Grown Rogue COO Tom Fortner has retired.

Fortner, who came out of retirement to join the multi-state operator in June 2021, completed his one-year contract and will return to a life of sailing, according to a company release. Grown Rogue says this departure will reduce corporate expenses by more than 10%.

“Tom came out of retirement to help us streamline our operations by creating efficiencies, disciplines and standardization across our approximately 200,000 square feet of cultivation in Oregon and Michigan,” said Obie Strickler, CEO at Grown Rogue. “I want to thank Tom for all his efforts over the past year and wish him well as he goes back to his love of sailing full time.”

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Adam August, CFO of a Grown Rogue subsidiary, will transition to senior vice president of Grown Rogue.

“Adam has been an amazing partner and advisor since we went public in 2018,” Strickler said. “His passion, expertise in financial planning and corporate strategy has allowed the company to flourish into the business we are now operating.”

See Grown Rogue's Obie and Sarah Strickler LIVE!

Obie Strickler and his wife Sarah Strickler, Director of Community Relations at Grown Rogue, will speak live at Cannabis Conference 2022, August 23-25 in Las Vegas. They'll speak on the all-access session, "How To Launch a Cultivation Business," and will be joined by Ball Family Farms Owner and CEO Chris Ball and Trulieve Chief Production Officer Kyle Landrum.

Visit CannabisConference.com for more information and to register.

Medical cannabis patients throughout Brazil may soon have the option to supply their own needs in a country where home cultivation has been repeatedly denied by the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA).

The Sixth Panel of the Superior Court of Justice—the country’s top court—issued a 5-0 ruling June 14 to authorize three patients involved in litigation to grow cannabis and extract its oil for medical treatment, The Associated Press reported. The decision will likely set a precedent for patients throughout the most populated nation in South America: Brazil has roughly 212.6 million people.

The majority shift in supporting medical cannabis legalization began nearly a decade ago in Brazil: A 2014 survey indicated that 57% of the population was in favor of legalization, according to the International Drug Policy Consortium.

Judge Rogério Schietti said the Brazilian government’s failure to take a scientific approach to medical cannabis prompted the court panel’s action, according to the AP.

“The discourse against this possibility is moralistic. It often has a religious nature, based on dogmas, on false truths, stigmas,” Schietti said. “Let us stop this prejudice, this moralism that delays the development of this issue at the legislative [level], and many times clouds the minds of Brazilian judges.”

While the AP reported Tuesday that Brazilian law currently limits the medical use of cannabis-derived products to imported goods, other reports contradict that statement.

In 2020, ANVISA (Brazil’s equivalent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) began allowing the commercialization of medical cannabis products, authorizing the manufacture, sale and import of cannabis-based medicines, including both THC and CBD-based products, according to The Cannigma and Daniel Law, a Latin American legal service in Brazil.

Currently, three companies are authorized in the country to cultivate, harvest and handle cannabis for medicinal use: Brazilian Cannabis Support Association Esperança (ABRACE), the Cannabis and Health Association (Cultive), and the Support for Medical Cannabis Research and Patients (APEPI), according to those two sources.

Home cultivation for personal use, however, remains unregulated and prohibited by ANVISA.

In Tuesday’s ruling, judge Antonio Saldanha said that “there is a deliberately backward action toward obscurantism” in the Brazilian government’s delay, the AP reported.

As recently as June 2021, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, a member of the conservative Social Liberal Party, said he opposed authorizing home cannabis cultivation, for medical purposes or not, according to the news outlet.

The Superior Court of Justice’s ruling came on the heels of June 11 protests in favor of medical cannabis in Brazil.

Cannabis data and business intelligence company New Frontier Data has released a new report titled, “Millennials as Cannabis Consumers: Attitudes & Behaviors of America’s Largest Generation.”

There are about 72 million Millennials in the U.S., according to a press release from New Frontier Data. Members of this group were born between 1981 and 1996, and many of them have children and are in the workforce.

“Millennials came of age when cannabis-related social attitudes and policies were changing rapidly,” Gary Allen, New Frontier Data’s CEO, stated in the release. “As young adults, they watched the normalization of cannabis use mitigate negative stereotypes, and they have played a leading role in the emergence of the legal cannabis economy, both as participants in the market and as champions for change.”

Here are some findings from the report, which is available for free download here:

• Nearly half of Millennials spend who purchase cannabis between $50 and $200 per transaction.
• More Millennials choose cannabis over sleep medication compared with other age groups and recognize what New Frontier Data calls “sleep-related minor cannabinoids” such as CBN and THCP.
• Sixty-six percent of Millennials state that cultivar identification is a key determination when making purchasing decisions, with that percentage being more than 20% higher than the share of Gen X consumers that do the same.