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New Jersey College Offers Cannabis Training Course for Entry-Level Positions

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In December 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced proposed settlements with six CBD companies accused of making a broad range of unsubstantiated health claims, including that CBD can treat cancer, heart disease, hypertension, Alzheimer’s disease, bipolar disorder, and chronic pain, among others. Nicknamed “Operation CBDeceit,” the enforcement sweep was part of the FTC’s ongoing effort to protect consumers from false, deceptive, and misleading health claims made in advertisements on websites, through social media, and on other platforms. These settlements became final in early March 2021.

For those who have been monitoring regulatory enforcement relating to CBD claims, the types of claims listed in the FTC’s Complaints are familiar reading. Prior FTC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enforcement has focused on products that featured claims of treating chronic diseases and health conditions similar to the claims at issue in the “Operation CBDeceit” settlements. In that respect, these settlements do not differ from prior enforcement.

In other respects, though, these settlements are different from prior FTC enforcement on CBD claims. By including multiple companies and announcing all settlements at once, the CBDeceit announcement was coordinated to send an authoritative message to the CBD industry, broadly that the law requires companies to have robust evidence known as “competent and reliable scientific evidence” to support their health claims, a standard that applies to health claims for all consumer products.

These settlements also name not just the company as a respondent, but also individuals in their official capacity as corporate officers. Given the significant degree of entrepreneurial activity in the CBD and hemp industries, this should be understood as an indication that the FTC will look to hold individuals liable as a way of ensuring compliance with the settlement agreement, particularly where the respondent company is comprised of only a few people. In addition, five of the six settlements included monetary components ranging from $20,000 to $85,000, which will be used to provide consumer refunds, called “redress.”

The respondent companies are also required to notify consumers about the settlements per prescribed terms. For example, the Easybutter LLC settlement requires the company to provide a notice on all of their social media accounts (including any Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube accounts) and on the first page of their websites. Such notice must link to a copy of the Consent Order (settlement agreement), along with a toll-free telephone number and an email address for the redress administrator. The notice must be posted not later than three days after the effective date of the Order and for at least one year after the redress period ends. In addition, the companies must use a form letter attached to the Consent Orders to directly notify consumers who purchased their products about the FTC’s charges. This notice requirement is different from the vast majority of FTC settlements involving health claims.

So, what does this mean? Although these settlements didn’t break new ground on the kinds of claims the regulators are targeting with regard to CBD products, they signal heightened attention on an industry that has proliferated exponentially over the last couple of years. Health claims have long been of interest to the FTC. Given this and the transition to the Biden administration, the CBD industry should expect more settlements like these in 2021.

For those who are new to the CBD industry or unfamiliar with advertising rules, this explainer provides additional context for understanding Operation CBDeceit.

Who is the FTC?

The FTC is the federal agency tasked with protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive practices in the marketplace, including via advertising.

What roles does the FTC play in the CBD/hemp market?

The FTC’s role in the CBD/hemp market is to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive acts and practices. In the CBDeceit cases, the FTC alleged that the companies made claims that their CBD products could treat or prevent a range of chronic illnesses and conditions but that the companies did not have adequate evidence to support those claims. Because of this, the FTC considered the claims deceptive. To resolve the enforcement matters, each of the companies agreed to a settlement, the basic terms of which are discussed below.

 Is this the first FTC enforcement on a CBD company?

No, but Operation CBDeceit is the most significant and coordinated FTC enforcement in the CBD space. Prior to this, the FTC had issued joint warning letters with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to companies whose products also featured aggressive health claims. There was also a settlement in July 2020 involving a CBD seller, Marc Ching, which related to claims that CBD products could “treat, prevent, or reduce the risks of COVID-19,” claims that the FTC also alleged lacked adequate supporting evidence.

Is the FTC’s enforcement like the FDA enforcement on CBD?

Yes and no. The FTC enforcement is like the FDA’s enforcement on CBD products in that both agencies are concerned about consumers using untested and unproven CBD products to treat or attempt to prevent serious diseases and conditions, and may forego conventional medical treatment. The FTC’s enforcement is different from the FDA’s enforcement on CBD products in that the FTC is not addressing whether the products at issue can be legally sold as dietary supplements, foods, beverages, etc., under the law. The FTC’s enforcement in Operation CBDeceit is focused on whether the product claims are deceptive under the law.

In addition, the FTC’s enforcement differs from FDA’s CBD warning letters in that the parties to the FTC settlements must comply with the settlement terms for twenty years. If they violate the terms, the FTC can charge them with a violation and seek civil financial penalties of up to $43,792 per violation.

There are lots of companies out there making similar claims. Why did the FTC target these companies?

We do not know why the FTC targeted these specific companies. It is frequently the case that there are many companies making similar claims and the FTC, like all law enforcement, will pursue some but not others. Looking at the complaints, it’s worth noting that the companies are similar in that they all made claims that their products could treat or prevent serious health conditions or diseases, including that CBD is safe for all users, treats pain better than prescription medications like OxyContin, and is able to prevent or treat a wide range of serious conditions, including cancer, diabetes, cognitive decline, autism, schizophrenia, substance abuse, and AIDS, amongst others. The FTC alleged that none of these claims had adequate substantiation.

That said, the companies differ in the range of health conditions or diseases they claimed could be treated with CBD. It’s possible that the FTC was looking to demonstrate the broad range of false claims being made in the CBD marketplace.

What were the details of the settlements these six companies agreed to with the FTC?

Each of the consent orders requires the companies to have competent and reliable scientific evidence when making any other health-related product claims, and prohibits them from making several of the claims at issue without human clinical testing to substantiate the claims. As noted above, these settlements name not just the company as a respondent, but also individuals in their official capacity as corporate offers. Five of the six settlements included monetary relief ranging from $20,000 to $85,000. In addition, the companies are required to notify consumers about the settlements. While the terms of that notice vary, most require the companies to provide notice of the settlement on both their websites and social media accounts, as well as use a form letter to notify consumers who purchased their products about the FTC’s allegations.

What’s the main lesson CBD, hemp and cannabis companies should take from these enforcement actions?

The main takeaway is that health claims require robust substantiation to be properly supported. The law requires companies to have competent and reliable scientific evidence when making any health-related claims. In plain terms, this is a quantity and quality of evidence sufficient for experts in the field to agree that it is enough to support the claim, which is a very high bar. For health claims, this is commonly clinical testing on the ingredients or the finished product. Given the investment required to conduct product clinical testing, many companies opt to try to market using only testimonials to convey their product benefits. However, testimonials alone are not considered reliable claim substantiation.

In addition, companies should expect to see more enforcement like this in the coming year. The FTC has long prioritized enforcement on deceptive health claims and is likely to continue to do so.

Kristi Wolff is a partner at Kelley Drye & Warren and chairs the firm’s cannabis law practice group. Her legal practice focuses on advertising of food, drugs, dietary supplements, and consumer health products. Having served as in-house counsel, Ms. Wolff is particularly attuned to balancing business objectives with legal considerations.

Byers Scientific, Iowa State University & Odor Experts Identify Volatile Chemical Compound Responsible for Cannabis Odor Complaints

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Reliable heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment can cost upward of $300,000 or more for a 5,000-square-foot growing facility in the cannabis space. Proper lighting might cost just as much.

But those environmental controls become less effective for an ideal harvest if they are not complemented by the intelligent application of air distribution through engineered ductwork, which isn’t overly complicated nor expensive in the grand scheme of a productive room, according to Geoff Brown, vice president of technical solutions for Quest.

Often an afterthought, airflow is currently the biggest hump for growers in relation to environmental controls, but it doesn’t have to be, Brown said. Through Quest’s partnership with Hawthorne Gardening Company, growers now have access to the Airflow Mapping service, a computer-aided analysis that calculates or predicts where a diffuser’s air will travel. In turn, growers have access to custom solutions to their specific facilities without making major changes to those facilities.

Featured here, Brown shares more about Airflow Mapping, the importance of intelligent air distribution, working with manufacturers, return on investment and other pertinent knowledge to help avoid oversights associated with environment controls.

Q: Why is airflow so important in cannabis cultivation?

A: Ultimately it just comes down to building productive plants. TIP 1 Good air circulation at the leaf is what allows the leaf to breathe, to get rid of the oxygen around the leaf and to absorb more CO2 to make sure that the transpiration is happening and that you don’t have a locally deficient vapor pressure deficit (VPD). It’s really how the system needs to work. In my opinion, airflow is the single most overlooked thing in cannabis right now, or at least it is the next hump to get over.

The hump 10 years ago was, “Oh, shoot, we’re going to put cooling units in these rooms and hopefully they’ll do enough for dehumidification.” And then there was a dehumidification problem. Now there’s a notion, “We’re putting cooling units and dehumidifiers in, so we don’t have to think about airflow.”

So, how has that been addressed? Well, people have thrown in rotation fans in the space to move air around, but there’s no real concerted effort at managing airflow, or at least thinking intelligently about how airflow works in your room. It’s an afterthought at best.

TIP 2 Proper engineered ductwork is relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of indoor grow rooms. A 5,000-square-foot, which is a big room, and a productive room, might cost $20,000 in ductwork. And properly designed ductwork reduces the need for air-rotation fans in the space.

TIP 3 Air-rotation fans, although they’ve been used successfully, are actually a really bad thing for an efficient growth. For one, every watt they consume is an additional watt that needs to be removed from the space by a cooling system. So, you pay to run the fan and then you pay to cool off the fan. And most of those fans are also relatively inexpensive, open-pole motors. They can’t be cleaned properly between grows. So, you end up with either a vector for infection in your space or a fan that’s a pain to clean. The bottom line is it’s not a good use of resources, it’s not sustainable, and there’s a better way to manage it.

Q: What exactly is the Airflow Mapping service that Quest and Hawthorne have partnered to offer indoor operators?

A: Airflow Mapping is basically using computer-aided design to calculate or to predict where each airflow stream, or where each diffuser’s air will go. It uses things like internal duct pressure and velocities and volumes to predict or map out very accurately what the airflow in the space is going to look like. It truly creates an airflow map in the space. Typically, those are presented as velocity maps.

TIP 4 Roughly 5 feet per second is the ideal speed through the canopy, and Airflow Mapping shows very easily what your duct concept is going to give you in terms of overall rotation in the space. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to do your duct design and to test your duct design without needing to sacrifice a million-dollar room.

Q: Is Airflow Mapping a one-time analysis, or are there certain components installed that provide continual, live readings?

A: Airflow Mapping is a completely computerized analysis. The Quest IQ systems are designed as constant velocity and volume systems. So, Airflow Mapping day one versus day 50 versus harvest day, the only change is the height of the canopy. TIP 5 There are only a couple of different models that need to be done to accurately reflect what’s happening in any given room.

Typically, you’ve got an engineer who has designed ductwork systems, who has laid out his or her best estimate or best experience of what that ought to look like. We run it through the Airflow Mapping tool and then are able to either tweak the engineer’s design or strategically apply air-rotation fans to hit trouble spots instead of relying on them for the entire room.

TIP 6 That’s typically what we’re doing, is we’re looking at that design and saying, “Yes, this is reasonable. It’s not going to cost too much money to fix that particular corner. So, let’s apply in our rotation fan, but let’s de-stratify that one particular problem area and move on with our lives.” It allows us to do that without sacrificing a plant, or having a bad harvest, or having powdery mildew developed in the corner because it’s a stratified air mass. These are the kinds of things that we can determine in the computer, and map out in the computer, prior to a grower running the facility.

Q: The Airflow Mapping modeling software is the same software used by NASA engineers to design space shuttles—is that what makes the service groundbreaking to the industry?

A: Absolutely. Software like that has existed for a long time, but it has typically been reserved to agencies like NASA using it to determine the heating of individual tiles on a space shuttle at reentry, or velocities over individual parts of the ship. So, the technology itself is not new, but its application in anything other than specialized military projects or NASA is new and has become more of a commonplace in the past few years among high-performing organizations that have brought the software to the prosumer market.

Q: The Airflow Mapping basically helps indoor growers with custom solutions to their specific facilities without making major changes to those facilities, correct?

A: Exactly. TIP 7 Airflow Mapping is able to quickly identify potential problem areas that are much easier to change in the design phase than after everything is installed and after you’re stepping on the master grower to make ductwork changes in a space.

Q: What’s the importance of good ductwork to achieve an ideal airflow?

A: It’s not just a matter of putting up whatever ductwork happens to be cheaper or fell off your sheet metal guy’s truck. TIP 8 Real ductwork with good diffusers, getting the right flow, and getting the right throw out of your diffusers and out of your duct design is crucially important. So, it really does need to be an engineered system to do that properly.

Right now, there’s a lot of interest in things like fabric ducts because they’re quick and easy to put up. They’re quick and easy to take down and launder between grows, if you ever need to. TIP 9 But even something like that duct, you can get real air devices in it. You can get real diffusers with long-throw devices or high-velocity patterns that get air in the right spot. That is very important.

TIP 10 That’s only useful if you have enough airflow out of your HVAC system to make it work. That’s where with Quest IQ handling the entire needs of the space, the heating, cooling and dehumidification of the space in one unit, we run a higher than typical airflow than you would out of a rooftop package cooling unit, for instance. The extra airflow plus good duct design means that we’re able to get the canopy movement and get the penetration into canopy to get the real leaf movement that we’re looking for without requiring the use of some of the band-aids that have been put in previously, like air-rotation fans.

Q: When it comes to tracking the canopy velocity, is it ideal for airflow to be moving horizontally, vertically or both?

A: Like anything, it depends. TIP 11 It’s going to depend on the type of grow, the type of lights and the tiering of it. We’re seeing a lot more multi-tiered rows—two, three, four levels sometimes—particularly with LED lights being more common and not dealing with quite as many heat issues as the market has previously. That’s going to affect where air distribution is effective.

Also, getting the air in the right spot is important. It can be difficult sometimes with a typical grow room, 14 feet tall, and you’ve got a supply grill on the roof and your return is up top, because your equipment is on the roof. It can be hard sometimes to get the air down low. TIP 12 That’s where a good air device with the right amount of throw to get the air to the canopy matters.

In my perfect world, TIP 13 I would love to see supply and return happen opposite each other. So, if you’re going to supply high and pull air down through the canopy, your return would be low to help that, to not have as much opportunity for stratification, or vice versa, right? If you’re going to supply low, which some people do, they supply into the under-table ductwork or something like that, and then pull or draw air up through the canopy to have a high return, that’s going to be situational. Sometimes it’s just growers get shoehorned into things because they’re retrofitting an existing building. They’re not building a facility from scratch; it’s what is available to them.

Regardless of what is available to them, the Airflow Mapping can help them determine the best way to lay out that airflow pattern. Whether it’s a high supply, low return, or whether they’re forced to do a high supply, high return and would naturally have some stratification problems, we can help mitigate that through the Airflow Mapping.

I’m not sure that I’m comfortable putting my hat in the horizontal versus vertical versus both. TIP 14 I think all of them can be applied properly with some intelligent thought.

Q: What other oversights do cultivation facilities make when it comes to airflow?

A: One is that example of high return, high supply. If you were to look over your head right now, if you’re in your office, you’d probably see one of those four-way supply grills. They have no throw and they’re not designed to, because they’re designed to get air from a 9-foot ceiling down to a 6-foot breathing space.

We often see rooms that have those same style of diffuser in a 14-to-16-foot-high room and high supply. TIP 15 Issues like that are going to naturally cause stratification, where you’ve got a high supply, you’ve got high return. You don’t have a good air device. You’ve got your lights that sort of naturally create a bit of an umbrella or barrier to the air dropping down low. You may have horizontal air-rotation fans giving you a bit of an air curtain. And you’ve got a space that’s always going to be stratified as a result.

TIP 16 Reducing air-rotation fans can reduce your overall HVAC demand costs by something like 8% to 10% a year. So, if you’re talking about a typical room that would easily spend $50,000 a year in energy, you’re going to save $5,000 a year by doing ductwork properly. It pays for itself very quickly.

Q: Do taller or bushier plants play a factor in dead-zone considerations for facilities?

A: They absolutely can, as well as moving racking. Between the two we can often end up with situations with a bit of an aisle effect, where air doesn’t penetrate well into the canopy and will naturally go where there’s less air resistance. TIP 17 If you’ve got moving racking where you’re no longer working in the room and your rack home position changes on a daily basis, or changes versus where the ductwork was designed, you can end up with a situation where the air isn’t going into the canopy the way it ought to and instead is finding the easy path.

That can happen as well with bigger or bushier cultivars, or cultivars with thicker canopies. It absolutely can be harder to get air into the canopy. TIP 18 That’s where an intelligent application of under-canopy ductwork may make more sense, where you draw air up through the canopy in a vertical way instead of trying to push it from the side on an angle. But that’s quite application-specific. It’s really going to depend on the cultivar that you’re trying to grow.

Q: How can a grower with movable racking avoid airflow problems?

A: Movable racking is becoming very common, of course, TIP 19 but home positions for that racking are not always well-respected and can absolutely cause problems if you’ve got an engineered system and then you change some aspect of the system, like where the plants are. You can certainly have a negative impact on your airflow there.

There is an education piece in ensuring that the person in the room who’s working on the plants understands the impact of maybe not quite following standard operating procedure and not returning the rack to the right spot because, “Who cares if it’s a rack in the same room; what does it matter?”

I’m a big proponent of process improvement overall, TIP 20 but a big part of process improvement is knowing the why and having everybody know and understand why something is being done, not just, “Those are the rules, so do it.” Understanding why the racks need to be in the right spot when you leave the room matters.

Again, I just think air distribution generally is the biggest problem facing this industry. It’s the one that’s most ripe for some good education right now.

Cannabinoids & Brain Health – CBD Health and Wellness

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Cannabinoids have been implicated in the treatment of various medical conditions, and it is believed that the potential benefits of cannabinoids extend as far as the endocannabinoid system is stretched out in the body.

When it comes to the brain and central nervous system, cannabinoids are promising candidates for treatment because of their neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, and neuromodulatory properties. In fact, they have been studied and used in the treatment of conditions such as Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, childhood seizures, Parkinson’s and malignant brain tumors.[1]

Neurotech International Ltd, a medical cannabis company, recently completed Studies of the potential benefits of cannabinoids to the brain using their proprietary cannabis strain, DOLCE / NTI. The studies were carried out at Monash, RMIT and the University of Wollongong. This strain, which contains cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), cannabidiphorol (CBDP), and canabidibutol (CBDB), showed significant anti-inflammatory activity.

The DOLCE / NTI cannabis strain contains less than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which minimizes the regulatory issues likely to arise in commercializing the company.

Compared to CBD alone, DOLCE / NTI appears to have stronger (80% more) anti-inflammatory properties. The full spectrum strain exerted these effects by reducing the expression of arginase 1 and iNOS (inducible nitric oxide synthase); The expression of these genes is increased during inflammation.

At the concentrations tested, DOLCE / NTI produced no toxic effects on healthy brain cells.

“These final test results are very encouraging, especially the potent anti-inflammatory effects of our strains compared to CBD alone.” said Brian Leedman, chairman of Neurotech. These results indicate that the DOLCE / NTI leads can have broader application in relation to the treatment and management of a variety of neurological disorders. “

Researchers are now ready to proceed with Phase 1 clinical trials, which are expected to begin shortly.

Credit: Piqsels

Image source: https://www.piqsels.com/de/public-domain-photo-zbqcl

reference

  1. Maroon J & Bost J. Review of the Neurological Benefits of Phytocannabinoids. Surg Neurol Int. 2018; 9: 91.

How to Review Cannabis Information

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In recent years, misinformation has spread like wildfire in the US and around the world. False facts have scorned the development of conspiracy theories and raised significant public health concerns. Examples of this include downplaying the very significant and real threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the persistence of the myth that vaccines cause autism. The adoption of social media into daily life has accelerated the development and dissemination of this harmful information.

Cannabis and cannabidiol (CBD) have also suffered from misinformation, but this is not breaking news. Government agencies, politicians and private organizations have already waged a war against the plant as part of the “Reefer Madness” campaign, which aims to get people to avoid cannabis use. Negative stigma and criminalization have severely hampered scientific research and discouraged patients from accessing drugs that can vastly improve their lives.

While research has advanced in recent years, the majority of these studies have focused on the negative effects of cannabis use. The media reaches for these results and often misreports the results in order to adapt them to the classic stigma.

So if you are looking for legitimate information about CBD and cannabis, you need to learn how to verify facts.

You may know the term as it refers to the confirmation of claims made by politicians, especially during election season. However, fact-checking is an important process that should be done regularly while reading the messages – especially before sharing information that you believe is correct.

First of all, it is important to assess the trustworthiness of the information source. If it’s published on a website you’ve never heard of or known to publish inaccurate information, you should look forward to another website with the story.

Second, when the author references a scientific study in an article, is he presenting a balanced view of the results? Or is there bias in the narrative? A good place to look is the headline. If it appears flammable, the article is likely not a balanced source of information.

As you read the article, look for references to support the author’s claims. Are there footnotes with corresponding references at the end of the page? Are there links embedded in the article that can lead you to original sources such as studies, rather than to other articles on the same website? In the absence of references, you can assume that this information is based solely on the author’s opinion or on the interpretation of the information, and not based on fact.

Finally, when you find references or embedded links to legitimate resources, take the time to read them yourself. Make sure that the summary of the information and the author’s conclusions are actually based on fact.

In an increasingly polarized world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. However, when it comes to your health, you need to check facts every day to make sure the information you are receiving and sharing is completely factual in nature.

Here are some helpful resources you can use to learn more about fact-checking:

Credit: Andrea Piacquadio

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/surprised-young-woman-browsing-mobile-phone-3771127/

Become your best self and how CBD can help you get there

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Los Angeles, CA (March 24, 2021): Who Says Your Twenty Is Your Best Decade? A poll of 2,000 general population Americans found that Americans, on average, peaked or will peak once they hit 37. Two-thirds of respondents believe their prime is still ahead of them, and more than a third (34%) of respondents I don’t think they will peak until they are over 46 years old. CBDfxand conducted by OnePoll, the study found a direct relationship between a person’s feeling of wellbeing and reaching their peak potential.

It’s been a long pandemic, and six in ten (61%) people have come to appreciate each other more than ever in the past year. Looking ahead to the year ahead, nearly two in five (39%) believe 2021 will be their peak year, and three in four Americans have a wellness goal planned for 2021. Major wellness goals include achieving better physical health (56%), better mental health (46%), more exercise (45%), and better nutrition (44%).

These wellness goals are also the most important indicators of success for Americans. More than half of respondents feel “they did it” when they are in better physical (56%) and mental (50%) health. Increased financial stability (52%) and better well-being (46%) are also high-ranking measures of success.

“When people feel good, there is a level of positivity and motivation that extends to all facets of their lives,” said Jameson Rodgers, co-founder of CBDfx. “The uncertainty and upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has led many people to look inward and redefine what happiness and success look like for them, whether it is financial stability, a dream job, better physical fitness or positive mental health. Feeling like your highest self is validating all of the hard work that has been done over the years is only natural to look forward to this time in life – it is an immense accomplishment and a sense of wholeness. “

Overall, 85% of Americans feel happiest when they are feeling good. Likewise, 80% believe that they can achieve anything as long as they feel good physically, mentally, and emotionally. But when something is wrong, it can put a heavy strain on a person’s psyche. Respondents said they felt held back from success because they were stuck in their own heads (64%) or had to deal with the circumstances caused by the pandemic (60%).

When things don’t go their way, and they don’t feel like the best version of themselves, two-thirds of Americans are ready to fix their current problems by whatever means necessary. Popular methods of overcoming physical, mental, and emotional turmoil include getting a good night’s sleep (48%), exercise (48%), a full meal (32%), and taking prescription drugs (32%).

Almost half (46%) of those surveyed said they use CBD products, while a third of consumers used products a few times a week. 54 percent of CBD consumers say products helped them cope with stress and anxiety. Other popular CBD uses have been to treat physical pain (47%), sleep (39%), and general health (30%).

“We saw a significant increase in new CBD consumers in 2020 as additional stressors from the pandemic led customers to look for alternative and natural ways to improve wellbeing and ease anxiety,” Rodgers said. “While researchers are still working to understand how CBD can regulate or affect our endocannabinoid system, individual evidence has shown that it can promote beneficial effects on the body. Almost half of CBD users take CBD to help sleep, followed by physical relief and relaxation. This is the result of a recent survey conducted by the Brightfield Group. Because CBD contains little to no THC, consumers can enjoy the therapeutic benefits of CBD throughout the day and easily incorporate it into their daily lives for happier, healthier lifestyles. “

About CBDfx: CBDfx is a Southern California based company founded to provide high quality, organic cannabidiol (CBD) care products to customers in a variety of formats. from tinctures to topicals and gums to capsules. Founded in 2014 with the aim of bringing quality to the forefront of the CBD industry, CBDfx offers some of the best, purest and most effective CBD products in the world. CBDfx products are sold in more than 32,000 outlets in 21 countries and online at www.CBDfx.com.

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20 Tips for Proper Air Distribution in Your Cannabis Facility

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Reliable heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment can cost upward of $300,000 or more for a 5,000-square-foot growing facility in the cannabis space. Proper lighting might cost just as much.

But those environmental controls become less effective for an ideal harvest if they are not complemented by the intelligent application of air distribution through engineered ductwork, which isn’t overly complicated nor expensive in the grand scheme of a productive room, according to Geoff Brown, vice president of technical solutions for Quest.

Often an afterthought, airflow is currently the biggest hump for growers in relation to environmental controls, but it doesn’t have to be, Brown said. Through Quest’s partnership with Hawthorne Gardening Company, growers now have access to the Airflow Mapping service, a computer-aided analysis that calculates or predicts where a diffuser’s air will travel. In turn, growers have access to custom solutions to their specific facilities without making major changes to those facilities.

Featured here, Brown shares more about Airflow Mapping, the importance of intelligent air distribution, working with manufacturers, return on investment and other pertinent knowledge to help avoid oversights associated with environment controls.

Q: Why is airflow so important in cannabis cultivation?

A: Ultimately it just comes down to building productive plants. TIP 1 Good air circulation at the leaf is what allows the leaf to breathe, to get rid of the oxygen around the leaf and to absorb more CO2 to make sure that the transpiration is happening and that you don’t have a locally deficient vapor pressure deficit (VPD). It’s really how the system needs to work. In my opinion, airflow is the single most overlooked thing in cannabis right now, or at least it is the next hump to get over.

The hump 10 years ago was, “Oh, shoot, we’re going to put cooling units in these rooms and hopefully they’ll do enough for dehumidification.” And then there was a dehumidification problem. Now there’s a notion, “We’re putting cooling units and dehumidifiers in, so we don’t have to think about airflow.”

So, how has that been addressed? Well, people have thrown in rotation fans in the space to move air around, but there’s no real concerted effort at managing airflow, or at least thinking intelligently about how airflow works in your room. It’s an afterthought at best.

TIP 2 Proper engineered ductwork is relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of indoor grow rooms. A 5,000-square-foot, which is a big room, and a productive room, might cost $20,000 in ductwork. And properly designed ductwork reduces the need for air-rotation fans in the space.

TIP 3 Air-rotation fans, although they’ve been used successfully, are actually a really bad thing for an efficient growth. For one, every watt they consume is an additional watt that needs to be removed from the space by a cooling system. So, you pay to run the fan and then you pay to cool off the fan. And most of those fans are also relatively inexpensive, open-pole motors. They can’t be cleaned properly between grows. So, you end up with either a vector for infection in your space or a fan that’s a pain to clean. The bottom line is it’s not a good use of resources, it’s not sustainable, and there’s a better way to manage it.

Q: What exactly is the Airflow Mapping service that Quest and Hawthorne have partnered to offer indoor operators?

A: Airflow Mapping is basically using computer-aided design to calculate or to predict where each airflow stream, or where each diffuser’s air will go. It uses things like internal duct pressure and velocities and volumes to predict or map out very accurately what the airflow in the space is going to look like. It truly creates an airflow map in the space. Typically, those are presented as velocity maps.

TIP 4 Roughly 5 feet per second is the ideal speed through the canopy, and Airflow Mapping shows very easily what your duct concept is going to give you in terms of overall rotation in the space. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to do your duct design and to test your duct design without needing to sacrifice a million-dollar room.

Q: Is Airflow Mapping a one-time analysis, or are there certain components installed that provide continual, live readings?

A: Airflow Mapping is a completely computerized analysis. The Quest IQ systems are designed as constant velocity and volume systems. So, Airflow Mapping day one versus day 50 versus harvest day, the only change is the height of the canopy. TIP 5 There are only a couple of different models that need to be done to accurately reflect what’s happening in any given room.

Typically, you’ve got an engineer who has designed ductwork systems, who has laid out his or her best estimate or best experience of what that ought to look like. We run it through the Airflow Mapping tool and then are able to either tweak the engineer’s design or strategically apply air-rotation fans to hit trouble spots instead of relying on them for the entire room.

TIP 6 That’s typically what we’re doing, is we’re looking at that design and saying, “Yes, this is reasonable. It’s not going to cost too much money to fix that particular corner. So, let’s apply in our rotation fan, but let’s de-stratify that one particular problem area and move on with our lives.” It allows us to do that without sacrificing a plant, or having a bad harvest, or having powdery mildew developed in the corner because it’s a stratified air mass. These are the kinds of things that we can determine in the computer, and map out in the computer, prior to a grower running the facility.

Q: The Airflow Mapping modeling software is the same software used by NASA engineers to design space shuttles—is that what makes the service groundbreaking to the industry?

A: Absolutely. Software like that has existed for a long time, but it has typically been reserved to agencies like NASA using it to determine the heating of individual tiles on a space shuttle at reentry, or velocities over individual parts of the ship. So, the technology itself is not new, but its application in anything other than specialized military projects or NASA is new and has become more of a commonplace in the past few years among high-performing organizations that have brought the software to the prosumer market.

Q: The Airflow Mapping basically helps indoor growers with custom solutions to their specific facilities without making major changes to those facilities, correct?

A: Exactly. TIP 7 Airflow Mapping is able to quickly identify potential problem areas that are much easier to change in the design phase than after everything is installed and after you’re stepping on the master grower to make ductwork changes in a space.

Q: What’s the importance of good ductwork to achieve an ideal airflow?

A: It’s not just a matter of putting up whatever ductwork happens to be cheaper or fell off your sheet metal guy’s truck. TIP 8 Real ductwork with good diffusers, getting the right flow, and getting the right throw out of your diffusers and out of your duct design is crucially important. So, it really does need to be an engineered system to do that properly.

Right now, there’s a lot of interest in things like fabric ducts because they’re quick and easy to put up. They’re quick and easy to take down and launder between grows, if you ever need to. TIP 9 But even something like that duct, you can get real air devices in it. You can get real diffusers with long-throw devices or high-velocity patterns that get air in the right spot. That is very important.

TIP 10 That’s only useful if you have enough airflow out of your HVAC system to make it work. That’s where with Quest IQ handling the entire needs of the space, the heating, cooling and dehumidification of the space in one unit, we run a higher than typical airflow than you would out of a rooftop package cooling unit, for instance. The extra airflow plus good duct design means that we’re able to get the canopy movement and get the penetration into canopy to get the real leaf movement that we’re looking for without requiring the use of some of the band-aids that have been put in previously, like air-rotation fans.

Q: When it comes to tracking the canopy velocity, is it ideal for airflow to be moving horizontally, vertically or both?

A: Like anything, it depends. TIP 11 It’s going to depend on the type of grow, the type of lights and the tiering of it. We’re seeing a lot more multi-tiered rows—two, three, four levels sometimes—particularly with LED lights being more common and not dealing with quite as many heat issues as the market has previously. That’s going to affect where air distribution is effective.

Also, getting the air in the right spot is important. It can be difficult sometimes with a typical grow room, 14 feet tall, and you’ve got a supply grill on the roof and your return is up top, because your equipment is on the roof. It can be hard sometimes to get the air down low. TIP 12 That’s where a good air device with the right amount of throw to get the air to the canopy matters.

In my perfect world, TIP 13 I would love to see supply and return happen opposite each other. So, if you’re going to supply high and pull air down through the canopy, your return would be low to help that, to not have as much opportunity for stratification, or vice versa, right? If you’re going to supply low, which some people do, they supply into the under-table ductwork or something like that, and then pull or draw air up through the canopy to have a high return, that’s going to be situational. Sometimes it’s just growers get shoehorned into things because they’re retrofitting an existing building. They’re not building a facility from scratch; it’s what is available to them.

Regardless of what is available to them, the Airflow Mapping can help them determine the best way to lay out that airflow pattern. Whether it’s a high supply, low return, or whether they’re forced to do a high supply, high return and would naturally have some stratification problems, we can help mitigate that through the Airflow Mapping.

I’m not sure that I’m comfortable putting my hat in the horizontal versus vertical versus both. TIP 14 I think all of them can be applied properly with some intelligent thought.

Q: What other oversights do cultivation facilities make when it comes to airflow?

A: One is that example of high return, high supply. If you were to look over your head right now, if you’re in your office, you’d probably see one of those four-way supply grills. They have no throw and they’re not designed to, because they’re designed to get air from a 9-foot ceiling down to a 6-foot breathing space.

We often see rooms that have those same style of diffuser in a 14-to-16-foot-high room and high supply. TIP 15 Issues like that are going to naturally cause stratification, where you’ve got a high supply, you’ve got high return. You don’t have a good air device. You’ve got your lights that sort of naturally create a bit of an umbrella or barrier to the air dropping down low. You may have horizontal air-rotation fans giving you a bit of an air curtain. And you’ve got a space that’s always going to be stratified as a result.

TIP 16 Reducing air-rotation fans can reduce your overall HVAC demand costs by something like 8% to 10% a year. So, if you’re talking about a typical room that would easily spend $50,000 a year in energy, you’re going to save $5,000 a year by doing ductwork properly. It pays for itself very quickly.

Q: Do taller or bushier plants play a factor in dead-zone considerations for facilities?

A: They absolutely can, as well as moving racking. Between the two we can often end up with situations with a bit of an aisle effect, where air doesn’t penetrate well into the canopy and will naturally go where there’s less air resistance. TIP 17 If you’ve got moving racking where you’re no longer working in the room and your rack home position changes on a daily basis, or changes versus where the ductwork was designed, you can end up with a situation where the air isn’t going into the canopy the way it ought to and instead is finding the easy path.

That can happen as well with bigger or bushier cultivars, or cultivars with thicker canopies. It absolutely can be harder to get air into the canopy. TIP 18 That’s where an intelligent application of under-canopy ductwork may make more sense, where you draw air up through the canopy in a vertical way instead of trying to push it from the side on an angle. But that’s quite application-specific. It’s really going to depend on the cultivar that you’re trying to grow.

Q: How can a grower with movable racking avoid airflow problems?

A: Movable racking is becoming very common, of course, TIP 19 but home positions for that racking are not always well-respected and can absolutely cause problems if you’ve got an engineered system and then you change some aspect of the system, like where the plants are. You can certainly have a negative impact on your airflow there.

There is an education piece in ensuring that the person in the room who’s working on the plants understands the impact of maybe not quite following standard operating procedure and not returning the rack to the right spot because, “Who cares if it’s a rack in the same room; what does it matter?”

I’m a big proponent of process improvement overall, TIP 20 but a big part of process improvement is knowing the why and having everybody know and understand why something is being done, not just, “Those are the rules, so do it.” Understanding why the racks need to be in the right spot when you leave the room matters.

Again, I just think air distribution generally is the biggest problem facing this industry. It’s the one that’s most ripe for some good education right now.

FDA Issues Warning Letters on Marketing and Sale of OTC CBD Products

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued warning letters this month to two companies concerning the marketing and sale of over-the-counter (OTC) drug products containing cannabidiol (CBD) as an inactive ingredient. The letters allege violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act related to current good manufacturing practice requirements and marketing of new drugs without FDA approval.

At issue: labeling, NDAs and active ingredients

The companies subject to the warning letters market OTC drug products that contain CBD as an inactive ingredient. In the warning letters, the FDA states that it has not approved any OTC drugs containing CBD. According to the FDA, an approved new drug application (NDA) is required to legally market nonprescription or OTC drug products containing CBD, regardless of whether the CBD is an active or inactive ingredient. The FDA notes that CBD has known pharmacological effects and demonstrated risks, and that CBD has not been shown to be safe and suitable for use, even as an inactive ingredient. As a result, the FDA states that CBD cannot be marketed in OTC drug products.

Further, the warning letters noted the marketing of several CBD products that highlighted the benefits of CBD for a range of conditions in such a manner that, according to the FDA, “misleadingly suggests that [their] . . . products are approved or endorsed by FDA in some way when this is not true.” The FDA also took issue with the way products were labeled, which included callouts on the front label regarding the CBD content of the product (a requirement under most state laws that permit CBD as an ingredient). Similarly, the FDA also noted that some of the products advertised CBD as an active ingredient in a topical pain reliever product. According to the FDA, no company may legally market such a product, since there are no OTC monographs or NDAs that allow the use of CBD in an OTC drug.

What this means for you

These warning letters highlight the FDA’s vigilance regarding OTC CBD products. Regardless of whether the CBD is labeled as an active or inactive ingredient, the FDA has taken the position that nonprescription CBD drugs are in violation of the FD&C Act. Companies marketing CBD products should be careful to ensure their marketing practices, as well as their product formulations, do not present a heightened risk of FDA enforcement.

The New Jersey Cannabis Microbusiness License: An Entrepreneur’s Guide

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Reliable heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment can cost upward of $300,000 or more for a 5,000-square-foot growing facility in the cannabis space. Proper lighting might cost just as much.

But those environmental controls become less effective for an ideal harvest if they are not complemented by the intelligent application of air distribution through engineered ductwork, which isn’t overly complicated nor expensive in the grand scheme of a productive room, according to Geoff Brown, vice president of technical solutions for Quest.

Often an afterthought, airflow is currently the biggest hump for growers in relation to environmental controls, but it doesn’t have to be, Brown said. Through Quest’s partnership with Hawthorne Gardening Company, growers now have access to the Airflow Mapping service, a computer-aided analysis that calculates or predicts where a diffuser’s air will travel. In turn, growers have access to custom solutions to their specific facilities without making major changes to those facilities.

Featured here, Brown shares more about Airflow Mapping, the importance of intelligent air distribution, working with manufacturers, return on investment and other pertinent knowledge to help avoid oversights associated with environment controls.

Q: Why is airflow so important in cannabis cultivation?

A: Ultimately it just comes down to building productive plants. TIP 1 Good air circulation at the leaf is what allows the leaf to breathe, to get rid of the oxygen around the leaf and to absorb more CO2 to make sure that the transpiration is happening and that you don’t have a locally deficient vapor pressure deficit (VPD). It’s really how the system needs to work. In my opinion, airflow is the single most overlooked thing in cannabis right now, or at least it is the next hump to get over.

The hump 10 years ago was, “Oh, shoot, we’re going to put cooling units in these rooms and hopefully they’ll do enough for dehumidification.” And then there was a dehumidification problem. Now there’s a notion, “We’re putting cooling units and dehumidifiers in, so we don’t have to think about airflow.”

So, how has that been addressed? Well, people have thrown in rotation fans in the space to move air around, but there’s no real concerted effort at managing airflow, or at least thinking intelligently about how airflow works in your room. It’s an afterthought at best.

TIP 2 Proper engineered ductwork is relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of indoor grow rooms. A 5,000-square-foot, which is a big room, and a productive room, might cost $20,000 in ductwork. And properly designed ductwork reduces the need for air-rotation fans in the space.

TIP 3 Air-rotation fans, although they’ve been used successfully, are actually a really bad thing for an efficient growth. For one, every watt they consume is an additional watt that needs to be removed from the space by a cooling system. So, you pay to run the fan and then you pay to cool off the fan. And most of those fans are also relatively inexpensive, open-pole motors. They can’t be cleaned properly between grows. So, you end up with either a vector for infection in your space or a fan that’s a pain to clean. The bottom line is it’s not a good use of resources, it’s not sustainable, and there’s a better way to manage it.

Q: What exactly is the Airflow Mapping service that Quest and Hawthorne have partnered to offer indoor operators?

A: Airflow Mapping is basically using computer-aided design to calculate or to predict where each airflow stream, or where each diffuser’s air will go. It uses things like internal duct pressure and velocities and volumes to predict or map out very accurately what the airflow in the space is going to look like. It truly creates an airflow map in the space. Typically, those are presented as velocity maps.

TIP 4 Roughly 5 feet per second is the ideal speed through the canopy, and Airflow Mapping shows very easily what your duct concept is going to give you in terms of overall rotation in the space. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to do your duct design and to test your duct design without needing to sacrifice a million-dollar room.

Q: Is Airflow Mapping a one-time analysis, or are there certain components installed that provide continual, live readings?

A: Airflow Mapping is a completely computerized analysis. The Quest IQ systems are designed as constant velocity and volume systems. So, Airflow Mapping day one versus day 50 versus harvest day, the only change is the height of the canopy. TIP 5 There are only a couple of different models that need to be done to accurately reflect what’s happening in any given room.

Typically, you’ve got an engineer who has designed ductwork systems, who has laid out his or her best estimate or best experience of what that ought to look like. We run it through the Airflow Mapping tool and then are able to either tweak the engineer’s design or strategically apply air-rotation fans to hit trouble spots instead of relying on them for the entire room.

TIP 6 That’s typically what we’re doing, is we’re looking at that design and saying, “Yes, this is reasonable. It’s not going to cost too much money to fix that particular corner. So, let’s apply in our rotation fan, but let’s de-stratify that one particular problem area and move on with our lives.” It allows us to do that without sacrificing a plant, or having a bad harvest, or having powdery mildew developed in the corner because it’s a stratified air mass. These are the kinds of things that we can determine in the computer, and map out in the computer, prior to a grower running the facility.

Q: The Airflow Mapping modeling software is the same software used by NASA engineers to design space shuttles—is that what makes the service groundbreaking to the industry?

A: Absolutely. Software like that has existed for a long time, but it has typically been reserved to agencies like NASA using it to determine the heating of individual tiles on a space shuttle at reentry, or velocities over individual parts of the ship. So, the technology itself is not new, but its application in anything other than specialized military projects or NASA is new and has become more of a commonplace in the past few years among high-performing organizations that have brought the software to the prosumer market.

Q: The Airflow Mapping basically helps indoor growers with custom solutions to their specific facilities without making major changes to those facilities, correct?

A: Exactly. TIP 7 Airflow Mapping is able to quickly identify potential problem areas that are much easier to change in the design phase than after everything is installed and after you’re stepping on the master grower to make ductwork changes in a space.

Q: What’s the importance of good ductwork to achieve an ideal airflow?

A: It’s not just a matter of putting up whatever ductwork happens to be cheaper or fell off your sheet metal guy’s truck. TIP 8 Real ductwork with good diffusers, getting the right flow, and getting the right throw out of your diffusers and out of your duct design is crucially important. So, it really does need to be an engineered system to do that properly.

Right now, there’s a lot of interest in things like fabric ducts because they’re quick and easy to put up. They’re quick and easy to take down and launder between grows, if you ever need to. TIP 9 But even something like that duct, you can get real air devices in it. You can get real diffusers with long-throw devices or high-velocity patterns that get air in the right spot. That is very important.

TIP 10 That’s only useful if you have enough airflow out of your HVAC system to make it work. That’s where with Quest IQ handling the entire needs of the space, the heating, cooling and dehumidification of the space in one unit, we run a higher than typical airflow than you would out of a rooftop package cooling unit, for instance. The extra airflow plus good duct design means that we’re able to get the canopy movement and get the penetration into canopy to get the real leaf movement that we’re looking for without requiring the use of some of the band-aids that have been put in previously, like air-rotation fans.

Q: When it comes to tracking the canopy velocity, is it ideal for airflow to be moving horizontally, vertically or both?

A: Like anything, it depends. TIP 11 It’s going to depend on the type of grow, the type of lights and the tiering of it. We’re seeing a lot more multi-tiered rows—two, three, four levels sometimes—particularly with LED lights being more common and not dealing with quite as many heat issues as the market has previously. That’s going to affect where air distribution is effective.

Also, getting the air in the right spot is important. It can be difficult sometimes with a typical grow room, 14 feet tall, and you’ve got a supply grill on the roof and your return is up top, because your equipment is on the roof. It can be hard sometimes to get the air down low. TIP 12 That’s where a good air device with the right amount of throw to get the air to the canopy matters.

In my perfect world, TIP 13 I would love to see supply and return happen opposite each other. So, if you’re going to supply high and pull air down through the canopy, your return would be low to help that, to not have as much opportunity for stratification, or vice versa, right? If you’re going to supply low, which some people do, they supply into the under-table ductwork or something like that, and then pull or draw air up through the canopy to have a high return, that’s going to be situational. Sometimes it’s just growers get shoehorned into things because they’re retrofitting an existing building. They’re not building a facility from scratch; it’s what is available to them.

Regardless of what is available to them, the Airflow Mapping can help them determine the best way to lay out that airflow pattern. Whether it’s a high supply, low return, or whether they’re forced to do a high supply, high return and would naturally have some stratification problems, we can help mitigate that through the Airflow Mapping.

I’m not sure that I’m comfortable putting my hat in the horizontal versus vertical versus both. TIP 14 I think all of them can be applied properly with some intelligent thought.

Q: What other oversights do cultivation facilities make when it comes to airflow?

A: One is that example of high return, high supply. If you were to look over your head right now, if you’re in your office, you’d probably see one of those four-way supply grills. They have no throw and they’re not designed to, because they’re designed to get air from a 9-foot ceiling down to a 6-foot breathing space.

We often see rooms that have those same style of diffuser in a 14-to-16-foot-high room and high supply. TIP 15 Issues like that are going to naturally cause stratification, where you’ve got a high supply, you’ve got high return. You don’t have a good air device. You’ve got your lights that sort of naturally create a bit of an umbrella or barrier to the air dropping down low. You may have horizontal air-rotation fans giving you a bit of an air curtain. And you’ve got a space that’s always going to be stratified as a result.

TIP 16 Reducing air-rotation fans can reduce your overall HVAC demand costs by something like 8% to 10% a year. So, if you’re talking about a typical room that would easily spend $50,000 a year in energy, you’re going to save $5,000 a year by doing ductwork properly. It pays for itself very quickly.

Q: Do taller or bushier plants play a factor in dead-zone considerations for facilities?

A: They absolutely can, as well as moving racking. Between the two we can often end up with situations with a bit of an aisle effect, where air doesn’t penetrate well into the canopy and will naturally go where there’s less air resistance. TIP 17 If you’ve got moving racking where you’re no longer working in the room and your rack home position changes on a daily basis, or changes versus where the ductwork was designed, you can end up with a situation where the air isn’t going into the canopy the way it ought to and instead is finding the easy path.

That can happen as well with bigger or bushier cultivars, or cultivars with thicker canopies. It absolutely can be harder to get air into the canopy. TIP 18 That’s where an intelligent application of under-canopy ductwork may make more sense, where you draw air up through the canopy in a vertical way instead of trying to push it from the side on an angle. But that’s quite application-specific. It’s really going to depend on the cultivar that you’re trying to grow.

Q: How can a grower with movable racking avoid airflow problems?

A: Movable racking is becoming very common, of course, TIP 19 but home positions for that racking are not always well-respected and can absolutely cause problems if you’ve got an engineered system and then you change some aspect of the system, like where the plants are. You can certainly have a negative impact on your airflow there.

There is an education piece in ensuring that the person in the room who’s working on the plants understands the impact of maybe not quite following standard operating procedure and not returning the rack to the right spot because, “Who cares if it’s a rack in the same room; what does it matter?”

I’m a big proponent of process improvement overall, TIP 20 but a big part of process improvement is knowing the why and having everybody know and understand why something is being done, not just, “Those are the rules, so do it.” Understanding why the racks need to be in the right spot when you leave the room matters.

Again, I just think air distribution generally is the biggest problem facing this industry. It’s the one that’s most ripe for some good education right now.

Senate Follows Suit in Reintroducing SAFE Banking Act

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Thirty U.S. senators attached their names to the Secure And Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act of 2021, legislation that was reintroduced March 23 in the upper chamber of Congress. Among them, seven Republicans are on board.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT) are leading the charge as primary sponsors of the bill, which would create protections for financial institutions that provide services to state-legal cannabis businesses. The Senate version of the bill comes on the heels of SAFE Banking being refiled in the House on March 18, where it carries more than 100 co-sponsors. The lower chamber overwhelmingly passed a standalone version of the bill in 2019, and then House members passed the measure two more times as part of federal coronavirus relief bills in 2020. 

None of those previous efforts cleared the Senate, where there now lies new optimism with Democrats taking control of a 50-50 split via Vice President Kamala Harris representing the tiebreaker vote. In the last Congress, the SAFE Banking Act of 2019 had 35 senators signed on for sponsorship, including then-Sen. Harris, but former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) never acted on calendaring it for floor debate.

Many state-legal medicinal or adult-use cannabis businesses are denied access to the banking system because banks fear they may be prosecuted under federal law given the ongoing federal restrictions on cannabis, Merkley said in a press release March 23. The lack of access to bank accounts, credit cards and checks has forced some state-legal cannabis businesses to operate in cash, opening the door to tax evasion and to a dangerous pattern of robberies, including one that resulted in the murder of a store clerk in Portland, Ore., Merkley said.

“No one working in a store or behind a register should have to worry about experiencing a traumatic robbery at any moment,” Merkley said. “That means we can’t keep forcing legal cannabis businesses to operate entirely in cash—a nonsensical rule that is an open invitation to robbery and money laundering. Let’s make 2021 the year that we get this bill signed into law so we can ensure that all legal cannabis businesses have access to the financial services they need to help keep their employees safe.”

Helping motor more than $17.5 billion of legal cannabis sales in the U.S. in 2020, there were 515 banks and 169 credit unions providing services to cannabis-related businesses at the end of last year, according to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) quarterly cannabis banking update. But, like Merkley said, not all cannabis-related businesses have access to those financial institutions, and those financial institutions don’t have guaranteed safe harbor for taking on clients who operate in a sector that is not federally legal.

Providing all state-legal cannabis businesses access to banking services would not only improve community safety, but also make it easier for Americans of color—who have long been disproportionately impacted by America’s war-on-drugs policies and generations of asset-stripping policies and practices—to access the capital necessary to participate in the merging cannabis industry, Merkley said in his release.

Daines, who did not sponsor SAFE Banking in the previous Congress, is now taking the lead for Republicans who support the reintroduced version of the bill. Perhaps influencing his sponsorship, Montana was one of four states that passed voter-approved ballot measures to legalize adult-use cannabis in the November 2020 election.

“Montana businesses shouldn’t have to operate in all cash—they should have a safe way to conduct business,” Daines said. “My bipartisan bill will provide needed certainty for legal Montana cannabis businesses and give them the ability to freely use banks, credit unions and other financial institutions without the fear of punishment. This in turn will help increase public safety, reduce crime, support Montana small businesses, create jobs and boost local economies. A win-win for all.”

To address the safety concerns resulting from state-legal businesses being shut out of banking services, the SAFE Banking Act would prevent federal banking regulators from:

  • Prohibiting, penalizing or discouraging a bank from providing financial services to a state-sanctioned and regulated cannabis business, or an associated business (such as a lawyer or landlord providing services to a legal cannabis business);
  • Terminating or limiting a bank’s federal deposit insurance solely because the bank is providing services to a state-sanctioned cannabis business or associated business;
  • Recommending or incentivizing a bank to halt or downgrade providing any kind of banking services to these businesses; or
  • Taking any action on a loan to an owner or operator of a cannabis-related business.

In addition to Merkley and Daines as the primary sponsors, the legislation is co-sponsored by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Angus King (I-ME), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Jon Tester (D-MT), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Gary Peters (D-MI), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Patty Murray (D-WA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rand Paul (R-KY), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

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The growth of medical cannabis created a need for training

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(March 24, 2021) ST. LOUIS, MO – BeLeaf Medical is a proud partner of Saint Louis University’s School for Professional Studies (SPS) in developing the university’s Cannabis Science and Operations certificate. Launched in 2020, the program is designed to train students in all aspects of the cannabis industry and understanding of the pharmacological properties of cannabis.

In 2018, Missourians voted to legalize cannabis for medicinal purposes. Since then, licenses for the manufacture and sale of medicinal cannabis have been issued nationwide, including 70 in the St. Louis area.

“Legalized cannabis is projected to be a $ 150 billion industry by 2025,” said Tracy Chapman, Ph.D., dean of the SLU’s School for Professional Studies. “In addition to Missouri, thousands of jobs are being created across the country, creating a growing need for skilled workers to support and sustain this fast-growing industry.”

The SLU certificate program is the first of its kind in the country and is taught by professionals from the industry as well as experienced SLU faculties. The program covers all aspects of the medical cannabis industry, including cultivation, manufacture, dispensing, plant science, compliance, and operations. In just eight months, the program has enrolled around 300 students from 35 states and Puerto Rico and continues to grow. The first cohort of students will graduate this summer.

“Partnering with a highly respected university like SLU provides high quality education and preparation for employees, those looking to start careers, and those looking to advance their careers in the industry. Career opportunities are numerous in the cannabis space, and the demand for talent is increasing daily, both at the state and national levels. Certification from an exceptional educational institution like SLU offers great benefits to cannabis owners across the country, ”said Mitch Meyers, CEO of BeLeaf Medical. “A well-trained workforce for this new, expanding industry is very important for starting and growing companies. We sat down with Dean Chapman and her team in 2019 to discuss this plan, share our expertise and have been involved with curriculum and planning ever since. “

About BeLeaf Medical: BeLeaf Medical Company is a leader in the medical cannabis industry in the state of Missouri. With years of experience in multiple states, we are able to bring the very best cannabis flowers and manufactured products to market. We have curated the highest quality genetics of popular flower varieties. Our cultivation facilities use proven high-tech methods to grow medicinal varieties of the highest quality. BeLeaf Medical products are specially designed with medical conditions in mind. To ensure a consistently high quality product, we apply strict Good Manufacturing Practices. BeLeaf Medical Dispensaries offer a variety of products and knowledgeable staff to help customers find the best solutions.

About the School for Professional Studies at Saint Louis University: Classes at the School for Professional Studies are typically offered in expedited eight-week sessions and are aimed at busy adults with affordable tuition and hands-on online courses. In the tradition of excellence at Saint Louis University, the School for Professional Studies is aimed at students with adult life circumstances to complete Bachelor, Master and Certificate programs from the globally recognized SLU.

For immediate release: Tracy Polansky

314.604.1916 tracy@polanskygroup.com