Group Tries Again to Place Adult-Use Cannabis Legalization Measure on North Dakota’s Ballot
Legalize ND refocused its efforts on the 2022 election after the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for the organization to collect enough signatures to qualify its initiative for the 2020 ballot.
Legalize ND is again working to get an adult-use cannabis legalization measure in front of North Dakota’s voters, according to a local KVRR report.
The group filed a petition with the Secretary of State’s office Jan. 11, the news outlet reported. If the petition is approved, Legalize ND will have one year to collect a minimum of 26,904 signatures to qualify its initiative for the 2022 ballot.
The group refocused its efforts on the 2022 election after the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for the organization to collect enough signatures to qualify its initiative for the 2020 ballot.
Legalize ND collected just short of 24,000 signatures in last year’s effort, KVRR reported.
Photo courtesy of Lightshade
How Unique Cannabis Genetics Drive Brand Building
Colorado-based Green Dot Labs and Lightshade share how breeding programs can help differentiate brands, as well as how the companies approach breeding in their own operations.
Cannabis genetics are the cornerstone of Green Dot Labs’ Boulder, Colo.-based concentrates operation, and according to co-founder Dave Malone, the craft beer industry provided the inspiration he needed to give the company’s unique cultivars their own identities.
Malone says the craft brewing industry started out as a select few companies with lines of beers that were almost indistinguishable among consumers, but as soon as brands began investing in marketing, consumers started gravitating toward specific brands.
The cannabis industry, he says, has a lot to learn from this approach.
“That’s what we’re aiming to do with our genetics, is give them their own identity,” Malone says. “People may prefer different brands for whatever reason, but they still look at our Cherry Fluff strain, for instance, which is [branded as] a beautiful cherry on a big pile of whipped cream, and [the marketing is] very captivating and seductive. People identify with that.”
Photo courtesy of Green Dot Labs
Green Dot Labs' Peach Brain Freeze cultivar
Dan Banks, director of cultivation strategy for Denver- based Lightshade, echoes this sentiment, adding that marketing is beginning to play a large role in the cannabis genetics space, with name-brand recognition starting to emerge among consumers.
“You have a couple different demographics,” Banks says. “You have people who are used to getting certain things from dispensaries, [and] they want to see those things maintained. Then you have people who are interested in anything new and checking that out, and if it’s new, then they’re like, ‘I want more of that’ or ‘I want more from that lineage.’”
Founded in 2011, Lightshade is one of the largest Colorado-owned, vertically integrated cannabis operators in the state. The company operates a greenhouse operation in Denver, as well as four indoor grow facilities.
When Banks joined Lightshade in late 2019, the company was cultivating roughly a dozen varieties across its five facilities, but it has since grown its genetics library to nearly 70 cultivars, with roughly 30 in regular production.
“Over the last year and some change, we’ve grown the library of genetics in the company and then implemented what we call a phenotyping program,” Banks says. “Basically, that’s a systematic way of introducing new varieties into production and gathering information about their performance, both on the horticultural side and also on the quality [and] potency side, as well.”
Lightshade acquired vertically integrated cannabis operator Sacred Seed last summer, which provided the company with a large bank of new genetics. Heading into 2021, Lightshade will establish an in-house breeding program to produce unique and proprietary varieties.
“[We’re] really trying to get some unique variety, … while also trying to cater to consumers that are looking for specific name-brand strains, as well,” Banks says, adding, “A lot of the things that people are excited about right now, there’s a lot of marketing behind that. Sometimes that marketing has a lot of substance backing it up, and other times it’s just a lot of hype.”
Photo courtesy of Lightshade
Lightshade plans to establish an in-house breeding program this year to produce unique and proprietary cannabis varieties.
Along those same lines, Malone says that companies can invest in robust marketing for a mediocre product, but that product still won’t do as well as better-quality offerings—product quality and marketing must go hand in hand.
“You can put all of the branding in the world on a jar of undifferentiated product and it won’t do well, but if you have integrity from the core, which is your genetics, it really extrapolates the value downstream when you do add these marketing layers to the product,” he says.
Green Dot Labs is entering its seventh year and maintains an in-house breeding program to create genetics specifically for its extracts.
“A lot of cannabis companies are curating genetics through a vast network that are available worldwide, whereas we’ve taken that into our own hands and steered the ship toward the goals that we set out, [so we’re] not necessarily … at the mercy of the market to provide content for the brand,” Malone says.
As it breeds new strains, Green Dot Labs brands them, which Malone says has become especially important in recent years as consumers have started to expect more from cannabis extracts.
“The consumer wants to know more,” he says. “They want to know the heritage, the lineage, where the strain came from, [and] what kind of flavors and experience they can expect when they open the package.”
Green Dot Labs has roughly 20 branded strains in its genetics library, and Malone says the branded cultivars outsell the company’s non-branded offerings, 3-to-1.
“There is so much content out there for the average consumer,” he says. “It’s overwhelming to find what strains work best for you. Everything in the current market, specifically here in Colorado, is extremely generic. A lot of companies haven’t taken this extra measure to differentiate their genetic portfolios.”
It’s a cultivator’s responsibility to tell the consumer why his or her product is better than others through branding, Malone says. The main points of brand differentiation, he adds, will be proprietary genetics that offer unique flavors and experiences, as well as the quality and efficiency with which these cultivars are produced.
Creating a Differentiated Experience
When Green Dot Labs launched its breeding program, Malone says it took a qualitative approach. The company pursued genetics that mirrored nearly every type of fruit, from a banana to an apple, and also started breeding what he calls “gassy” varieties. Since not all genetics are created equal when it comes to performing well in the extraction process, data collected during extraction helped the Green Dot Labs team further refine its genetics offerings. Specifically, the company looked at extract yields, and pursued cultivars with differentiated flavors that offered as much resin as possible.
Green Dot Labs recently closed on a new facility in Colorado that will allow the company to expand and increase its R&D capacity as it heads into the new year.
“We’re going to be delivering new strains and new flavors that have never even been imagined by the most sophisticated cannabis connoisseur,” Malone says. “That’s the goal now.”
Another one of the company’s goals, he adds, is to find strains that perform well during solventless extraction.
Photo courtesy of Green Dot Labs
Green Dot Labs will expand its extracts line this year by improving the resin structure of its favorite plants while also creating new cultivars.
“You see a lot of connoisseurs wanting to enjoy the solventless extract, but the problem with this and why it’s so expensive is because your yields are highly unpredictable and heavily predicated on the quality of the plants you produce and the genetics,” Malone says, adding that Green Dot Labs currently has 10 cultivars in its genetics library that work well with solventless extraction.
As the company heads into 2021, it will expand its extracts line by improving the resin structure of its favorite plants while also creating new cultivars.
“We like to offer something for everyone,” Malone says. “Each consumer has a certain taste, and we don’t want to alienate anybody. We want to make it so anybody who likes cannabis can come to Green Dot Labs and this can be their one-stop shop.”
For Banks and the Lightshade team, 2021 will be focused on establishing the company’s breeding program, which will include sourcing more genetic material and identifying desirable plants to work with.
“What we’ll do is try to establish a bank of male plants that we can then use to start crossing with females, and the other thing that we’ll do is look at partnering with some of the companies that are offering genetic mapping in order to get a better understanding of the source genetics that we have,” Banks says. “You bring something in and it has a name, but is it what they’re saying it is? We don’t know, but we can look into that.”
The market continues to change rapidly as consumers gain a better understanding of terpene profiles and minor cannabinoids, adds Nick Drury, Lightshade’s director of cultivation operations, and Lightshade will lean into consumer education and marketing to address these topics.
“People are realizing that it’s not just about THC content,” Drury says. “It’s also about your overall terpene profile, and how those terpenes and cannabinoids are interacting to produce a high. As people start to increase their own education into certain things, I think what you’ll start to see in the market as a whole is a shift … in terms of what people are looking for, and a little bit more interest in specific profiles, [which will do] away with the indica/sativa/hybrid terminology. … That will open up the market to a lot of cultivars that may be low in overall THC, but they might be high in CBN and all these other cannabinoids and all the different terpene profiles. … I would say education and marketing are huge in the upcoming year.”
“I think branding is just going to become more important than ever,” Malone adds. “[With] the quality [and] the differentiation being so vast, how you present the product to the consumer is really where the rubber is going to hit the road once competition elevates to this level."
CULTA Announces Move to New Bethesda Office to Support Continuing Growth
The new headquarters will allow CULTA to add employees as it scales its business.
BETHESDA, Md., Jan. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PRESS RELEASE -- CULTA, a Maryland-based producer of craft cannabis and extracts, has announced a move to a larger workplace in Bethesda as part of its expansion. The new headquarters will allow CULTA to add employees as it scales its business.
The two-floor office space is nearly 150% larger than CULTA's previous office in Silver Spring. The new facility will provide CULTA with much-needed space to accommodate additional administrative headcount. "The decision to relocate to our new, larger office in Bethesda was a logical next step in our long-term growth strategy," said CULTA Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Clark.
This relocation comes less than a year after CULTA expanded the footprint of their outdoor grow facility in Cambridge to three acres, and only months after hiring Jonathan Lassiter as the vice president of retail sales. Most recently, CULTA announced plans to enter the edibles category with a new brand launching in Q1 of 2021.
"The new office is a physical example of our evolution," said CULTA President and Co-Founder Mackie Barch. "I'm incredibly proud of what my team achieved in 2020. I want to continue to provide the team with the tools and human resources needed to hit goals in 2021."
This year, CULTA plans to add 100 more employees across its farm in Cambridge, retail dispensary in Baltimore, and headquarters in Bethesda. Those interested in joining the CULTA team can view open positions here. At this time, CULTA plans on recruiting all new employees in-house.
What's Happening in the 'Canopy Growth v. GW Pharmaceuticals' Lawsuit?
A new federal lawsuit highlights a patent that protects a THC and CBD extraction method.
Canopy Growth Corp., one of the largest cannabis producers in the world, filed a federal lawsuit in late 2020 against GW Pharmaceuticals, the UK-based cannabis business behind the FDA-approved Epidiolex. At issue is an extraction method that Canopy asserts is newly protected by patent.
Read the full complaint below.
Canopy Growth alleges that GW Pharmaceuticals produces Epidiolex via the protected CO2 extraction method. Since its 2018 approval from the FDA, GW then distributes Epidiolex across the U.S. and elsewhere at $1,235 per 100mL bottle. “GW reported approximately $366 million in net product sales of Epidiolex in the United States in the first nine months of 2020,” according to the lawsuit.
Although the patent protection on this extraction method is a new issue for Canopy Growth, an earlier iteration of the patent in question was published in 2000. Its contents were acquired by Canopy Growth Corp. amid an acquisition of Germany’s C3 Cannabinoid Compound Company (founded by Bionorica SE), a company with which GW allegedly considered partnering in 2016 for its cannabinoid processing work.
Canopy Growth specifically points to two claims in its patent, asserting that GW Pharmaceuticals performs the described actions in its manufacture of Epidiolex.
For example, in Claim 1 of the patent, Canopy Growth writes:
A process for producing an extract containing Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and/or cannabidiol (CBD), and optionally the carboxylic acid thereof, from a cannabis plant material or a primary extract thereof, said processing comprising:
(1) Subjecting the cannabis plant material or primary extract thereof to CO2 in liquefied form under subcritical pressure and temperature conditions to extract cannabinoid components; and
(2) reducing the pressure and/or temperature to separate tetrahydrocannabinol and/or cannabidiol, and optionally the carboxylic acids thereof, from the CO2.
This lawsuit is the first action Canopy has taken to argue its patent. Marijuana Momentfirst reported on the contents of this lawsuit in December.
The case echoes the UCANN v. Pure Hemp lawsuit that we covered in 2019. UCANN went after Pure Hemp for cannabis tincture formulation that fell under a patent for “liquid cannabinoid formulations wherein at least 95% of the total cannabinoids” is THCa THC, a combination of THCa and CBDa, and a combination of THC and CBD. In other words, the patent covered a broad swath of the cannabis concentrate market segment.
In April 2020, UCANN filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the federal lawsuit was administratively closed by the court.
Common Citizen, a vertically integrated business in Michigan’s medical and adult-use cannabis markets, brought on Allison Hornev as the company’s chief marketing officer. Hornev arrives from Bell’s Brewery Inc., another stalwart of the Michigan landscape.
The move is a good example of that bridge between the breweries and cannabis cultivation facilities. Each market tends to connoisseurs and new customers alike, making the story behind a brand incredibly important. Before Bell’s, Hornev worked as Kellogg’s.
“Through Allison’s marketing expertise, she will help our continued efforts to identify and serve the unique needs of every patient and adult-use customer at all Common Citizen retail and wholesale locations as we continue expanding our footprint here in Michigan and beyond,” CEO Mike Elias said.
We spoke with Hornev about her plans for Common Citizen and the cannabis business in general.
Eric Sandy: What brought about your interest in the cannabis space and in Common Citizen?
Courtesy of Common Citizen
Hornev
Allison Hornev: It’s funny: I wasn't interested in the cannabis industry. I was very happy working for Bell’s. It's an amazing company with an amazing culture. But then I met one of the founders [of Common Citizen], and we just started having conversations and started talking about the opportunity. And at that point, I got to know the brand more and know the founders and understand what they're wanting to do with cannabis and in this very busy market that we're in. That's really what turned me on to it: that great opportunity that Common Citizen has to not just sell cannabis but make a difference. You see that coming through our commitment to safety and safe products and the idea of cannabis for humanity: How do we debunk the stigma so people feel comfortable using it to help them, or using it however they choose. That, to me, is really what made the difference. It just stood for more in my eyes.
ES: Common Citizen has some interesting terminology that customers can use, whether it's “chapters,” “citizen advisers” and, of course, all the in-store categories for different cannabis products. Could you talk a bit about why that is important?
AH: From a business standpoint, it allows you to stand apart in a very crowded market. But, honestly, it's going to get more crowded before it consolidates, right? So, it allows you to stand apart, but it also allows you to talk to the people, to the consumers and to our patients from a different voice. And to me, that voice is a more caring voice. That voice is a more passionate voice and a more approachable voice. And I think that is really powerful.
ES: We featured Common Citizen in a piece about the design of their Flint store. Could you talk a bit about how things like interior design can help shape the story of a company?
AH: I think oftentimes it's overlooked, right? “We're just going to put up a store and sell some cannabis.” Again, as a lot of things with Common Citizen, it’s more than that. It’s creating an environment that is welcoming, that is very concierge-based and it’s helping the patient or the consumer through that journey and spending time with them. You look at that Flint store and it's got that area off to the side with the couches, where we can sit down and have a conversation about what it is you're looking for or what it is you need or what your desires and hopes and dreams are. That’s where we can really get to know you and provide you something that will be beneficial and provide you an experience that you then enjoy—or one that helps you. Then you do feel more comfortable every time you come back. And I think the interior design just builds and allows for that to happen
ES: And certainly a lot of those same ideas are at play over at Bell's. Is there a helpful sense of marketing crossover that might be a play between craft beer and cannabis?
AH: Yeah, it's fascinating. On the surface right there, you've got the 21-and-plus audience. If you look at craft beer and beer in general and adult beverages—and it is incredibly saturated, there's a lot of players—and you look at how Larry [Bell] has built this business to stand apart and stand for things for the 35 years he's been in business. He has built what Bell's stands for now and its quality and its consistency and its great branding, and it's continuing to provide new and different things. And then when you come to the cannabis industry, again, it's so oversaturated and there's so much out there and it can be, to a consumer, to somebody that's new into it, overwhelming just like beer. So, how do I take what I learned through my years at Bell's—and even before that at Kellogg’s—and apply that here to help those consumers in that space and stand for those key things that are so important right now?
For us at Common Citizen, it’s safety. And that leads to quality and that leads to approachable brands that aren't intimidating—brands for that common citizen, you know? That’s what we're built off of. Just in talking to you in this conversation, it gives me goosebumps. It makes me smile. But this is something we're out to do. We're out to help people and help them feel comfortable with that decision.
ES: I did want to touch on Michigan in particular. What does it mean to have Michigan as a backdrop for Common Citizen?
AH: It provides just tons of opportunities. When you look at Michigan, you see, just in a short time, where we've come with cannabis. From medical and then phasing into rec, the future is so incredibly bright for Michigan in this space. Leaning into our roots and being true to where we've come from, that’s important. The founders are all boys that grew up in Detroit. There's such heart there. And it's such a great story for us as a brand.
I think Michigan is going to be a state to look at in this industry, and it's going to be sought after. People are going to learn a lot, and other states are going to learn a lot from what we're able to do here at Michigan.
And I think that's why it's so important that we are leading by example and that we are building a GMP facility, even though it's not necessary to do so in the regulations. We feel that that's the right thing to do to ensure that safety. If we can lead by example here in Michigan and get some friends to come along and do that with us, I think that will help other states learn from us. That will help other brands learn from us. You look at beer 100 years ago, and they were just coming back online from Prohibition and there was a lot of work to do. I don't think we're 100 years back, but there's a lot ahead of us.
ES: With the new year upon us, what are some of your short-term goals at Common Citizen?
AH: Honestly, I'm still getting my feet wet. Short-term, I've got to just be a sponge. It is absolutely my goal to talk to everybody here, from the greenhouse to the executive team, to the investors—talk to our retail locations and our budtenders and talk to our wholesalers and spend time with them understanding the market in general and what the needs are. I believe that there are needs currently unmet, so how can we do that? How can we stand apart? It is absolutely my goal to be the leader in Michigan, and to do that in a couple of different ways. Not just through volume and sales, but through advocacy and through safety and through being that shining star in this very crazy industry right now. That is both long-term and short-term, and I think the team here has already set us up for great success there. Now, it is my job and responsibility to continue to carry us there.
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