Discover more from Your Dose of THC
2020 may be remembered as the year of COVID-19 as it pillaged throughout the world causing inequalities to deepen and the realities of a fragile public health system comes to light. However, as a stark contrast, the Cannabis industry, made some significant strides in 2020 towards national acceptance.
M.O.R.E. Shows Potential
The MORE act, or the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, the bill that would ‘deschedule’ cannabis and decriminalize it at the federal level. Although the legislation did not make it to Senate, it passed in the house with representatives from both parties, which means that there is appetite to re-define what Cannabis means for the future generations with bipartisan support.
Arizona, Montana, South Dakota, and New Jersey all legalized adult-use in 2020 (Check out this dope legalization map). What’s crazy about that is that New Jersey actually arrests a third of all marijuana-related instances in the country!
(mjbizdaily.com)
Sales were Rippin’
Despite the pandemic, “Sales were rippin,” according to David Hua, co-founder and CEO of Meadow, the company that powers cannabis retail companies. They serve as a POS system, online ordering tool, and a slew of other back-end products. He talked us through bringing the community together to be able to weather this pandemic, early in the year. By the time the sweeping lock-downs, the Meadow team had come up with guides and ways for the community to survive. He even helped make sure that Cannabis companies were essential!
Cannabis is already experiences huge regulatory costs… imagine what happened when COVID hit..
Regulatory Burden
Another thing that carried over to 2020 was the stringent regulations on operations. Co-Founder and CEO of Canix, Stacey Hronowski tells us all about this in practice:
“Cannabis is regulated like the government regulations poison or guns… Every step of the Cannabis of supply chain from seed to sale, needs to be tracked”
Most companies spend about 75% of their time on compliance.. That is the problem that Stacey and the Canix team is trying to solve. Canix is a seed-to-sale software company that is bringing technology solutions to all Cannabis companies, including cultivators, manufacturers, and distributors. It’s the bedrock software to your Cannabis company, where you can do inventory, business analytics, and more importantly, stay compliant!
The Future is Clear
There is no question to the success of Cannabis. 67% of Americans think that Marijuana should be federally legal. Entrepreneurs like Hua and Stacey are bringing technology to improve efficiencies across the board! They are building the future of Cannabis.
The demand is there and the economic benefits are hard to argue with:
New Jobs: 57 million Americans filed for unemployment since March 2020. The industry has the potential to hire thousands of Americans as it already employs over 247,000 people.
Tax Dollars: I don’t have to tell you how much the government taxes sales: anywhere from 15% to 40%.
Positive Regulation Prospect: The government, even at the national level, is acknowledging that this is an issue and making steps towards decriminalization. As it gets legalized across the country, beyond the access to banking, there is potential to expunge the people whose lives were destroyed by incarceration.
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