Oklahoma’s Supreme Court just cleared State Question 836 to begin signature gathering and paused new restrictions on citizen-led petitions. Here’s why that matters, and what it means for SQ 837, the cannabis legalization measure.
Category: Business
Patients for Safe Access of Oklahoma: Fighting for Clean Cannabis in the Sooner State
A grassroots patient group is raising the bar for medical cannabis in Oklahoma. With over 200 products independently tested, Patients for Safe Access of Oklahoma is fighting for transparency, accountability, and safer medicine for patients statewide.
Brixx Cultivation
By Brannan Bell After years of doing other things, the owner of Brixx Cultivation was excited to put his horticulture degree from Tarleton State, in Stephenville, Texas, to good use and dive into the cannabis space with his knowledge and expertise. Many people within this industry can relate to coming from different backgrounds, or pivoting…
RX3 has the R3m3dy
“Just a couple of old school stoners using new school tech to create innovative, clean, and highly potent cannabis products.” That’s how Hopper and Ron, the team behind RX3 and R3m3dy Gard3ns describe their companies. A lot has changed in the 30 years since Hopper first started growing cannabis, and RX3 is evidence of that…
Lettuce Learning by Chet Tucker
With a saturated cannabis market here in Oklahoma, it’s important to understand not only basic economics but also how your product or service fits or outshines. At the date of this writing, we have over 6,800 licensed growers serving a medicinal market that makes up about 10% of the state’s population (aka Med-Rec with the…
Painted Pistols Cannabis Co.
By Veronica Castillo Painted Pistols Cannabis Co. Providing an avenue for the community of Chickasha to experience clean, organic medicinal cannabis. In a city about 35 miles away from Oklahoma City, exists a cannabis cultivation company owned and operated by life-long Chickasha residents- Painted Pistols Cannabis Co. Painted Pistols is located in a stand-alone…
That’s Not a Potato
by James Bridges | Herbage Magazine “So we decided to grow the real big buds.” When I was a kid I had a vision of what it would look like to be a wild man. I imagined I would of course own a helicopter, many unnecessary firearms, a pet grizzly or some sort of bizarre…
Texas – Landlocked and Surrounded by Legalization
by Veronica Castillo Texas, the second-largest state in the United States, largest city Houston, largest metro Dallas- Fort Worth, and surrounded by legal/decriminalized states on all sides- refuses to legalize cannabis for medicine. Present day, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana are medicinally legal and/or decriminalized cannabis states. Meanwhile, Texas doesn’t want smokable hemp legal,…
Harborside Decision
by Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish, Cannabis Lawyer Harborside was brilliantly briefed and argued before the Tax Court by my International Cannabis Bar Association colleague, Henry Wykowski, an exceptionally talented cannabis attorney headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are in the cannabis industry in Oklahoma or, for that matter, anywhere in the United…
Kind Origins Cannabis
by Anna Ervin When Camron Owens began growing cannabis in his home garage during the early days of Oklahoma legalization, he knew he had found his calling. “I’ve been supporting cannabis since 2015 or so, and I just love the product. I love the plant.” With a little help from his Dad, Camron transformed a…
Compassionate IND Program
by Tab Moura The history of cannabis in the United States has some dark and terrible chapters; the prohibition of cannabis has caused irreparable harm to the lives of many innocent people. Cannabis is a plant that has been used as a pawn to manipulate certain people into compliance, which is something we’re still fighting…
Sowing the Seed
by Chet Tucker As we move into the stages of growth, I felt it necessary to twist one up a bit and reflect on how nature (plant medicine) and ourselves are mirrors of growth. We’ve covered the genetics, the soil, the medium, the water, and the light and they all lead to the strength of…
Reefers
by Micah McKamie After being in dispensary after dispensary in the bigger cities you think you have seen it all. For The Reefer Shack in Seminole, super busy is just an every hour thing. “Being open 24 hours gives us a great advantage”, Jeremy stated, “we get people from all over headed to all sorts…
Oklahoma’s Medical Marijuana Program – 2021 Legislation Still In Play
by Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish | Cannabis Lawyer Earlier this year I provided an introduction to some of the more substantive bills filed in the Oklahoma House and Senate pertaining to Oklahoma’s Medical Marijuana Program. What follows are highlights concerning the more important bills that now have been passed by the legislative body in which…
From the Front Lines
by Chip Paul | Gnupharma/OK4U What is up with the OMMA? Has your commercial cannabis business been inspected? Did you know every other license the OMMA issues, you MUST be inspected BEFORE you are awarded your license? A marijuana commercial business license is the only Oklahoma State Department of Health issued license you can get…
Beating Censorship
by Veronica Castillo “Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy.” This is what Americans are told on whitehouse.gov’s, executive order, preventing online censorship. The government goes on to say and assure Americans that: “Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution. The freedom to express and debate ideas…
Sowing the Seed
by Chet Tucker Let there be light! Just like all of the elements needed to grow virtually anything, without light there is no flower. Besides our natural sun, there are many ways to “replicate” its rays and grow cannabis. These variants of light are typically analyzed and then chosen based on the environment that cultivators…
Rusted
By James Bridges | Herbage Magazine Finally after hearing and reading and talking back-and-forth I am able to sit down with this once cannabis prisoner, the “Genetics Man” himself, Brandon Rust. “When I go in there I put in the contract that any genetic material is my property. “That’s one of the reasons why some…
Changes In the Wind
by Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish | Cannabis Lawyer Has the pandemic given Oklahoma legislators too much time to ponder what changes they would like to see in Oklahoma’s medical marijuana program? Perhaps. As of January 22, 2021, they have filed a combined number of approximately 38 bills (some are only one-page titles and several are…
Easy Street Extracts
by Anna Ervin Nothing will solidify your love for humanity more than getting to explore the mindset of individuals who are passionate about helping Oklahoma patients find medicine that works for them. I had heard nothing but positive things about Easy Street Extracts, so I went into this interview with pretty high expectations. Josh Parsons,…
Noble Nectar Extracts
Photo Credit: Miranda Cummings | Words by Anna Ervin When asked what drives the Noble Nectar team, founder and co-owner Preston Anderson, told me that “providing quality cannabis products for patients is the foundation and objective of Noble Nectar.” “We come from cannabis marketing, sales, and retail experience,” Preston explained. “We learned many lessons from…
From the Front Lines
by Chip Paul GnuPharma Some of you are old enough to recall the effort that Austin TX started maybe 20 or 25 years ago. Austin made a very conscious effort to become the hub of the next Silicon Valley. They created State incentives, they started research, they started University level programs. They attracted the first…
Sowing the Seed
Seed to Soil by Chet Tucker Last month we started with the importance of genetics, the seed. This month we move to triggering the birth of the seed and what most growers use to feed the budding seed outside of water, soil. Every farmer is different and some might mention that water is required next…
How Sustainable is the Cannabis Industry?
by Brittiany Ralls In the last piece “How Sustainable is the Cannabis Industry?”, we chatted about how cannabis sustainability is hindered in part to laws that restrict the ability of businesses to be able to be more sustainable. Huge bummer, I know. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to participate in programs or come…
Congress Boards the MJ Research Train
by Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish, Cannabis Lawyer In the wake of passing the MORE Act, which I wrote about in my December 2020 column, two other Acts related to marijuana were passed by Congress at the end of 2020. The U.S. House of Representatives approved the Medical Marijuana Research Act (“MMRA”) on December 9, 2020….
From the Front Lines
by Chip Paul At this writing 2020 is coming to an end. Perhaps the craziest year of my lifetime. In addition to not knowing the truth about a mask, we cannot even conclude a Presidential election. We are beginning to learn about numerous foreign influences in our politics and major institutions. I would wager there…
Solventless Medicine
by Anna Ervin I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jeremy Babbitt of 918OG and I don’t think I have ever had the privilege of meeting someone so passionate about what they do. Whether he’s studying the composition and behaviors of different trichomes or designing the perfect water chilling system to process bubble…
Multilingual Cannabis Careers
by Brittiany Adilas ¿Conoces más de un idioma? In Spanish this means, “Do you know more than one language?” I’ll be honest with you, I don’t. Being multilingual in an industry that’s burgeoning like cannabis can make all the difference for career seekers. I have seen this first hand as a budtender myself….
National Expungement Week, Black Cannabis Week, and How Supporting Black Owned Helps Society
by Veronica Castillo Photo Credit: www.classpass.com The truth is the truth, in this country, black people have been at the bottom of importance, since Columbus and his boys showed up. So much of this country’s history is rooted in the oppression of black people and suppression of our rights. Changes have been made, but we…
Black Cannabis Week
by Veronica Castillo Photo credit: Black Cannabis Week Connection to entrepreneurship, wellness, innovation, education, and more Celebrated during the same week as National Expungement Week which I think is beautiful, Black Cannabis Week, also known as BCW, is: a collective web of educational and informational experiences to empower Black communities to move toward social…
The Daze of a Trimmer; Trimmers Fatigue
by Kathleen Clark The first day is always exciting. The second day you start to get comfortable.. Typically by the third day you know where everything is… The fourth day people start running out of things to talk about…. By the fifth day usually people feel some type of soreness in their hands and…
Building Your Brand in the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry
by Brittiany Ralls I was doing a little math one night and I was wondering how many active grow licenses Oklahoma had in comparison to the amount of residents. When I looked it up, the number quite surprised me. There is a cultivation for every 663 people in the state. We can probably assume some…
Making Cannabis a Family Business
by Brittiany Ralls Growing up I was never around cannabis. My family is primarily floor installers that came from Christian backgrounds. The women stayed home with the kids a lot and those that did work, did mostly secretarial work. Being that the family business was primarily flooring, I never really learned the trade like my…
From the front lines
by Chip Paul On June 26th at the 2 year anniversary of the passage of SQ788, a new trade organization and patients rights organization will be launched. We have the most unique situation in the country here in Oklahoma with our medical marijauna law. We have been fortunate that things have “gone our way..” as…
WHAT’S UP WITH THE GRANDFATHER CLAUSE IN THE UNITY ACT?
by Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish, Cannabis Lawyer Oklahoma House Bill 2612, known as the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana and Patient Protection Act, became effective on August 26, 2019. Now, with a significant number of commercial business licenses coming up for renewal since that effective date, UNITY’s “grandfather clause” on Oklahoma residency requirements is causing anxiety and…
Blossom Canna
by Rayne Graham Brian and Amber Hallum, the owners of Higher Health Medical Marijuana Dispensary and H&H processing, have really hit the Oklahoma Cannabis market by storm simply by sticking to their slogan, “Education before Medication.”. With products like Orion tablets and Blossom Canna Capsules, you will quickly come to have the same notion and…
The Daze of a Trimmer
by Kathleen Clark In the beginning everything that could go wrong went wrong. The first time euphoria from getting to work on the inside of a grow operation is difficult to put into words. I have enjoyed other aspects of the Cannabis industry but after spending over 10 years catering to customer service jobs I…
THC Terpene Infused CBD Pre-Rolls, Green Girls, a Medical Herb Co.
by Veronica Castillo My first experience smoking Lemon OG CBD was with pre-rolls from Green Girls, A Medical Herb Company. I remember being a little confused at first because, Lemon OG is one of my favorite strains and I have only ever heard of it as THC. When I consumed it, I knew that Marne…
From Corporate to Cannabis- Meet the Chapter President
by Veronica Castillo Meet the Chapter President of Minorities for Medical Marijuana- Missouri “I remember smoking Blue Dream one night. I was studying and my brain was absorbing words like a sponge. The next morning, I remembered everything from the text book- verbatim.” Marne Madison, was the youngest manager at one point in her career;…
Trailblazers: Peacock CBD, CBD Vape Cartridges Infused with THC Terps
by Veronica Castillo Terpenes contribute just as much as cannabinoids do. The consumption of Cannabis isn’t the same, without the terpenes that contribute to our medicinal needs. Like fruit and flowers, plant Cannabis has loads of terpenes, and they are responsible for the fragrances that our noses respond to. In my last piece, I covered…
The First Black Woman in Cannabis to Own an Exclusive Line of Strains
Musician and Cultivator- 1st Lady of The West Coast by Veronica Castillo 1st Lady of the West Coast had dreams and aspirations early on about having her own line of strains. This happened when she discovered the magic that Cannabis placed in her body; “sis, it would be so dope if I had my own…
Woman who Said “F” Working for the Man Now Owns The Botanical Joint
by Veronica Castillo Meet Sue Carlton I spent time with Sue and The Botanical Joint for a week in April during my tribute to Cannabis. I honored Cannabis during the first time that it was 4/20 all month long. The Botanical Joint sponsored my week long stay and I had such a nice time learning…
Cannabis Doctor-Certifying Patients for Medicinal Cannabis
by Veronica Castillo Meet Dr. Troy Alexander Dr. Troy Alexander is the Chief Doctor and Founder of Higher-Level Healthcare in Chicago, Illinois. She was also one of my sponsors for my tribute to Cannabis in April. She is one of few fighting for the people in southern Chicago. It wasn’t that long ago that Dr….
Inspiring Women to Come out of the Cannabis Closet
Pretty Women Love Cannabis: Meet Keba Richardson by: Veronica Castillo Keba Richardson is a Business Economics with a holistic health, and digital business consulting background. Her brand, Pretty Women Love Cannabis, is an inspiring one. She aims to remove stigmas associated with Cannabis consumption by making it ok to be a woman that loves Cannabis….
If a Law is Unjust, a Man is Not Only Right to Disobey It, He is Obligated to Do So: Spekr CBD
by: Veronica Castillo Meet Amir Zendehnam; Amir is the Founder, CEO, and Product Formulator of Spekr CBD, an optimal health and biohacking company with a focus on CBD. Amir, has over 10 years of work experience in every sector of Cannabis supply chain and years of work experience in electoral politics, government legislation and laws,…
The Cannabis Job Market Has More Options Than You Think
Written By: Brittiany Ralls Options, there are so many options! There are always the obvious choices of job searching for different positions. When a lot of job seekers start looking for different jobs that are available in the cannabis industry they sometimes forget all the options they have. When I consult with anyone seeking…
Can You Adapt Your Cannabis Industry Skills for Your Next Career Move?
Written By: Brittiany Ralls Being a critical thinker, problem-solver, and having excellent communication skills are always great attributes to have in any industry. With such an expanding industry there are a ton of skills that could be utilized in cannabis businesses. Some are more important than others when it comes to different positions that can…
Cannabis Careers Series: Spotlighting Transferable Skills
Written By: Veronica Castillo In this week’s series, Cannabis job resumes, and cover letters are the focus. Cannabis is a booming new industry and well- it being essential and by all means- GROWTH. There are many aspiring Cannabis employees waiting for legalization in their state. There are many already in a legal state and just…
Cannabis Careers Series: Resume Tips- Trimmer
Written By: Veronica Castillo In my previous Cannabis careers piece, I said: “It’s best to use words in the job description or as close as possible if the experience relates. No lying- just editing to align your experience with how the job posting describes it.” I didn’t explain why so, I will address it…
Cannabis Careers Series: Resume Tips- Budtender
Written By: Veronica Castillo The Cannabis industry is growing and booming! It’s an essential business and though we are seeing some layoffs and closures- the green rush is still- the green rush. This means JOBS! The Motley Fool predicted that between 2018 and 2023, the legal Cannabis industry will triple in revenue, reaching $30B….