Featured guests: Leafly and Headset founder Cy Scott and Derek Porter, CEO of Security Grade Protective Services
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT
• The unique security concerns in the cannabis industry.
• Who legalized marijuana better, Colorado or Washington State?
• Banking is still a very serious concern to pot industry insiders.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
TOP MARIJUANA NEWS
Justin Trudeau made an incredibly credible case for legalization: During a recent economic conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made one of the more buttoned-down, straight-edged arguments for marijuana legalization I’ve heard in recent years. It’s worth quoting at length so I’ve done that below:
Look, our approach on legalizing marijuana is not about creating a boutique industry or bringing in tax revenue, it’s based on two very simple principles:
The first one is, young people have easier access to cannabis now, in Canada, than they do in just about any other countries in the world. (Of) 29 different countries studied by the U.N., Canada was number one in terms of underage access to marijuana. And whatever you might think or studies seen about cannabis being less harmful than alcohol or even cigarettes, the fact is it is bad for the developing brain and we need to make sure that it’s harder for underage Canadians to access marijuana. And that will happen under a controlled and regulated regime.
The other piece of it is there are billions upon billions of dollars flowing into the pockets of organized crime, street gangs and gun-runners, because of the illicit marijuana trade, and if we can get that out of the criminal elements and into a more regulated fashion we will reduce the amount of criminal activity that’s profiting from those, and that has offshoots into so many other criminal activities. So those are my focuses on that.
I have no doubt that Canadians and entrepreneurs will be tremendously innovative in finding ways to create positive economic benefits from the legalization and control of marijuana, but our focus is on protecting kids and protecting our streets.
Trudeau points to an easy-to-overlook fact: It’s already incredibly easy for teenagers to get high if they want to. In 2015, for instance, nearly 80 percent of U.S. 12th-graders said it would be easy for them to obtain marijuana. It’s clear, in other words, that current policies centered on making the drug completely illegal are doing little to keep it out of the hands of kids who want to use it. –Report by The Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham
Colorado sets record with $117M in weed sales for April: Colorado’s monthly cannabis sales have reached a new apex in the legal era with a record-setting $117.4 million worth of flower, edibles and concentrates sold in April 2016. According to data reported by the state Department of Revenue, marijuana shops sold almost $76.6 million in recreational cannabis for April, significantly eclipsing the previous high-water mark of $62.2 million for December 2015. –Report by The Cannabist’s Aleta Labak
POT QUIZ
Test your current-events knowledge about American’s use of medical marijuana, a $900,000,000 a year CBD industry, a new CSU grant to research marijuana and more.
