bit of a gold rush: the sudden swarm of thousands of people from in and out of Colorado trying to get into the state’s new recreational marijuana industry.
“Everybody’s expanding right now,” Elan Nelson, business consultant for Medicine Man, one of the largest marijuana shops in Denver. “Really, we’re just trying to keep up with demand.”
Since retail sales of recreational marijuana began in January, the state has seen a small boom in jobs. The Marijuana Industry Group (MIG) estimates there are currently about 10,000 people directly involved with marijuana, with 1,000 to 2,000 joining in the past few months and more expected as high demand for recreational marijuana continues. MIG says it’s hard to separate how many of those 10,000 jobs are tied to recreational marijuana and which are exclusively on the medical side, but at least a few thousand jobs came during and after the preparation and start of recreational sales.
Read more: Legal marijuana created thousands of jobs in Colorado | Vox.
Signs posted around Denver International Airport warn passengers of stiff fines if they are caught with marijuana.
So far, though, Denver police have not cited anyone for possession and have not confiscated any marijuana products since airport officials banned pot in January.
Ten people have been stopped trying to take marijuana through TSA security checkpoints, airport spokesman Heath Montgomery said Thursday. They all cooperated when police asked them to dispose of their pot.
“To have contact with 10 people of out millions passing through, it tells me most people are abiding by the rules and this is not a major issue,” Montgomery said.
Read more: Despite ban, no marijuana seized and no citations at Denver airport | The Denver Post.
Christie Lunsford used to feel so lonely.
As a medical marijuana caregiver, she would attend cannabis industry meetings and be the only woman in the room.
“The first time I saw another female, I was really excited. That was in 2010,” said the 43-year-old Denver wife and mother, who has branched out to cannabis marketing, product development and sales.
These days, she attends some cannabis-industry meetings that are all-women — and all about women. What began several years ago with a trickle of women tiptoeing into the brave, new weed world has turned into a stream in Colorado.
Read more: Colorado women making over the image of the cannabis industry | The Denver Post.
If America’s first marijuana legalization experiment is any indication, the end of prohibition can start smoothly.
Since retail sales of recreational marijuana began in Colorado, revenues from marijuana sales have continued trending up. At the same time, crime in Denver, home of most recreational marijuana shops in the state, has dropped nearly across the board.
Colorado and Denver’s experiment with legalization is, in other words, going well. The state is seeing its coffers filled with some extra revenue, as expected. And crime, despite warnings from law enforcement officials, isn’t rising.
Read more: Since Denver legalized pot sales, revenue is up and crime is down | Vox
A newly approved state plan aimed at helping Colorado’s marijuana stores handle the vast sums of greenbacks ringing through their cash registers might be dead on arrival unless Congress steps in.
State lawmakers late Wednesday night approved a law giving marijuana-store owners the right to create cannabis co-operatives, which would operate like banks or credit unions. Gov. John Hickenlooper previously indicated he would sign a slightly different bill but has repeatedly called on federal lawmakers to change laws on the national level.
Marijuana banks face tough go without feds’ help | The Coloradoan
Canvas Capitol Hill on any given day and you’ll run into hundreds of lobbyists. But Michael Correia is one of a kind.
He is the first full time lobbyist for the growing marijuana industry.
“I’m just a Capitol Hill vet like most Capitol Hill people,” Correia said.
In the year since recreational pot use was legalized in Colorado and Washington, the cannabis industry has been booming. Now, the association that represents it is attempting to pull off its first full-scale meeting.
To an outsider, the Cannabis Business Summit—the National Cannabis Industry Association’s NCIA first national conference, which will take place this June in Denver—might seem like an excuse for people in the marijuana industry to get together for a “tradeshow” of epic proportions.
Whether that’s a fair assumption or not, it represents an image of the industry that NCIA is hoping to break away from by hosting its first full-blown tradeshow.
“Whenever we do regional events, if you walked in off of the street and didn’t know what the event was for, you’d never be able to guess from [looking around] the room. This event will be no different,” said NCIA Deputy Director Taylor West. “As a national conference, this is a great opportunity for people to see what the reality of this industry is, and that reality is that these are extremely competent, responsible, and ambitious businesspeople—on top of it being an industry that’s committed to ending the social injustices of prohibition.”
Read more: Cannabis Association to Host First National Conference | Associations Now
The legalization movement’s entrepreneurial arm is taking its quest for normalcy to the next level as it begins to push for influence in the U.S. city where norms are defined: Washington, D.C.
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This means that, more or less, the NCIA’s time and resources will be increasingly spent talking to powerful people about tax laws and banking regulations that hurt its industry. Only in marijuana’s case it’s more like basic rights: changing the tax code to allow pot businesses to deduct expenses or convincing banks to let them open bank accounts (which a February announcement by the Obama administration shows is not far off).
To better understand how such lobbying efforts will translate into actual policy changes—and if they do, whether that means corporate “Big Pot” is next—last week I caught up with NCIA co-founder Aaron Smith.
Read more: Can the Weed Industry Grow Up Without Growing Corporate? | Playboy
When Colorado legalized recreational marijuana sales, Denver embraced the opportunity with open arms.
The city is now home to more than 62 percent of all Colorado recreational marijuana retailers, who cashed in on $14 million in sales in January alone.
Other cities weren’t so eager: heeding legalization opponents’ safety concerns, several pushed off licensing retail sales. Some banned retail sales altogether.
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Three months into its legalization experiment, Denver isn’t seeing a widespread rise in crime. Violent and property crimes actually decreased slightly, and some cities are taking a second look at allowing marijuana sales.
Read more: Remember when legal marijuana was going to send crime skyrocketing? | Vox
A new Pew Research Center survey found a broad shift in the public’s views on the nation’s drug policies, with many in favor of shifting the focus of government efforts from prosecution to treatment for use of illicit drugs. The survey also attracted much attention for its findings on attitudes about legalizing marijuana and views of its use. Here are six key facts on public opinion about marijuana.
When David Goldberg started smoking pot 15 years ago, he stored his stash in a plastic sandwich bag that was transparent. He didn’t care about quality or discretion, because he was a student. But now that Goldberg is 32 years old and married, his tastes have changed.
“I prefer something a little more sophisticated,” said Goldberg, a former lawyer and MBA graduate. “I am a regular cannabis user, but I don’t want to walk into a head shop in Manhattan’s West Village that targets the stoner hippy. I’m looking for luxury cannabis accessories that are stylish, more mainstream and professional that I can display in my home.”
Read more: Millennials to Spearhead Pot Legalization with Votes | MainStreet
With the arrival of marijuana legalization in the U.S. comes medicated cookies, gummies, brownies, caramels, hard candies, chocolates, Rice Krispies treats and more — available for purchase in states that allow infused edibles within their pot laws.
Edibles make up a sizable chunk of Colorado pot shop business, anywhere from 20-40 percent of overall sales, according to industry estimates — and for good reason, say industry leaders.
“They’re discreet, and it’s an easy way to dose the medication,” said Bob Eschino, a partner at Colorado-based Medically Correct, which makes the popular Incredibles infused chocolate bars. “Especially here in Colorado, where you can’t smoke in public, you can still medicate with edibles.”
Read more: Edibles 101: Eight tips for getting the right dose | The Cannabist
A new poll has found that 75 percent of Americans believe that the sale of marijuana will eventually become legal across the nation—whether they supported legalization or not.
The Pew Research Center Poll, conducted in mid-February among 1,821 adults, also found that the number of people in favor of legalizing pot continues to grow. Four years ago, 52 percent of people said they thought marijuana use should not be legal. Now, 54 percent are in favor of marijuana legalization.
The survey also found that the public believes marijuana to be less harmful than alcohol. Sixty-nine percent of people believed alcohol was more harmful to a person’s health than marijuana, with only 15 percent saying that they believed marijuana was more harmful. Similarly, 63 percent of people believed alcohol was more harmful to society in general than alcohol. A large majority of people surveyed (76 percent) believed that people convicted for possession of small amounts of weed should not have to serve jail time.
Read more: Poll: Three in Four Say Legalized Pot Is Inevitable | TIME
A new Pew survey out today provides yet another illustration of the failure of America’s drug war. By a nearly five-to-one margin, Americans agree that alcohol is worse for you than marijuana. However you slice the data up demographically, majorities say the same thing.
Read more: Americans finally understand that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol | Washington Post
Proponents of legalizing marijuana in New Jersey received a boost from an unlikely source — the very people who prosecute pot users.
The New Jersey State Municipal Prosecutors Association in Hamilton, N.J., has come out in favor of legalizing possession of marijuana. The support of the prosecutors association comes as two bills were introduced this month in the New Jersey State Legislature and as polls show a majority of Americans favor legalization.
Read more: It’s high time to legalize pot, N.J. prosecutors say | USA Today
It took Michael Correia more than a week after getting his new job to tell his parents he was a marijuana lobbyist.
“I just got a job lobbying for a small-business trade association that focuses on taxes and banking issues,” he told them four months ago after being hired by the National Cannabis Industry Association.
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Correia, 44, may not have intended to tell his parents about his past marijuana use, but he didn’t plan on hiding the details of his new job forever. Eventually, Correia let them know he was the first full-time lobbyist on Capitol Hill for the NCIA — essentially the Chamber of Commerce for marijuana. It was true that he was focusing on small businesses; they just happened to have names such as Weedmaps, Chronic Clinic and Haze City.
Colorado’s legal cannabis businesses brought in $45 million in sales and $3.5 million in tax and fee revenue for the state during the historic first month of legal retail sales, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
The figures, announced on March 10 by state officials, show that Colorado’s dispensaries brought in approximately $14 million in adult-use cannabis sales, and approximately $31 million in medical cannabis sales. Adult-use cannabis taxes and fees for January added $2.1 million to Colorado’s state coffers. Medical cannabis taxes and fees contributed another $1.4 million.
In a statement to the press, NCIA executive director Aaron Smith applauded the news. “Colorado’s cannabis business community is proud to support important state programs like school construction through this new tax revenue. The month of January showed the world that taking marijuana off the streets and putting it behind a taxed, regulated counter can be done professionally, productively, and prosperously. Now it’s time for Congress to reconcile outdated federal laws with those of states like Colorado that have decided to opt out of the failed experiment of marijuana prohibition.”
Cannabis a multi-million-dollar tax windfall for Colorado – CBS News
Last month, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury followed through on long hinted-at guidance intended to provide a roadmap for financial institutions to provide services to state-compliant cannabis businesses. It was a dramatic step in the ongoing effort to give legal marijuana businesses the same access to basic banking services that any other American industry has.
Memos issued by the Department of Justice and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) division of the Department of the Treasury explicitly state their intention to “clarif[y] how financial institutions can provide services to marijuana-related businesses.” This acknowledgement by two cabinet-level departments of the Obama administration that the banking issue needs a resolution shows that the industry is making very real headway in raising the profile and legitimacy of our challenges.
Overall reaction to the memos in the financial sector has been tepid, which underscores the critical need to keep pushing for congressional action. However, in the weeks since the guidance was issued, we have begun to see gradual, quiet progress, as some institutions start to explore the possibilities and opportunities for serving businesses in the industry.
Given the clearly stated intent of Justice and Treasury to create a system allowing banks to serve our industry, we expect those gradual positive developments to continue to accumulate.
DENVER – The National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) is launching its first national conference, The Cannabis Business Summit, June 24-25 in Denver, Colorado. The summit will offer cannabis business leaders a national stage to discuss best practices and business developments from around the industry. The summit will include more than 35 sessions, more than 800 attendees, and an exhibition floor featuring more than 30 leading cannabis businesses over the course of two days.
The Cannabis Business Summit is positioned for business owners and operators across multiple verticals in the cannabis industry. Several topic-oriented tracks will give attendees the opportunity to focus on their areas of expertise. Tracks offered include: CannaBusiness 101, Advanced CannaBusiness, Ancillary Services and Products, and Cannabis Policy and Reform, as well as Community Sessions offering attendees an opportunity to meet and learn from the diverse communities that make up the industry. Featured educational sessions will highlight some of the industry’s leading pioneers and innovators.
Conference highlights and topics covered will include:
NCIA’s Cannabis Business Summit will be held at the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver. Along with the educational sessions and an exhibitor showcase, the event will also include a fundraising reception to support NCIA’s work advancing the policy goals of the responsible cannabis industry.
In an evolving industry with new frontiers and prospects emerging each day, the Cannabis Business Summit will provide essential educational and networking opportunities, making it a must for any cannabis industry professional. Visit us online, and register at www.cannabisbusinesssummit.com.
Media Inquiries: Taylor@thecannabisindustry.org
Sponsorship Inquiries: Sponsorship@CannabisBusinessSummit.com
Not all that long ago, marijuana advocates tended to encounter more shut doors than open ones when dealing with lawmakers in Washington, D.C. But times are steadily changing.Last week, a group organized by the Denver-based National Cannabis Industry Association spent two days in the Nation’s Capitol, with members participating in a whopping sixty meetings with congressional staffers and the like over that span — and officials from both parties were represented.
Read more: Marijuana industry being taken more seriously by D.C. power brokers, advocate says | Westword
The roughly 2,500 medical marijuana dispensaries in the United States pay taxes to local, state and federal governments.
But they can’t take the same federal tax breaks that other small businesses take.
A section of the federal tax code known as 280E was meant to prevent tax write-offs for illegal drug activity. It was enacted in 1982, before medical marijuana was legalized in any state.
Now the Internal Revenue Service is applying 280E to pot shops operating legally under state law.
Read more: Medical marijuana stores blocked from federal tax breaks | USA Today
The delegation from the National Cannabis Industry Association made a point of dressing well for its day on Capitol Hill, sporting mostly dark suits, lots of ties and plenty of the group’s signature lapel pins, which feature a sun rising over vibrant fields of marijuana.
Marijuana advocates have come to lobby Washington before, often to argue for more lenient treatment under federal law. But on Thursday, buoyed by a flurry of state decisions that have expanded the legal use of marijuana, the cannabis crowd came less as social activists than as entrepreneurs, asking Congress to remove some of the obstacles that stand in the way of their fledgling businesses.
They met with staff members to ask for changes to the tax code, which prohibits the businesses from taking standard deductions for expenses. And they huddled in congressional offices to make the case for other changes that would encourage banks to work with legal cannabis businesses.
In the center of the crowded basement cafeteria of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Big Pot’s mobile war room was humming.
While hundreds of congressional staffers lunched around them, a group of foot soldiers in the effort to legalize marijuana stood over a rectangular table cluttered with plates of sushi and documents, busily stuffing white folders with literature about the need for the federal government to change the nation’s cannabis laws. Each folder, which would be delivered to a congressional office on one of the floors above, needed a primer on bills that had been introduced to reform banking and tax laws for the cannabis industry, a letter urging co-sponsorship of the bills, a position paper from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, and a New York Times story about the burgeoning marijuana industry.
It was the final hours of a two-day Washington, D.C., blitz by the National Cannabis Industry Association, the 3-year-old lobbying arm of the country’s increasingly organized legal marijuana industry. With just a few hours remaining until the advocates’ scheduled flights home, there were still several offices to visit.
Read more: A day in the life of a marijuana lobbyist | Yahoo News
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Thursday, March 13 at 10:30am, three members of Congress will join the National Cannabis Industry Association, industry leaders, and pollster Celinda Lake in the Cannon House Office Building to hold a briefing on the growing support for the legal cannabis industry and the issues facing it at the federal level. Members of the media are welcome to attend.
This week, dozens of cannabis industry professionals have traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with congressional members and staff to discuss critical banking and taxation issues affecting the industry.
WHO:
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO)
Aaron Smith, Executive Director, National Cannabis Industry Association
Celinda Lake, President, Lake Research Partners
NCIA Business Leaders representing California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington
WHAT: “Marijuana: Growing Support and Growing Economies” Capitol Hill Briefing
WHEN: 10:30am, Thursday, March 13, 2014
WHERE: Cannon House Office Building, Room 210
MEDIA RSVP: Taylor West, (202) 495-9680 or taylor@thecannabisindustry.org
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As Massachusetts gears up for its entry into the medical marijuana business, entrepreneurs will meet Saturday for a forum on the new industry.
Hosted by the National Cannabis Industry Association, the all-day Northeast CannaBusiness Symposium will focus on education, with updates on federal and regional marijuana policy.
“Obviously the medical marijuana industry is getting started in Massachusetts, and there’s a lot of activity in the Northeast overall, so Boston is a good location for talking about the region,” said deputy director Taylor West, whose group is based in Denver and Washington, D.C
Read more: Medical marijuana business symposium heading to Boston | Boston Herald
Colorado collected more than $3.5 million in taxes and fees from both recreational and medical marijuana sales in January, according to figures released today by the state’s Department of Revenue.
Of that amount, more than $2 million came from recreational pot.
Colorado became the first state where recreational pot went on sale on Jan. 1. Washington is the only other state with legal recreational pot, which is expected to go on sale this summer.
Read more: Colorado makes $3.5M in pot revenue in January | USA Today
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