Cura founder and President Cameron Forni has been named CEO of the company, after former CEO Nitin Khanna stepped down in late May, according to a company press release.

“Personal allegations against Nitin that arose several years before the company was founded have become a distraction for the company’s mission,” newly named CEO Cameron Forni wrote in a press release this week. “We are announcing the changes today to continue the incredible work several hundred of our employees have done to build a company and work environment that we’re all very proud of. Nitin is stepping down as of today [May 30]; however, this is a natural progression due to Nitin’s decision to pass off operational leadership responsibilities four months ago, and the transition has been in the works for some time.”

In 2014, Khanna filed a civil settlement with a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2012, according to a Portland Business Journal report. 

Founded in Portland, Ore., in 2015, Cura distributes its cannabis oil products in multiple states. Cura’s Select Oil cartridge line led the corporate expansion to a $400-million valuation at the start of 2018. The company recently picked up Montel Williams’ Lenitiv line of hemp-derived CBD products.

Jonathan Franks, vice president of Lenitiv Scientific, provided this statement to Cannabis Business Times: “The founders of Lenitiv Scientific believe that the actions taken by Cura today are a powerful expression of its values. We take allegations like these very seriously and we expect all with whom we do business to do the same. That said, these allegations pre-date Cura and are entirely unrelated to its business. Cameron, Amy and the line staff have our full confidence going forward as they work to make Cura an even better company.” 

In April, Cura announced that it would enter the impending legal cannabis market in Canada. The decision to seek licensure in Canada could ultimately grant Cura an opportunity to export its products to additional international markets. “My team and I are more than excited to contribute to the Canadian cannabis ecosystem in 2018,” Forni said at the time.

Detroit will be home for several thousand marijuana enthusiasts and entrepreneurs this weekend when CannaCon hits the Motor City.

“Michigan has some up and coming laws that are being changed,” said Joe Kennedy, sales manager for the convention, which will be held on Friday and Saturday at Cobo Center. “So we have two days of seminars with top people in the industry.”

The marijuana market in Michigan is poised to explode. The state is expected to start issuing licenses for medical marijuana businesses next month. And Michigan voters could see a proposal to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use on the Nov. 6 ballot.

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Top photo courtesy of Adobe Stock

In early 2018, as the national cannabis press corps was focused on California’s rough regulatory roll-out, a small cultivator in San Francisco caught a few headlines for its move to 100-percent renewable energy sources. Sense Grown, a small indoor grower in San Francisco, had partnered with the city’s CleanPowerSF program, which funnels alternative energy sources to customers who are willing to pay more for a sustainable operation.

With two 36-light flower rooms and “a traditional HPS setup” in a converted garage in SoMA, cultivator Rob King was eager to find a way to enact sweeping sustainable business practices. He’d worked with CleanPowerSF at a past job, and he figured that the opportunity would be ideal for a cannabis grow.

“As a way to look at the lowest-hanging fruits in terms of biggest impact we could have on sustainability, … it was kind of a no-brainer for us,” King says. “For a business, it ends up costing less than two cents per kilowatt-hour more to switch over to 100-percent renewable. It’s really not anything that’s prohibitive for the business, even as we’re going through all the regulations and new taxes right now. It’s still a great option for us.”

Initiated in May 2016, the CleanPowerSF program is a community choice aggregate (CCA), which is a negotiating tool for municipalities interested in offering alternative energy sources while still utilizing the grid of whatever local utility operates in the region. CCA legislation originated in Massachusetts, but it has since found success in California, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island—states that, in some form or another, have a growing cannabis industry. (Other states, including Colorado, are actively studying the matter.)

In San Francisco, the city partners with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to push renewable energy sources onto the utility’s grid.

“CCAs usually offer customers multiple purchasing options with different levels of renewable electricity,” according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “For example, San Francisco residents can choose between the ‘Green’ package, in which 40 percent of the electricity is sourced from renewables, and the ‘SuperGreen’ package, which sources 100 percent of electricity from renewables. The Green package’s electricity rate is slightly lower than the rate of PG&E, the local IOU. The SuperGreen package is sold at a $0.02/kilowatt-hour (kWh) premium over the Green package rate. Most CCAs around the country have similar packages.”

Sense opted into the SuperGreen package.

“The city’s ability to purchase power allows them to really fine-tune [the sources] they’re purchasing from [as part of this program],” King says. The CleanPowerSF program includes solar, wind and hydroelectric power. “It allows them to pull from a range of sources—and if they’re not able to keep up with demand, it allows them to spend some money and help fund some projects to get more renewables in the state of California.

“You’re literally supporting increasing the infrastructure for renewable energy in the state when you utilize this kind of program.”

Next up for Sense: King says the company is looking into closed-loop recyclable water and the LED market. “The technology is changing so rapidly, and things are getting cheaper and better. I think it might be worth it, since we’re already 100-percent renewable, to hold off for another year on that. It’s kind of a strategic approach to sustainability in a couple different ways.”

If he and the staff do elect to overhaul the Sense lighting system, PG&E offers $100,000 in interest-free financing for five years for any company interested in an LED package. 

Update: The STATES Act was introduced June 7.

U.S. Sens. Cory Gardner and Elizabeth Warren have said that they intend to introduce the STATES Act, which would echo Cole Memo policy and exempt state-legal regulated marijuana markets from the U.S. Controlled Substances Act. The announcement came after the highly publicized “deal” struck between the senator from Colorado and President Donald Trump. 

“Since the campaign, President Trump has consistently supported states’ rights to decide for themselves how best to approach marijuana,” Gardner said at the time. In return for relenting on his blockade of U.S. Department of Justice appointment confirmations, Gardner said, the president agreed to move forward a piece of cannabis legislation.

So far, it remains unclear when the bill will be filed. Cannabis industry observers and stakeholders are awaiting the next steps.

Rachel Gillette, a Colorado attorney specializing in cannabis law (and a partner at Greenspoon Marder LLP), says that the STATES Act, as it's been described to her, would bring far-reaching benefits to the financial framework of the fragmented cannabis industry. While a draft of the bill does not include any plan to remove cannabis from the list of controlled substances, a Cole Memo-like policy at the federal level would ease the financial restrictions on cannabis business owners and the nascent industry at large.

“As a result of this kind of legislation, it would fix a number of problems,” Gillette says, “including limited access to banking, as well as 280E, which is the provision of the tax code that says if you’re in the business of trafficking in a Schedule-I or Schedule-II substance that’s illegal under state or federal law, that your business is not entitled to ordinary business deductions. That’s a very punitive tax treatment from the federal government. In essence, it puts people out of business.”

Legislation like the STATES Act would take care of that issue, she says.

IRS Code 280E was passed in 1982 in response to cocaine trafficker Jeffrey Edmonson’s attempts to deduct business expenses from his drug-dealing operation. (Read more on how 280E creates “an impossible situation for legitimate businesses.”)

“It doesn’t make sense to apply such an archaic law to a regulated marijuana business,” Gillette says. “By applying 280E to regulated businesses in states like Colorado, it really punishes the businesses that are trying to play by the rules—while providing a subsidy to those individuals who continue to operate in the black market.”

NORML Political Director Justin Strekal agrees, as he explained in an interview with Westword.

The wave of legalization in the U.S. has brought drug-related law enforcement to an intersection with job growth and tax revenue. The STATES Act takes a small-business approach to the ongoing debate over legalization; rather than confronting the merits of legalizing cannabis, this bill merely makes those successful and active businesses economically viable.

“We’re seeing legislators on both sides of the aisle recognizing that there needs to be a change at the federal level,” Gillette says, citing states that have legalized adult-use, medical marijuana and industrial hemp programs. “This is toothpaste that’s not going back in the tube, a horse that’s not going back in the barn.

“We really do need to see the federal government, in essence, get out of the way of states that are experimenting in the laboratory of democracy with regard to these types of cannabis law reforms.”

Top photo courtesy of Adobe Stock