TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (NSF) - Two more medical-marijuana businesses have joined seven already licensed by the state, and another three are in the works, as the potentially lucrative industry continues to develop.

The Florida Department of Health this week issued licenses to Tornello Landscape, also known as “3 Boys Farm,” and Plants of Ruskin, both based in Ruskin. Licenses for Jacksonville-based Loop's Nursery and Greenhouses, Eustis-based Treadwell Nursery and Arcadia-based Sun Bulb Nurseries are in progress, according to department spokeswoman Mara Gambineri.

STATE BY STATE: Florida Cannabis News

 The new licenses are the result of a law approved by the Legislature during a June special session to carry out a constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana for a broad swath of patients with debilitating conditions. Voters overwhelmingly approved the constitutional amendment in November.

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An Oahu laboratory received certification Monday to begin testing medical marijuana from licensed dispensaries, opening the way for at least one Maui dispensary to begin putting its flowers, capsules and oils on the market by mid-August.

Maui Grown Therapies, one of two Maui licensed dispensaries, said Monday that medical cannabis samples from its production center are on their way to Steep Hill Hawaii Lab for mandatory testing for safety and potency. Steep Hill was granted a provisional certification by the state Department of Health after the lab passed its final onsite inspection and met other requirements.

Teri Freitas Gorman, director of community relations and patient affairs for Maui Grown Therapies, said Monday that once the samples pass the mandatory tests for heavy metals, pesticides and microbial contamination, which could take three to five days, the dispensary has to pass final retail inspection by the Health Department.

Once the lab-tested products are returned to the dispensary, the Health Department will observe a rehearsal of a sale, check security programs and make sure the dispensary is in compliance with regulations, she said. Freitas Gorman could not say how long it would take for inspectors to come to its Maui Lani facility or for the Health Department to issue a notice to proceed, but said that the department has been “very responsive.”

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This article originally appeared in the August 2017 print edition of Cannabis Business Times. To subscribe, click here.

 Canopy shape has a significant impact on your company’s bottom line, and that’s seen in the many different canopy shapes cultivators are trying out. No clear consensus has emerged on which approach is best, and that is not surprising for a young industry. These shapes are being created by growers using the familiar techniques of pruning, pinching, trellising and super cropping. Add light, nutrients, hormones and plant spacing to your shaping toolkit, and you can deliver the lowest-cost canopy management program for any growing situation. Here, we review a handful of canopy-shaping techniques and how they can impact your cannabis harvest’s bottom line.

Abstinence

It’s always easiest to do nothing. Many strains grow into bush-like forms with no effort on the grower’s part. So if a grower selects only such strains, they can duck a significant amount of labor. Sativa-dominant strains, on the other hand, often have tall and skinny phenotypes. Even they can be transformed into bushier shapes with the right handling, but the grower must decide if it is cheaper to coerce those plants into a higher-yielding shape or just plant more of them. The answer to that and other shaping questions comes from assessing the cost of producing a given plant size and shape against the additional yield attributable to the shaping.

Hormones

Pinching off growing points manipulates hormone levels, a process to which all plants are remarkably responsive. Growing points produce auxins, whose presence at certain levels suppresses side branch growth. Reduce or eliminate the auxin levels with a pinch, and that suppression signal is lost resulting in increased side branch growth.

To read the full article in Cannabis Business Times' August edition, click here.

Photo by Vanessa Stump

According to the results of a recent poll released Monday, more than 75 percent of Utah voters support a proposed ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana in Utah.

Published in The Salt Lake Tribune, the poll shows 78 percent of registered Utah voters strongly and somewhat support the 2018 ballot initiative. Twenty percent of those not in favor of the measure were evenly split between strongly and somewhat opposed, with 3 percent undecided.

The poll was conducted by Dan Jones & Associates and has a margin for error of plus or minus 3.95 percent.

“We’re happy to see that,” Doug Rice, a member of the Together for Responsible Use and Cannabis Education, or TRUCE, said over the phone Monday.

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