WCS 33 LFG: Down goes another barrier!

Cannabis rescheduling means plant medicine has finally bypassed a major fed hurdle

Welcome to the “Almost All Weed Edition” of the West Coast Sojourn newsletter. If an item ain’t about weed it’s about something I associate with enjoying while weeded, a smaller category than you probably imagine. So, follow along!

Before I exercise at the 24-Hour Fitness on Sunset, I sometimes pop into MMD, a cute basement dispensary tucked around the corner, on Cahuenga. My gut tells me there’s a Hollywood Boulevard Proximity Tax that’s been paid whenever I count how much cash I have left after MMD. But the gummy prices are okay, and working out without gummies is only so much fun. So, I go.

On Friday, the lobby was mad spacier than the last time I bought weed here.

MMD’s security dude must have seen the WTF look on my face—insiders know that austerity’s been the weed biz rule for a few years now—because he said it all while he examined my ID.

I visit so many dispensaries between Southern California and Washington,
sometimes I can feel the business’s financial strain.

“It’s the reality show,” he said.

I nodded absently because, truth be told, right about now I was about copping my gummies and not being late to the gym. And everything’s a reality show in this motherfucker anyway, am I right?

But still… that wasn’t austerity in there. I go to so many dispensaries between Southern California and Washington, sometimes I can feel the business’s financial strain. Bud tender vibes can speak volumes. No tangibly bad news here though.

Passively pondering, I walked up out of the basement and through to the daylight. About 20 yards from Sunset I looked up, and there was the dispensary’s billboard—a shooting star in this town’s galaxy of billboards. One must be hit over the head occasionally.

No matter how incredibly the show seems to treat LA’s cost of living, may the universe bless the cast of High Hopes and its maker—Disney talk show host and neighbor Jimmy Kimmel—for giving our legal weed business a needed boost. I can wait for the end of this weird epoch in which more Americans consume cannabis than ever while the entrepreneurs selling it are scraping by in a fashion that too is unprecedented.

Weed normalization matters, especially as the industry and the greater community embark on a new era of commercial and medical viability.

10 Nevertheless, there’s no substitute for legalization

The Boomer Biden administration’s decision to reschedule cannabis amounts to historic drug reform, even with its shortcomings, like the sentiment expressed above and other important flaws for us to quibble fiercely over.
Cannabis Business Times

• Since last August’s Health and Human Services memo recommending rescheduling, activists have wanted to see cannabis removed from the list completely.

• “With this monumental move also comes the elimination of 280E, which has burdened cannabis businesses and kept the industry from reaching its full potential,” said Dennis Curran, CEO & chairman of Acreage Holdings.

Lil Hit

• When you see and hear Britney Griner talk about the day she got busted flying with cannabis oil, you’ll not blame her the same for carrying it into Russia. We’ve all packed hastily, but almost never with such cruel results.
  ABC News

• I love that Oakland, Mendocino, and Humboldt counties got together to curate a cannabis trail from Santa Cruz to the Emerald Triangle. Just like Napa’s Wine Road.
  MG Retailer

9 Weed: The Jobs Program can revive candidate Kamala

As former LA cannabiz czar Cat Packer points out, rescheduling doesn’t address inequities in the industry. However, the development does open the door to a business discussion that the most dissed VP since Dan Quayle moved toward last year with Kentucky Gov Andy Beshear, MC Fat Joe (Cartagena) and advocates for the previously incarcerated: Legal weed as job creation machine.
Associated Press