Industry

The 2016 Cannabis Business Summit and Expo is expected to draw thousands of entrepreneurs, speakers, and vendors to Oakland in June. The Expo will run from June 20 to 22 at the Oakland Marriott City Center. It’s part networking event, part classroom, and part sales floor, billed as the “ONLY national event where you will have an opportunity to meet ...

The world’s “Biggest Pot Shop,” a Bay Area cultural and political staple, has escaped the claws of the federal government yet again. Federal officials agreed in May to give up their four-year attempt to shutter Harborside Health Center of Oakland, a shop with more than 100,000 patients. Local leaders announced the decision early in the month. The news was music ...

When it comes to legal marijuana, California is the prize to beat all prizes. Four states (Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska) plus the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis for recreational use within the last four years. But the Golden State could leave them all in the dust. Reform groups are pushing to put the legalization question on the statewide ...

Los Angeles is known for a lot of things, but two in particular, one good, the other bad: medical marijuana dispensaries and a large and growing population of homeless people. Now one of those things could be used to help deal with the other. City leaders passed a $2 billion program in 2016 that is designed to give homeless residents ...

Medical marijuana is big business in California. In 2015, dispensaries here sold more than $1 billion worth of cannabis, accounting for almost a fifth of the $5.4 billion sold nationwide. That’s not much of a surprise. Medical marijuana has been legal in California longer than anywhere else; it started in 1996 when voters passed the Compassionate Use Act at the ...

Pot brownies. Marijuana-infused candies. Cannabis coffee. Even weed wine. These are just a few of the endless varieties of food, beverages, and other assorted treats infused with the world’s favorite drug. Even meat makes the list. Now add vodka. Humboldt Distillery, located in the Emerald Triangle, brings an enticing mix of hard liquor and soft drugs. The company’s vodka-marijuana mix ...

It’s hard to forget the real estate crash of 2008, but that institutional memory may be fading in California as marijuana businesses drive up property values across the state. A report in the San Francisco Chronicle notes that property values are rising in many places thanks to new regulations governing the medical marijuana industry. The bubble is growing in small ...

Marijuana is going mainstream by the day. For proof, look no further than Orange County, where workers at a local medical cannabis dispensary voted to unionize in March. That makes the employees of South Coast Safe Access some of the first in the nation to join a union – specifically, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 324. The ...

The nation’s largest marijuana convention is picking up stakes, leaving Colorado, and moving to California this year, High Times magazine announced in March. The High Times Cannabis Cup has long been the premier festival for stoners, medical marijuana patients, and other visitors. It has traditionally been held in Denver, but this year organizers ran into local resistance. The magazine hosts ...

Financial experts in California are warning of a potential penny stock scam involving marijuana. A Nevada company called KUSH announced in March that it would donate $1 million in stock to a campaign to legalize marijuana for recreation. But rather than supporting legalization directly, experts say, the move appears to be a classic “pump and dump” scam. Steve Kubby, a ...