A group of Democratic state lawmakers in Wisconsin gathered at a dispensary in South Beloit, Ill., Aug. 10 to announce the introduction of a bill to legalize adult-use cannabis.
Rep. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), Rep. David Bowen (D-Milwaukee) and Sen. Melissa Agard (D-Madison) were joined by Beloit City Council President Clinton Anderson and Rock County District 15 Supervisor Yuri Rashkin at the Sunnyside dispensary in South Beloit to introduce the legislation, which the sponsors said would generate new tax revenue for the state and address the racial inequities of cannabis prohibition, according to a Beloit Daily News report.
Spreitzer, Bowen and Agard estimated that an adult-use cannabis market in Wisconsin could generate $160 million in annual tax revenue, and the legislation would earmark 60% of this revenue for a community reinvestment fund to support communities that were most disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs.
“However you feel about cannabis use, keeping it illegal isn’t helping anything. It’s only hurting. The people of Wisconsin are ready for legalization,” Spreitzer said when the trio of lawmakers unveiled the bill, according to Beloit Daily News.
The legislators referenced cannabis tax revenue in Illinois, the news outlet reported, which hit another record in July when the state’s dispensaries reported $127.8 million in adult-use sales.
The legalization bill will be circulated in the coming weeks in the hopes of picking up co-sponsors, the Beloit Daily News reported, although Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature largely remains opposed to the full legalization of cannabis.
Gov. Tony Evers, however, supports legalization, and included a proposal to legalize medical and adult-use cannabis in his state budget earlier this year. Evers’ plan immediately received pushback from lawmakers and was ultimately cut from the final budget.
MariMed Adds Key Executives to Its Team to Drive Revenue and Build Brand Value
Former Sam Adams CMO Robert Hall will serve as a Senior Brand and Marketing Advisor, while Kevin Compagna joins MariMed as VP, Wholesale & Licensing for North America.
NORWOOD, Mass., August 10, 2021 -- PRESS RELEASE -- MariMed Inc., a multi-state cannabis operator focused on health and wellness, has announced a series of appointments intended to help the company drive sales of its award-winning brand portfolio.
Senior CPG marketer and former Sam Adams beer Chief Marketing Officer, Robert Hall, has been appointed as a Senior Brand and Marketing Advisor to MariMed. In that capacity, he will help MariMed establish data-supported, distinct brand strategies and brand building techniques as the company expands the distribution of its top selling brands and products across the country. Hall will also assist the company in the expansion of its marketing team and organization.
Hall has been recognized for helping transform both the U.S. craft beer (Sam Adams brand) and hard seltzer (Truly brand) categories while working at the Boston Beer Company. Earlier in his career in a series of senior leadership roles, Hall was responsible for the overall marketing and profitability for Kellogg Company’s new Cereals and the marketing of the Natural & Functional Foods division.
Kevin Compagna has joined MariMed as Vice President, Wholesale & Licensing for North America. The accomplished sales executive will be responsible for driving revenues and market share for the company’s top-selling products, including Betty’s Eddies fruit chews and Nature’s Heritage high quality flower brand, in markets where MariMed is already licensed as well as new markets via licensing partnerships.
Compagna brings over two decades of spirits, beer and carbonated beverage sales experience, representing the full Constellation Brands portfolio at distributor Horizon Beverage, the Stirrings division of Diageo, the Moet Hennessy portfolio for that company, and Pepsi-Cola products as a Key Accounts Manager before that.
“I’m thrilled to announce today’s appointments and look forward to the many contributions each of these highly accomplished executives will each make in helping us achieve our business goals,” said MariMed President and CEO Bob Fireman. “Refining our product portfolio strategy and maximizing the revenue potential of our award-winning brands are core drivers of the strategic plan we began implementing last year, and Robert and Kevin’s expertise will contribute immensely to our efforts. Our plan has been working and MariMed is among the most efficiently run, highly profitable companies in our peer set.”
Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Conference Announce Inaugural Cannabis Leadership Awards Recipients
Award winners will be honored for their excellence in leadership at Cannabis Conference 2021 (Aug. 24-26) in Las Vegas.
LAS VEGAS, NV / Aug. 11, 2021 –Cannabis Conference and award-winning media brand Cannabis Business Timesare pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 Cannabis Leadership Awards, which recognize cannabis industry professionals who exemplify the leadership qualities needed to inspire and empower those around them and who work to better the industry and their communities.
Winners were selected from nominations of cannabis industry professionals from cultivation and/or vertically integrated companies (with cultivation and retail operations) in North America.
The award recipients will be recognized at an invite-only awards dinner and reception during Cannabis Conference on Aug. 25. In addition, they are featured in the August issue of Cannabis Business Times magazine, and their profiles are available at www.CannabisBusinessTimes.com.
“We are thrilled for the opportunity to honor these six individuals whose visions and values are an inspiration to their teams and others in the industry,” said Cannabis Conference Editorial Director Noelle Skodzinski. “This year’s honorees stood out for their accomplishments in building employee culture, scaling businesses responsibly and sustainably, furthering cannabis legalization, prioritizing social equity, giving back to their communities and more. In this burgeoning industry, the Cannabis Leadership Awards are an opportunity to recognize the work of those paving the way for future generations of cannabis leaders to come.”
The Cannabis Leadership Awards are made possible with support from FOHSE – Future of Horticultural Science + Engineering.
“It is an honor and a privilege to be at the forefront in building a diverse industry that harnesses the power of cannabis for good,” said FOHSE Chief Marketing Officer James Bradley. “FOHSE is proud to partner with Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Conference in celebrating the recipients of the Cannabis Leadership Awards for the passion and dedication they exhibit toward their businesses and the broader cannabis community.”
About Cannabis Conference
Cannabis Conference 2021, presented by the award-winning Cannabis Business Times, Cannabis Dispensary, and Hemp Grower media brands, is the leading educational provider for plant-touching businesses in the legal cannabis and hemp markets. The three-day event will take place at Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nev., Aug. 24-26, 2021. The Cannabis Conference exhibition hall will feature industry-leading technologies, solutions and services for cannabis cultivation and retail businesses. For more information, visit www.CannabisConference.com.
About GIE Media
GIE Media was founded in 1980 and has grown over 41 years into a leading marketing and communications business-to-business media company serving 17 industries -- including the horticulture industry through its Horticulture Group (Greenhouse Management, Produce Grower, Nursery Management, Garden Center, Cannabis Business Times, Cannabis Dispensary and Hemp Grower). The company employs nearly 100 editors, publishers, sales representatives, marketers and other professionals. For more information, visit www.GIEMedia.com.
Photo courtesy of Wana Brands
Wana Brands and The Green Solution Host Pop-Up Vaccination Clinics in Colorado
The edibles manufacturer and dispensary chain partnered with public health officials to provide COVID-19 vaccines to the local community.
What started as a tour to celebrate summer and highlight a new line of cannabis edibles transformed into an effort to bring the COVID-19 vaccine to the people of Colorado during a series of pop-up vaccination clinics this past weekend.
The tour, which launched in early July to kick off the summer, initially aimed to highlight Wana’s Quick Fast-Acting Gummies. The company set up a van at dispensary locations along the tour to celebrate the new product line.
“It was basically a pop-up in the parking lot, and that was inspired more or less from the post-COVID summer that everybody was really looking forward to,” Kim Gibson, a territory account manager for Wana Brands, told Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary. “They had the vaccinations, and there was this real sense of getting out and everybody being social again.”
As the summer progressed and more information surfaced about the Delta variant of COVID-19, Wana and The Green Solution wanted to encourage more people to get vaccinated.
“With the pandemic last year, we saw a lot of folks suffering from different levels of the pandemic, from financial [impacts] to folks who were passing away from COVID,” said Steve Lopez, CEO of The Green Solution. “We always want to help out all the communities that we serve. … We’re trying to increase vaccination rates and trying to make sure we’re doing our part to combat this pandemic.”
Wana approached The Green Solution with the idea to turn some stops along the Summer of Quick Tour into pop-up vaccination clinics.
“We wanted to basically look for other opportunities to make vaccinations available for people in Colorado,” Gibson said. “The consensus was to do it with a dispensary because we could target people where it would be very convenient for them [because] maybe it just wasn’t available to them until now.”
“A lot of things we’ve been hearing out in the news is that a lot of people are not getting vaccinated because of convenience—it’s too far away,” Lopez added. “This gives us the opportunity to take advantage of the traffic that’s coming to our stores to help get us to our level of vaccination rates that are known to make an impact on safety.”
Wana is a fully vaccinated company, Gibson said, and the leadership team is passionate about not only providing a safe working environment for the company’s employees, but also providing support to the local communities it serves.
“For Wana, it was important for us to support our community in offering opportunities for vaccination,” Gibson said. “We value our communities. We want our communities to be safe, and we want them to stay out of harm’s way. In our minds, becoming vaccinated not only serves our local community, but also our state as a whole. It was a unique opportunity that we felt that we should definitely step into and serve as well as we could.”
Photo courtesy of Wana Brands
The vaccines were administered in a separate tent in the parking lot during what Wana called the “Vaccine Edition” of the Summer of Quick Tour.
Since Wana and The Green Solution were already working together on events to showcase Wana’s Quick product line—and since The Green Solution is one of Wana’s largest dispensary partners with 23 locations across Colorado—Gibson said the dispensary chain was a good fit to host the vaccination clinics.
“They definitely had the bandwidth and the structure internally to help support this initiative because there are a lot of moving parts that are involved with putting on one of these events,” she said. “A lot of moving parts had to be connected, and it really takes a strong partnership between the dispensary and the brand to put this into place and make this go off without a hitch.”
The vaccination clinics were held Saturday, Aug. 7 through Monday, Aug. 9 at The Green Solution’s dispensaries in Edgewater, Aurora and Northglenn. The vaccines were administered in a separate tent in the parking lot during what Wana called the “Vaccine Edition” of the Summer of Quick Tour.
“We made a little special edition to highlight these particular stops to emphasize that there were going to be the vaccination clinics available,” Gibson said.
The clinics were generally well-received by the public, she added, with people pre-registering for the vaccinations and walk-ins who saw the tent on-site and were interested in receiving the vaccine.
“It’s really turned into a political thing, which is unfortunate,” Lopez said. “But we’re not political about this. This is not a red or blue state thing for us. … All we’re doing is trying to help out the community. … It just goes back to taking care of our communities and our employees.”
The Green Solution launched its dispensary locations with online ordering and express windows, which Lopez said helped the company comply with the coronavirus-related restrictions that went into effect last year. The dispensary had much of the infrastructure needed for curbside pickup already in place, for example, and is currently looking at ways to offer delivery services.
After seeing the success of the vaccination clinics, other dispensary groups in Colorado have reached out to the Wana team to ask if they can participate in similar events. Gibson said that although Wana has not scheduled any additional clinics at this time, the company is evaluating other opportunities.
“I think it’s even more important that we make these opportunities available for people just as a sign that we’re all in this together,” she said.
“We just are trying to get the word out so that people know, even if you don’t shop with us, you don’t even have to come in or any of that,” Lopez added. “Just come by, and we’ll get you vaccinated."
Legislative Map
Cannabis Business Times’ interactive legislative map is another tool to help cultivators quickly navigate state cannabis laws and find news relevant to their markets. View More