Minnesota lawmakers are seeking public input on adult-use cannabis legalization through 15 “Be Heard on Cannabis” discussions, which were announced late last month.

House Majority Leader Rep. Ryan Winkler (DFL-Golden Valley) hosted the second discussion in North Minneapolis on Sept. 25, where attendees throughout the Twin Cities discussed the importance of adult-use legislation that ensures local communities have control of cannabis production, according to a Minnesota Daily report.

“We want to make sure it’s not just big corporations coming in to make a bunch of money as we make this change and that it actually benefits people in Minnesota,” Winkler said, according to the news outlet.

Winkler will host the next event in St. Paul next month and is optimistic that a legalization bill will pass the DFL-controlled House in the next legislative session, although the Republic-controlled Senate could pose an obstacle, Minnesota Daily reported.

A Senate committee rejected this year’s proposal to legalize adult-use cannabis in March.

Hawaiian Ethos, one of the two state-licensed, vertically integrated medical cannabis operators on the Big Island of Hawaii, has woven sustainable practices into every aspect of its business model, particularly when it comes to packaging.

Rather than opting for traditional indoor cultivation, Hawaiian Ethos installed translucent panels on the roof of its facility to grow its plants under natural sunlight, Community Relations Coordinator Kea Keolanui tells Cannabis Business Times. The company also uses recycled water throughout its cultivation facility. In addition to reducing the company’s environmental footprint, these initiatives have also helped Hawaiian Ethos cut utility costs, which allows them to invest in sustainable packaging solutions.

“It’s often driven by cost, and out here, especially because of our overall approach to sustainability, we were able to prioritize sustainable packaging,” says Amelia Sandy, the company’s product manager. “It is more expensive, but because we’re not paying giant electricity bills to support our grow, it’s something that we have a little bit more leeway for.”

Almost every one of the company’s products has at least two vendors providing its packaging, Sandy says, which is more costly than other packaging solutions, but prioritizing sustainability was a conscious decision for the Hawaiian Ethos team. “That’s something the industry overall can do better because if we all shift towards sustainable solutions, there will be more available at a lower cost at scale.”

The issue of plastic waste is often magnified in Hawaii, Sandy says, due to its geographical location. “We have ocean waste washing up on our shores every day. Discarded fishing nets are the largest waste item, but also plastic. Microplastic that’s been floating around for decades just keeps washing up here.”

This led the Hawaiian Ethos team to consider how to implement compliant packaging while also minimizing its environmental impact.

All cannabis products in Hawaii must be in compliant packaging before being delivered to the dispensaries. Packaging must be child-resistant, opaque and able to protect the protect against degradation, according to Hawaii’s regulations. Meeting these standards can be challenging in itself without factoring in the sustainability of the packaging.

“For instance, our tincture bottles are solid jars,” Sandy says. “We use cobalt blue glass, but they’re technically a touch transparent, so … we use an outer paper bag. It’s pretty simple, but it helps us meet our opaque requirement and also allows more space for labeling.”

Photos courtesy of Hawaiian Ethos

Labeling regulations in Hawaii mandate that products bear black-and-white labels—no color is allowed. To meet this requirement, Hawaiian Ethos applies white compostable, post-consumer recycled paper labels to its unbleached paper bags and cardboard boxes.

Adequately protecting products against degradation is another matter, Sandy adds. “That was the other challenge because you can find a solution, but it has to perform.”

While many of the company’s products are packaged in child-resistant cardboard boxes, Hawaiian Ethos had to find a different solution for flower in order to keep it fresh. The company landed on compostable zipper pouches made with high-barrier materials that have very low oxygen and moisture transmission rates.

“We package flower into those compostable packages with zippers, we heat-seal them, throw them in our cardboard boxes, label those with recycled paper labels, and there we go,” Sandy says. “You need to be able to depend on your packaging because the last thing you want is to invest in a packaging solution and have it fail you. Our products are really precious to us. We pour so much into creating really good medicine, and if we couldn’t depend on [the packaging] to keep our products fresh [and] shelf-stable, or if it didn’t prevent contamination or degradation, we couldn’t move forward with it. The pouches are a really great solution. That’s our direct outer layer for our flower, and they do a great job keeping it fresh. You actually can’t smell anything from the outside, either, so they’re pretty odor-proof, in addition to keeping our flower exactly the way it is when we package it.”

Some of the company’s other items are packaged in glass, she adds, which also protects against product degradation. “We wouldn’t want anything, especially anything that had a high terpene content, to be in contact with plastic just because of potential leaching or degradation concerns.”

Meeting all of these requirements meant vetting and partnering with many different vendors.

“We did have to piecemeal together solutions from several suppliers because … there’s not off-the-shelf fully compliant and sustainable packaging in one go always,” Sandy says. “For example, our flower packaging. There could be child-resistant boxes, but you can’t put flower right in them, or you can find packaging that seals the flower well, but then it’s not child-resistant or it’s not sustainable in other ways that we’re identifying.”

Hawaiian Ethos has identified three main priorities for its compliant and sustainable packaging: compostable materials, recyclable materials and glass.

Since packaging must have a minimal impact on the local environment, the company first identified which recyclable materials are actually recyclable in Hawaii.

“For example, we could offer a plastic weed tube—they’re technically recyclable, but they’re not out here,” Sandy says. “Our county only takes beverage containers that have … the five-cent deposit on it. They take jars, jugs and bottles, [but] only number two plastic. That’s it. They don’t take any other type of plastic out here. So, even though we could have items that are considered recyclable, … there’s no real home for them here on island other than the landfill.”

Therefore, Hawaiian Ethos chooses compostable packaging materials as its first priority, even over recyclable materials, when possible. When it must use recyclable materials, the company analyzes local return rates to decide which materials to use.

“Various materials have different rates of how likely people are to return it back to recycling streams, so that was another lens that we were selecting our packaging through,” Sandy says. “When we could, we stuck with paper and cardboard because those tend to have high return rates. I think 70 percent of cardboard in the world is recycled, whereas plastic is a 7- to10-percent return rate. These are all items that are technically recyclable, but we wanted to look at real-world road testing—what is actually happening with this?”

Glass is Hawaiian Ethos’ third packaging of choice.

“Glass is recyclable, and if it escapes the waste stream and is just thrown outside, turtles aren’t going to eat it, it’s not going to release microplastics into the environment, but it’s heavy, and that increases shipping costs and carbon footprint,” Sandy says. “It’s something we try to use sparingly, but we still try to use it over plastic.”

If a packaging solution is not available in any of the above materials, only then does Hawaiian Ethos turn to plastic.

“Our only plastic items are our child-resistant caps for our glass containers because there isn’t a compostable, compliant solution for those yet,” Sandy says. “We have to triangulate so many factors, and our primary goal is to offer good products to our patients. For instance, tinctures—the standard offering is you have a bottle and then you have a plastic dropper cap, and there really isn’t another way to offer that one.”

Sandy hopes Hawaiian Ethos can set a new industry standard through its practices, and that more cannabis operators across the country will start taking these extra steps toward sustainability. “We’ve shown that you can hold on to your values and deliver on them and make it work, and if the whole industry bands together on this, we can make it accessible to industries in every state."

This week, the U.S. House voted 321-103 to pass the SAFE Banking Act in the first major floor vote in Washington, D.C., for any cannabis reform legislation. Elsewhere, in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker declared a public health emergency and announced a four-month ban on vape sales statewide, including cannabis vape cartridges sold in licensed dispensaries.

Here, we’ve rounded up the 10 headlines you need to know before this week is over.

• Federal: In an effort to increase educational awareness around growing public interest in the CBD-based products now proliferating markets across the U.S., the Arthritis Foundation has released the first guidance to inform consumers and medical practitioners alike seeking out CBD’s potential to treat inflammatory pain. The Arthritis Foundation consulted with leading experts in cannabis and arthritic pain management to convey best practices for CBD sourcing, usage and dosing. Read more
• District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine led a bipartisan coalition of 21 state attorneys general in urging Congress to pass the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act or similar legislation that would allow legal cannabis businesses to access the banking system. The coalition sent a letter to Congress Sept. 23. Read more
• The U.S. House voted 321-103 to pass the SAFE Banking Act on Sept. 25, the first major floor vote in Washington, D.C., for any cannabis reform legislation. H.R. 1595 will provide a safe harbor for financial institutions that work with cannabis business clients, effectively opening the door to formal banking relationships in the fragmented, federally illegal cannabis industry. Read more
• Utah: Gov. Gary Herbert has signed the state’s revised medical cannabis law, which lawmakers approved Sept. 16 during a special session of the legislature. The amendments to the law eliminated Utah’s original plan for state-run dispensaries, instead taking the traditional route of licensing private businesses for cannabis sales, and also increased the number of “cannabis pharmacy” licenses to 14. Read more
• Massachusetts: Gov. Charlie Baker declared a public health emergency and announced a four-month ban on vape sales statewide. This includes cannabis vape cartridges sold in licensed dispensaries. Read more
• South Dakota: A newly formed political campaign, South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws, has launched an effort to pass two marijuana reform ballot initiatives in South Dakota next year. The first ballot initiative, a proposed constitutional amendment, would legalize and regulate marijuana for adults 21 and older and direct the legislature to enact laws regulating the cultivation and sale of hemp. The second ballot initiative, a proposed statutory amendment, would establish a medical marijuana law for qualifying patients. Read more
• New York: Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced plans to discuss cannabis legalization with governors in the neighboring states of Connecticut and New Jersey to ensure the administrations are all aligned on the issue. Cuomo planned to discuss the issue with Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont Sept. 25 and with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy at a later date. Read more
• Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman announced their support for adult-use legalization in their state in a Sept. 25 press conference that marked a turning point for a state that’s actively engaged a wide-ranging public policy conversation on cannabis over the past year. “We are calling for the General Assembly to seriously debate marijuana legalization,” Wolf said. Read more
• New Mexico: The New Mexico Department of Health must begin issuing medical cannabis cards to qualifying non-residents following a judge’s ruling that upholds an elimination of the program’s residency requirements. Santa Fe District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid’s order addressed confusion over the state’s medical cannabis law earlier this year. Read more
• International: Canberra, Australia’s capital city, has become the first part of the country to legalize adult-use cannabis possession and cultivation after the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly voted to legalize possession of up to 50 grams and the home cultivation of two plants. The new law goes into effect Jan. 31, 2020 and applies to adults age 18 and older. Read more

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PRESS RELEASE--Cresco Labs Inc., one of the largest vertically integrated multistate cannabis operators in the United States, has announced that it has signed a binding agreement to sell its Joliet and Kankakee, Ill. properties to Innovative Industrial Properties, Inc. for approximately $46.3 million, which amount includes funding for additional tenant improvements at the Kankakee property. Concurrent with the closing of the sale, Cresco Labs will enter into a long-term, triple-net lease agreement with IIP and will continue to operate each property as a licensed cannabis cultivation and processing facility. The two properties represent approximately 100,000 square feet of industrial space in aggregate. The agreement is expected to close within the next 30 days.

“This sale-and-leaseback agreement with IIP represents a non-dilutive capital solution for Cresco Labs that will support the expansion of our Illinois operations in preparation for the legalization of adult-use cannabis on January 1, 2020,” said Cresco Labs CEO and Co-founder Charlie Bachtell. “A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the two properties will be utilized to create the scale in our cultivation capacity and retail dispensary network necessary to meet the significant increase in demand projected from the legalization of adult-use cannabis and the expansion of the medical-use program in Illinois. With the Illinois cannabis market projected to reach $2 billion to $4 billion in annual sales at maturity, the expansion of our operations will position Cresco Labs to build upon our leading market share and significantly increase the revenue we generate from Illinois in the coming years.”