Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has announced that cannabis dispensary applicants will get a second chance to qualify for the state’s licensing lottery following backlash over the licensing process, according to a CBS Chicago report.
Earlier this month, regulators announced that 21 social equity applicants would be included in a lottery to win the 75 dispensary licenses.
The 21 applicants were chosen from 1,667 total applications submitted and all received perfect scores, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Shortly after the winning applicants were announced, a group of companies behind some of the unsuccessful bids filed a federal lawsuit, alleging political motivation behind the businesses chosen to advance in the process.
Last week, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) announced plans to “review questions” raised about the licensing process before setting a date for the cannabis dispensary license lottery, which was initially scheduled for a to-be-determined date this month.
Now, Pritzker is allowing applicants who did not receive the maximum score of 252 points to amend their applications or challenge their scores, according to CBS Chicago.
Applicants who did not receive perfect scores on their initial applications will receive a “supplementary deficiency notice” and a score sheet that outlines each part of the application on which points were deducted, the news outlet reported. The applicants will then be able to respond to the notice by amending their applications or asking the state to rescore their applications if they believe a mistake was made in the initial scoring process.
Applicants cannot change the listed owners or ownership percentages on their original applications in an attempt to qualify as a social equity applicant, or as veteran ownership or Illinois resident status, CBS Chicago reported.
Pritzker’s office said the IDFPR will review all responses to the supplemental deficiency notices and issue final scores for each application before moving forward with the licensing lottery, according to the news outlet.
Clinton | Adobe Stock
Oklahoma Signs Seed-to-Sale Contract with Metrc
The contract creates a system to track cannabis plants and products in the state’s medical cannabis market.
The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) has announced that it has signed a contract with Metrc to implement a statewide seed-to-sale system to track cannabis plants and products in the state’s medical cannabis market.
“The seed-to-sale system will greatly expand our compliance capabilities and improve the effectiveness and speed of any future recall efforts,” OMMA Interim Director Dr. Kelly Williams said in a public statement. “It will also allow us to detect unusual patterns that may indicate product diversion.”
The system will track medical cannabis plants and products from a plant’s growth stage through the sale to patients, and is part of OMMA’s broader efforts to ensure accountability and safety in the state’s medical cannabis market, according to the announcement.
Metrc is a national company with a presence in 14 U.S. states, and offers integration features with many seed-to-sale software systems already in use by individual cannabis licensees. All Oklahoma licensees must now either integrate with Metrc or input their information into the new system.
Full implementation of the system is expected to take up to six months, according to OMMA’s announcement.
“We know that businesses will have many questions in the coming weeks, and we will answer them as quickly as possible,” Williams said.
Colorado Department of Revenue Releases Average Market Rates for Retail Marijuana Effective Oct. 1, 2020
The Colorado Department of Revenue has released the Average Market Rates for retail marijuana effective Oct. 1, 2020 until Dec. 31, 2020.
DENVER, Colo. - September 21, 2020 - PRESS RELEASE - The Colorado Department of Revenue (CDOR) today released the Average Market Rates (AMR) for retail marijuana effective Oct. 1, 2020 until Dec. 31, 2020.
Three of the seven AMR categories increased this quarter, specifically bud ($1,316), trim ($350) and seed ($8). Three of the seven AMR categories decreased this quarter, specifically bud allocated for extraction ($502), trim allocated for extraction ($175) and wet whole plant ($175). The immature plant rate ($9) stayed the same.
The AMR is the median market price of each category of unprocessed retail marijuana that is sold or transferred from retail marijuana cultivation facilities to retail marijuana product manufacturing facilities or retail marijuana stores. CDOR’s Office of Research and Analysis, in coordination with the Taxation Division and the Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED), calculates AMRs quarterly for use in levying the excise tax as required by Colorado statute.
The Oct. 1 AMR was calculated based on retail marijuana transactions from June 1, 2020 through Aug. 31, 2020 in MED’s marijuana inventory tracking system. AMR is an estimate of the typical prices of each category of unprocessed retail marijuana that is sold or transferred from marijuana grows to product manufacturers or stores.
Some people like flower, some people like extracts. Some people like to mix them for combined effects.
The latter group makes up the audience that Scott Sundvor and Libby Cooper, the founders of Space Coyote, are trying to reach with their extract-infused prerolls.
Space Coyote’s website doesn’t mince words: these products will get you “glazed.” “Gone are the days of tasteless prerolls and mediocre highs,” it reads.
“We both consider ourselves stoners,” Sundvor told Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary. “Libby has really emphasized being proud of using that terminology and embracing that heritage culture in the market.”
Photo courtesy of Space Coyote
But there’s also a science behind the stoniness—data to which Cooper paid attention in her last job at Eaze. The numbers showed customers’ purchasing behaviors reflected the value of “price-to-THC ratio,” she told CBT and CD. She also noticed that the preroll segment continues to grow, but these products are often made with trim or shake, and turn off some more experienced users.
“There was a disconnect between people who considered themselves connoisseurs, or stoners that really enjoyed strain-specific flavors, [and people] buying prerolls,” Cooper said. “Prerolls were for more of the canna-curious, the newer to the weed scene.”
She and Sundvor had wanted to work together for a while, he said. (He cofounded Nima, which creates gluten and peanut sensors for people with food allergies.) “We had this name, Space Coyote, and we knew that we wanted to do something in cannabis together,” he said.
They came up with that name when they and some friends visited Joshua Tree National Park in late 2017 for Sundvor’s birthday. New moon? Check. Meteor shower? Check. The “magic mushroom” active ingredient Psilocybin "might have been involved,” Sundvor joked.
“It really felt like we were in space, actually a part of this meteor shower,” Cooper said. “We were traipsing through the desert late at night. ... The coyotes were yipping in the background, and we climbed on some boulders and we really felt like we were space coyotes.”
Inside the Products
Cooper and Sundvor incorporated Space Coyote as a company in August 2018 and began linking up with companies that had built a name for themselves.
“Our first line of joints was a collaboration with Nasha Extracts, using their hash,” Sundvor said. “Then we had a collaboration with Guild, using their THCA in it. We have Utopia live resin. Now we have F/ELD live resin.
“We wanted to partner with companies that were really high quality and people knew were high quality because then they would know that our joints, as a result, were also meeting that quality.”
Space Coyote’s Indica Diamond Joint, created in partnership with Eel River Organics
Space Coyote uses a proprietary process to combine flower and extract inside its prerolls, “so that it's a smooth and even burn every single Space Coyote,” Cooper said.
“A lot of the infused joints that we were seeing back in the day and still [see] today are infused on the paper on the outside, and that just doesn't make sense,” she said. “You want to be smoking the extract and specifically drawing it in through the cone. If it's on the outside, it's really just for show. It's going to crackle, it's going to smoke a lot, but most of that extract won’t get into your lungs.”
Cannabis extracts provide “a pure expression of the plant,” Sundvor said, accenting its cannabinoid and terpene profiles. Space Coyote joints are currently infused with hash, live resin or diamonds.
“The diamonds … are very high in THC and much lower in terpenes,” he said. “For me, it gives much more of this sparkly, almost psychedelic effect, whereas the live resin, you're getting this full, really broad spectrum, and then the hash is much more of that full-bodied flavor and just richness.”
Sundvor and Cooper serve more than 300 California dispensaries with the help of three full-time employees.
“We would love to expand to [other states], and it's definitely in our plans,” Cooper said. “But California's not only the fifth-largest economy in the world, but it's definitely the largest cannabis economy in the world. ... We want to be in all of the dispensaries here.”
As for the small team, there’s a reason for it that business owners in 2020 know all too well. “Our team was bigger before COVID, but we had just scaled back with the times,” she said.
Aiming to Empower
In the short time they have been in business, Sundvor and Cooper have swapped job titles. In 2019, Sundvor was CEO and Cooper was president. This year, Cooper is CEO and Sundvor is president. They are considering more switches in the coming years, Sundvor said.
“It was really important for us just to really symbolically show it to our team and also to outsiders that we do think of this as an equal partnership in this company, even though we have very different skill sets, we both run this company jointly,” he said.
Sundvor continued: “Our employees really appreciate it. We have multiple women on our team also, and I think that just seeing that we're empowering a female CEO [this year] also was really powerful.”
There’s another form of empowerment happening at Space Coyote: sponsorships of artists. From painters to DJs, they’re featured on Space Coyote’ssite.
Photo courtesy of Space Coyote
“Many up-and-coming artists still have to work a day job. Sometimes they work multiple day jobs,” said Cooper, who shared that she wanted to be an artist herself before taking a more commercial path in design. “Whatever sponsorship or commissioned pieces Space Coyote can do, helps.”
Space Coyote helped Messy Beck host her first gallery show of her own in San Francisco, Cooper said. And the company now has a “Resident Cosmic Guide,” Kristina Bakrevski, writing for its website.
When working with artists, Sundvor said Cooper has always emphasized fair pay.
“I've been so impressed by that perspective that Libby has instilled in our whole company,” he said. “It's really great to see the impact that we’ve been able to make on some of these artists that we've worked with so far.”
Space Coyote is drawing and following its own map in the cannabis space—as reflected in its goals to embrace stereotypes that many consumers and businesses are moving away from, and its commission of art.
“Hopefully, one day, we'll actually be able to have what I fondly call ‘Space Coyote Ranch,’” Cooper said. “The vision would be land where people would be able to come and do an artist residency and really just truly create, uninterrupted, for a couple months.”
cuneyt | Adobe Stock
New Zealand Medical Cannabis Company Awarded License to Grow Country’s Largest Crop to Date
Marlborough-based Puro received a license Sept. 17 to grow up to 90,000 plants.
Marlborough-based Puro received a license Sept. 17 to grow New Zealand’s largest medical cannabis crop to date, according to a Radio New Zealand report.
The license, granted by the Ministry of Health, allows Puro to grow up to 90,000 low-THC cannabis plants, which will be exported internationally, the news outlet reported.
“It's essentially just a hemp crop,” Puro Director Sank Macfarlane told Radio New Zealand.
Puro has additional cultivation applications under review, according to the news outlet, including one for a recently completed indoor research facility in the Waihopai Valley.
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