Companies and Brands

Marijuana Weekly News Roundup

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Cannabis social media network MassRoots has filed an application to list the company’s stock on the Nasdaq exchange. The stock currently trades over the counter on the OTC Venture Marketplace under the ticker symbol MSRT.

MassRoots offers a free app designed to function as a social space where users can find other cannabis users to smoke with, locate dispensaries and share posts, videos and photos.

Two other cannabis-related companies are already listed on the Nasdaq: U.K.-based GW Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ: GWPH) and Insys Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: INSY). Both are medical marijuana companies.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter permits cannabis-related businesses and dispensaries to advertise on their social media platforms. And that advertising market is MassRoots’s target. The company said in late August that it generated more than $25,000 in ad revenues in the first 10 days of aggressively working to monetize its digital properties.

Here is a rundown on other stories related to marijuana that made news this week.

The Women in Weed Who Could Make Legal Marijuana a Billion-Dollar Business

It seems fitting that a plant called Mary Jane could smash the patriarchy. After all, only female marijuana flowers produce cannabinoids like the potent THC chemical that gets users buzzed. Pot farmers strive to keep all their crops female through flowering female clones of one plant, called the Mother. And women are moving into the pot business so quickly that they could make it the first billion-dollar industry that isn’t dominated by men.

In Washington, Greta Carter says she’s the mom with the most mother plants and the most lucrative female flowering crops of any legal pot farm in her state. A former Citibank vice president and mother of five, Carter is just a little bit country.

She has a gap-toothed smile and a shaggy platinum bob the same hueas Dolly Parton’s. Of the 2,400 people who applied for the first recreational marijuana growing facility licenses in the Evergreen State in 2012, Carter was the 71st approved. Her first weed ranch, the 45,321-square-foot farm Life Gardens near Ellensburg, is now one of the biggest and oldest legal recreational marijuana farms in the world.

Read more at the Irish Examiner.
Marijuana Dispensary Opens in Brockton

The state’s second medical marijuana dispensary opened Friday morning, receiving what its president described as brisk but orderly business.

“Overall, our patients are very happy today,” said David B. Noble, president of In Good Health, which was granted a 90-day waiver on Wednesday that allows it to sell marijuana that has not been fully tested for pesticides and other contaminants.

Noble said that by midday Friday, his dispensary had seen 100 to 150 customers at its 1200 W. Chestnut St. facility, a sprawling one-story building in the city’s southeastern corner, near the Easton line. Each patient spent about an hour and 15 minutes waiting in line and making their purchase, he said.

Read more at the Boston Globe.

US College Students Using More Marijuana, Less Tobacco

Marijuana use among college students is on the rise in the United States.

Studies of American college students show that daily marijuana use was more popular than cigarette smoking for the first time last year.

Studies found that 5.9 percent of college students said they use marijuana nearly every day. Students claimed to have smoked at least 20 times in the prior 30 days. That is a 3.5 percent increase from 2007, and the highest rate since 1980.

Only five percent of college students reported using tobacco daily.

More students are experimenting with the drug for the first time, as well.

Read more at Voice of America.
Spain Police Bust Large Marijuana Plantation Set Up by Inmate While on Prison Leave

Spanish authorities who raided what is thought to be the country’s largest outdoor marijuana planation didn’t have far to look for the prime suspect. He was in jail.

The 47-year-old Spaniard arranged for others to cultivate a three-hectare (7.4 acre) olive grove he had purchased while on prison leave, Interior Ministry spokesman Federico Pozuelo said Saturday.

The prisoner relied on a 59-year-old Lithuanian assistant and a staff of five to tend 75,000 cannabis plants, which weighed five metric tons and were valued at 5 million euros ($5.6 million), police said.

Read more at Fox News.

Fears of Marijuana ‘Monopoly’ in Ohio Undercut Support for Legalization

Yellow Springs is a small college town in Ohio that has more than one head shop and a lot of tie-dye and hemp.

Many would consider it ground zero for likely supporters of the referendum on the ballot this November that could make Ohio the fifth state to legalize recreational and medical marijuana.

But the proposal is drawing some unusual opposition — and it’s coming from residents who generally support legalizing marijuana.

Samantha Van Ness is among them. While she’s all for legalizing marijuana, the 25-year-old says she’s dead set against the amendment that will be on the ballot.

“I would rather take the minor misdemeanor fine than let someone have such a massive monopoly in my state,” she says.

And that’s the word lots of liberals and old hippies in Yellow Springs don’t like: monopoly. Many people who generally support legalization have a problem with the group ResponsibleOhio that’s pushing this initiative.

Read more at NPR.

Gov. Jerry Brown Brokering Late Deal on Medical Marijuana Regulations

Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration is crafting the framework for medical marijuana regulations in California, a session-closing play that could end nearly two decades of clashing interpretations and court battles.With the Legislature scheduled to leave town next week, Brown’s office is said to be bearing down on the details of a compromise medical cannabis measure, legislation that would have implications for the push to place a recreational marijuana legalization initiative on the 2016 statewide ballot.

While Brown’s office is not commenting, legislators and groups with a stake in the issue confirmed over the last week that the Democratic governor’s administration has stepped in to help develop a bill. Last week, legislative leaders stripped the contents of several medical marijuana-related measures and linked them with boilerplate language, establishing a new entry point for Brown’s aides.

Read more at the Sacramento Bee.

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