Businessman gets prison time for $1M Medical Marijuana tax evasion Image Cannabis News June 6, 2024 The federal government has thrown the book at a Bloomfield Hills business operator. Ryan Richmond, who owned Warren medical marijuana dispensary Relief Choices LLC, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for tax evasion and obstructing an IRS investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Medical Cannabis News Marijuana Business News Crain's Detroit Business
The federal government has thrown the book at a Bloomfield Hills business operator. Ryan Richmond, who owned Warren medical marijuana dispensary Relief Choices LLC, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for tax evasion and obstructing an IRS investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice announced
97% of public comments support Cannabis rescheduling Image Cannabis News June 6, 2024 More than 7,000 comments were received in the first week - and the public comment period remains open until July 22. If the public comments are any indication, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s proposal to reschedule cannabis is well on its way to approval. The government agency has only been Marijuana Politics Marijuana Business News Green Market Report
More than 7,000 comments were received in the first week - and the public comment period remains open until July 22. If the public comments are any indication, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s proposal to reschedule cannabis is well on its way to approval. The government agency has only been
A Fox News Poll published the results of an election survey after the close of trading markets on Thursday that included positive results regarding the legalization of adult-use cannabis in Florida.
The question for voters read, “If the election were today, how would you vote on Amendment 3, which would legalize marijuana for adults ages 21 and older? ” 66% of respondents said they would vote in favor of this, while 32% said they would vote against it. The legislation needs 60% to vote in favor and this seems to be one of the first that shows the momentum may be building for approval.
In early May, the Florida Chamber of Commerce ran a survey by Cherry Communications that determined 58% of Florida voters were in favor of the legalization versus 37% against it. This was the third poll that showed Floridians had some work to get over that critical threshold and it seems to be paying off for now.
Republicans against legalization
The Fox News poll also found support for Governor DeSantis slipping slightly. In April his approval rate was 59% and this latest poll showed his support slipped to 52%. Disapproval with the Governor grew from April’s 33% to 47% in June.
The Florida Republican Party Executive Board unanimously passed a resolution opposing Amendment 3 (adult-use cannabis). The Resolution stated that passing the legislation would “benefit powerful marijuana special interests, while putting children at risk and endangering Florida’s family-friendly business and tourism climates.”
With the Florida Republican Party officially targeting the legalization initiative, it will clear the way for Gov. DeSantis to raise money to fund an opposition campaign against the measure.
“We support killing the [marijuana and abortion] amendments as a party because it’s not good policy for the state,” Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power told The Miami Herald. “When you look at it, it seems like these amendments are out of step with what Floridians want.”
Looking at the survey results, it seems the Florida GOP is out of step with residents.
The largest cannabis presence in the state, Trulieve Cannabis Corp. (OTC: TCNNF) saw an uptick in the stock’s valuation in early trading on Friday. CEO Kim Rivers has been quoted recently as saying the Governor just needs more education on the topic. Trulieve donated over $9 million in the past quarter for the legalization efforts on top of $40 million previously spent. CNN reported in 2023 that Trulieve made a $25,000 contribution to DeSantis’ political committee. It doesn’t look as if it was enough to persuade to Governor.
Nebraska activists are putting out an urgent call for voters to sign petitions to place a pair of medical marijuana legalization initiatives on the state’s November ballot, with just under four weeks left to collect about 30,000 more signatures to qualify each measure.
“We made the counties our main focus because they require a great deal of time and resources that cannot wait until the last minute,” Crista Eggers, NMM’s campaign manager, said. “We have the counties, but we have an urgent need to collect bulk signatures.”
“There is no doubt we are farther ahead than in past petition drives, but still have a tremendous push to gather over 30,000 signatures on each petition over the next 27 days to assure we are successful,” she said.
The campaign needs to collect a total of 87,000 valid signatures for each of the two measures by July 3 in order to make the ballot.
NMM has worked to put medical cannabis on the ballot for two prior election cycles, only to come short due to setbacks such as the loss of critical funding in the last election cycle and intervention by the state Supreme Court in the prior attempt.
“There is no doubt Nebraskans want to see this on the ballot, so we need them to step up and help make that happen,” Eggers said. “My personal ask, not as a campaign manager, but as a mother, is that people would react as if their child’s life depends on it and go sign; because for many of us, our child’s life really does depend on it.”
The first of the two current ballot initiatives from the campaign would require lawmakers to codify protections for doctors who recommend cannabis and patients who purchase and possess it. The patient-focused measure says that its aim is to “enact a statute that makes penalties inapplicable under state and local law for the use, possession, and acquisition of limited quantities of cannabis for medical purposes by a qualified patient with a written recommendation from a health care practitioner, and for a caregiver to assist a qualified patient in these activities.”
The other initiative would create a new a Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission to provide “necessary registration and regulation of persons that possess, manufacture, distribute, deliver, and dispense cannabis for medical purposes.”
The campaign is urging voters to find locations to sign the petitions, which can be done in Omaha and Lincoln at Wine, Beer and Spirits, for example.
While the campaign has faced setbacks in past election cycles, advocates got an early start on signature gathering this round. In addition to meeting the county-based threshold, activists must generally collect signatures from at least seven percent of registered voters statewide to qualify for the ballot.
Gov. Jim Pillen (R) has already voiced opposition to the reform effort, saying last September that legalization “poses demonstrated harms to our children,” and that medical cannabis should only be accessible if its approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Eggers told Marijuana Moment at the time that the governor’s argument is a “cop out,” and she says the campaign will let voters decide for themselves.
“We can’t stop until we get that done. That’s where we’re at, and that’s how our campaign feels,” she said. “We just keep showing up. And the reason we have to do that is because there is no option.”
Nebraska lawmakers, including campaign co-chair Sen. Anna Wishart (D), have also attempted to enact the reform legislatively, but cannabis bills have consistently stalled out in the conservative legislature.
The Cannabis Media Council just released its 2024 report titled “Full Spectrum: Guidelines for Responsible Cannabis Advertising,” and it’s chock full of great advice for people in the cannabis industry trying to navigate the complicated landscape for cannabis advertising and marketing.
One of the key findings in the report is that cannabis marketing continues to be unfunded or underfunded (often less than 5% of annual operating budgets) compared to other traditional sectors, where marketing spending averaged 9.1-12% of annual operating budgets.
Not only that, cannabis brands spend 82% less on marketing in relation to the Consumer Packaged Goods industry when comparing marketing spend as a percentage of revenue, according to data from marketing technology firm Surfside. Even worse, Surfside found that dispensaries spend 92% (as a percentage of revenue) less on marketing in relation to the retail vertical.
Green Market Report’s Executive Editor Debra Borchardt sat down with CMC Co-founder Amy Deneson to talk about the new report and its suggested advice for cannabis marketers.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I felt like this report was impressive in the amount of useful and practical information. Who do you see as your audience for this report?
Amy Deneson: We are all building this industry, and so it’s really important as we issue these guidelines that it helps empower people to build and to create for their own names. So there are two main audiences that we endeavor to inspire and also empower with the full spectrum guidelines.
One are all the cannabinoid operators who are looking to deploy their marketing dollars in a impactful way. Advertising is part of the marketing mix. (We want) to let them know that they can advertise but also that they also need to go get budgets in order to advertise.
The other audience that we’re speaking to are media providers, our outlets, our publishers, our platforms that are either open to the category and to some extent and expanding their inventory to the cannabis sector – or they are in the midst of needing to make the business case to someone internally to work with the cannabis sector as advertisers.
With the publisher side of the house, we also try to provide useful information as to the business opportunity of opening up to the sector. Encouraging publishers to be excited to work with this category and then giving them tips and tricks for how to work with either their legal team in order to set out, for example, the letter of publisher indemnification.
The other internal teams that we often need to work with is the business development team, to help them be comfortable going out to their existing advertisers and explaining why cannabis fits within the publication’s mission and community.
The report states that the cannabis industry, in general, tends to spend much less on marketing than more traditional industries. We know that a lot of that has to do with taxation, because they can’t claim marketing as a business expense. Do you think that that’s the main reason, or do you think it’s just the immaturity of the legal industry, that it just hasn’t had time to understand the benefits of marketing budgets?
Deneson: It’s a great question. For the last 10 years of being in the marketing leadership roles with a number of brands from multistate operators to startups, I truly think that it has to do with marketing not being a write-off as a business expense.
We all know the expense of getting to market, whether it’s a vertically integrated state by state or looking to try to build a brand across the industry. There’s also capital constraint on who and how much can be invested into the sector. I think brands and operators are honestly just running out of money by the time they get to market, and there’s not much left over for marketing.
The second thing is that I think that there is a very big misunderstanding that brands cannot advertise. I’ve spent four years with the Cannabis Media Council and still, on a daily basis, hear that cannabis advertisers cannot advertise. It’s not true. As we evolve, we understand that if we have the marketing dollars, advertising is a channel that’s open to us and that we can make the decision on that marketing spend. What percentage of it do we want to allocate to the paid channel versus the other parts of the marketing program and methodologies?
The use of cannabis versus marijuana has certainly been a source of debate within the industry. Within the report, you promote the use of the word cannabis, but every SEO research that we do returns marijuana as the top search term, not cannabis. We’re caught in the middle on this, and I’m curious how you see that for your media audience on this terminology debate.
Deneson: We went towards advocating for cannabis based on the plant’s name and how marijuana has been weaponized, but there’s also a full business case to be made that literally the names of programs are the medical marijuana programs.
I think that giving people a very base foundation of understanding of the terms, what is generally meant by them, and giving a launch pad to make their own business decisions is what we aim to achieve at this time.
I found the advice on dealing with Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and influencers super helpful. You really gave some practical guidelines on how to approach these social media giants who have historically not been super friendly to cannabis. Maybe you could just touch a little bit on how you were able to retrieve the information to give that guidance.
Deneson: The goal for us was to help advertisers understand why they’re seeing advertising for hemp-derived products on Facebook or Instagram when they thought that cannabis couldn’t advertise. We offer practical advice on how to engage with Meta, as you see in a case study with Embark and how they had incredible success.
But the way we secured that knowledge for Meta is (through) another hat that I wear in the industry. I am the co-founder of Pheno, an ad agency for cannabinoid brands and businesses and revolutions. I work directly with advertisers on that property to get them live, be compliant, and achieve results.
You also touch on influencers, who are becoming more important for cannabis companies to reach out to consumers. Is it difficult to figure out the way to measure the effectiveness of an influencer?
Deneson: The influencer information that we provide is twofold. One is to encourage the brand to engage with an influencer in a way that will serve them and the key performance indicators and that the return on ad spend or the return on sponsorship will work for the brand.
The second way that we encourage people to engage influencers is to understand that the brand will be held responsible for whatever the influencer says. So it’s about also the brand understanding that they need to have terms and conditions in place. They need to have scripts in place as a brand safety activity, as well as looking for the return on investment that they want to see. Within the guidelines, we talk about best practices for engaging with influencers and also provide a sample contract that brands can reference.
The full report, “Full Spectrum: Guidelines for Responsible Cannabis Advertising,” is free to download at cannabismediacouncil.com.
