Weed Talk NEWS - Massroots Goes PPP, High Times Ends the Storm, and Joe Biden's Black America Plan
What a wild week in cannabis as Massoots flaunts a PPP government loan, High Times gets a new CEO for the 3rd time in less than a year, and Joe Biden has a plan for Black America.
Join us as Cannabis.net and Pro Cannabis Media team up with Debra Borchardt of the Green Market Report to bring you this week's cannabis news, insights, and commentary. You can watch the show by clicking on the YouTube video above and read the full transcript below.
Jimmy Young:
Hi everyone. Welcome to another edition of Weed Talk News. I'm Jimmy young from Pro Cannabis Media.
Curt Dalton:
And I'm Curt Dalton from Cannabis.Net.
Jimmy Young:
And we've got an amazing amount of news items for you this week as always, an interesting week in the world of cannabis. In fact, you could even make a case that you've got politics, you've got weed, you've got racism, you've got guns. I mean, and you've got golf. Unbelievable Curt.
Curt Dalton:
Lawyers, guns and money Jimmy, the matrix is broken. We're living in Banana Land. We have Stormy Simon out at High Times. We have MassRoots playing a game of dangerous chicken with the federal government and right away we're going to Debra Borchardt to give us the headlines for this week.
Debra Borchardt:
I'm Debra Borchardt and this is the Weed Talk Business recap, MassRoots based industry backlash this week after the troubled cannabis platform company announced it got a payroll protection loan of $50,000. A lot of people pointed out, if you earn income from plant-touching cannabis companies, you can't actually get this loan. There were demands in social media that the company return the money, but so far, CEO Isaac Dietrich has said, no. Iconic cannabis publisher High Times reported that its CEO Stormy Simon resigned and was replaced by former Green Growth Brands, CEO Peter Horvath. This is the third CEO in just one year for the company.
Debra Borchardt:
Cannabis REIT Innovative Industrial Properties reported first quarter revenues of $21 million and net income of $11 million. The company also said it is deferring rent for some of its tenants due to the COVID crisis. And finally analytics from BDSA said that sales increased in March despite the pandemic for all the legal States except Nevada and Massachusetts. Nevada because it lost the tourist crowd and Massachusetts sales fell because the governor closed recreational dispensaries. And that's it for this week. Have a happy mother's day everyone. I'm Debra Borchardt from the Green Market Report, reporting for Weed Talk News.
Jimmy Young:
Thanks Debra. Well, I know for one Curt, you were not surprised about Stormy Simon's short reign at the helm of High Times.
Curt Dalton:
No, not at all. Unfortunately, she's a very nice person and seems like a good human being. We had done that interview in February that we published and she just didn't seem like a good fit and we questioned whether she was getting set up for something like this. Why does she go walking the glass cliff as it's referred to for a female or a minority to be appointed CEO at a very trying time in a company's history in order for if something bad was coming, maybe the punishment or the criticism would be lessened if you have a female CEO or a minority CEO. And unfortunately Stormy's out after only three or four months and we'll have to see what happens with their IPO in the future
Jimmy Young:
And she has not told her side of the story as far as you know yet, right?
Curt Dalton:
As according to why from what I hear, she's going to wait a month and then talk to people, but she did put out a post on her LinkedIn that was a meme that was a little bit cryptic, but as far as an interview, she has not given one yet.
Jimmy Young:
And of course, what's up with this MassRoots story? You and I talked about this earlier this week when it first broke. You know this situation and is this guy kind of playing with fire with the US government a little bit?
Curt Dalton:
Yeah, he certainly is. So MassRoots is a cannabis tech platform that applied for a PPP loan, the Payroll Protection Plan and he got it, $50,000 good for him. I think the mistake happened when he did a huge press release about it that got picked up by CNBC and Yahoo! Finance and of course we questions he's not eligible for it. If you have any income from the cannabis plant or dealing with companies that deal in cannabis, you are not eligible. Isaac then doubled down their CEO and did an interview with a cannabis law blog and their lawyers basically said, "No, you are not eligible if you have any income from a cannabis type company." The other problem in that interview is he mentioned Bank of America, kind of giving him the okay to go for it, he mentioned his law firm, giving him the okay that you could go for it.
Curt Dalton:
So now he's implicated Bank of America in possible PPP fraud, he's implicated his lawyers telling him it was okay and then if doubling down wasn't bad enough, he tripled down last night and tweeted and Facebooked the president of the United States and the secretary of state saying, "I got $50,000 we should open this up to all cannabis companies." So at some point Jimmy, it's a really risky proposition. It's not good for the industry and this could blow up in his face in the fact you could lose a bank account, you could have your lawyers drop you as a client and you could come under federal indictment like some people have for a PPP fraud.
Jimmy Young:
And again send lawyers guns and money because this is where the, you know what has hit the fan. Here in Massachusetts of course where this show originates, the governor, Charlie Baker had extended his ban to May 18th. We're all supposed to stay at home for non-essential workers and now of course things are softening up a little bit. Leading the way is one of my favorite sports golf. They've opened up some of the golf courses in the state for social distance play. I don't know if you saw some of the details on this Curt, but do you know they're actually taking the... you're supposed to put the little golf ball in the hole, right? That's the nature of the game, right?
Curt Dalton:
Right.
Jimmy Young:
Basically what they're doing is they're taking the cup and they're bringing it to the top with the flag. So you really only have to hit the flag for the ball to go in the hole because there's not to be a hole. It's just going to be sitting there so the person who makes the pot has to go over, pick up his own or her own golf ball and keep playing with that. It's a strange world now, isn't it?
Curt Dalton:
We're going back to five-year-old birthday parties where you just have to kind of hit the little standing pin and you're all set. The funniest part after the great interview with Keith and talking about what they're doing in Cambridge and how Massachusetts is adjusting to this pandemic. Right now we're at, you can go hit your 9-iron, you can go... Governor Baker also allowed, actually the Supreme court allowed gun shops to open. So you can hit your 9-iron, pull out your 45 but you're not allowed to go buy a joint. So what are we coming to here?
Jimmy Young:
Right, and you mentioned Keith Cooper, the CEO of Revolutionary Clinics, one of the larger medical dispensaries here in Massachusetts. Curt and I had a chance to sit down with him and I flat out asked him, "So are adult-use recreational stores going to open on May 19th?" Here's what he had to say.
Keith Cooper:
I don't know that May 19th is a realistic date frankly, just a couple of weeks from now. You've seen that there's already been indications of certain industries and businesses that are going to be allowed to open healthcare being at the top of the list for obvious reasons with people staying away from healthcare facilities that really need to be there, for surgeries or or procedures. I think there's a bunch of other industries, golf industry for example, that feels like a relatively easy decision because it's easy to stay socially distant. We'll be in that first wave I think Jimmy of businesses that have shown that they can open and have a plan to do that responsibly and productively. I don't know that the 19th is the right date. What we would like is a date.
Jimmy Young:
So we really don't know at the time of this taping of this newscast Curt, exactly what's going to happen in Massachusetts as far as adult-use cannabis dispensaries go. Obviously Keith Cooper's right in the middle of it. He of course is trying to help out his own industry and only time will tell. Maybe even next week we'll have an answer to how the Bay State is going to ramp up their adult-use cannabis sales again. And a lot of eyes are on the State of Massachusetts because it is the only State for adult-use recreational in legal States that banned them. You know what I'm saying?
Curt Dalton:
Yeah. And governor Baker mentioned that where one of his concerns was to ban the out-of-state people coming in. Now if you had legal rec in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, you wouldn't have people coming into the state to buy it. So that plays right into what he said. He said, "I don't think it's going to be the 18th," but certainly sounded like it would be coming after that so that's good news.
Jimmy Young:
Absolutely. And what isn't good news came out of South Carolina overnight where a former, actually a current Kansas City Chiefs player got busted for possession of cannabis because he was smoking a joint and I believe an 1/8th of an ounce of cannabis in his car. But this is another example again of law enforcement and people of color getting hassled.
Curt Dalton:
And just another example too, I'm sure Steve DeAngelo would agree to we need federal criminal cannabis reform. And people who are using it, even though the NFL has relaxed their policies and the new CBA, which I'm sure Biden was thinking or thought was okay, it has not changed federal law and that is the big problem.
Jimmy Young:
And yet federal prosecutors, even state prosecutors have said they really don't want to waste their time prosecuting small possession cannabis crimes anymore. Needless to say, with the COVID-19 crisis, there are movements as you know, to be more considered a public safety than worrying about a guy or a girl who's got a joint on them or a small amount of cannabis and bringing them into jail and then prosecuting them and... It's just the time has come and I think we've even seen it now in our political arena with the democratic candidate, presumed nominee, I guess is the way to look at Joe Biden at this point who came out with his plan for Black America and that included an expungement of these cannabis crimes where people are in jail for very small amounts of carrying weed and getting busted for it. And as you know, certainly more people of color are in jail for these kinds of crimes than any other ethnic group.
Curt Dalton:
It is a small step forward, but Biden is the only democratic nominee not to want to legalize. He just wants to decriminalize and it just again shows how tone-deaf I think he is as far as his plan for Black America, almost like a token gift or here's what I'm going to do for you is just decriminalize and clean up your records. We need someone that's going to step in, legalize at the federal level tax it, makes sure the products are all safe, make sure people are doing it over 21 and really clean up some of the illicit market. But Biden just seems to be tone-deaf on his plan for Black America. Hey, tell you what, we'll decriminalize it. How's that? And I just think he's still not getting it.
Jimmy Young:
But yet that even if you look at history in our country about cannabis reform, that is the first step towards legalization. It has happened just about in every legal State now is the first step is to decriminalize it. That also will take pressure off law enforcement and it will also take pressure off prosecutors and it will certainly take pressure off a lot of the people out there who are just using it for either medicinal purposes or for recreational purposes. It's time, I mean I'm not going to sit here and defend Joe Biden or even say, "You know what? He didn't go as far cannabis reformers would like." I'm just happy he's going in the right direction and more importantly, he's a responsible adult and that's an improvement over what we have now. Sorry, I had to put that in there.
Curt Dalton:
It's certainly again, it's better than nothing, but when you have candidates like Yang and Sanders who wanted full legalization and you even had more in there, I wish he would have come more to the left on that. And even Bernie said out of the conversations he had to get the endorsement from Bernie, legalizing marijuana was a non-starter for him. So it doesn't look good. And we've talked about it on the show, for the next four years is Trump or Biden better just for legalizing marijuana. And I think that's debatable. It is unfortunate.
Jimmy Young:
Well, I think it's a lesser of two evils and that's usually how it works on a presidential election. When you get behind that curtain, a lot of people don't like either candidates, so they take the least objective candidate and in this case, let's just leave it at that. I think people know which side of the fence I lean on. Actually it's so far left, it's ridiculous. But let's talk more about the cannabis industry on the whole here. Is this industry being held to an even a higher standard than typical industries that are opening and are highly regulated. It seems like any teeny weeny little mistake or bump in the road, they're getting held out there like a scapegoat kind of a thing. I would think that the people and including people like Keith Cooper, they can't make any little mistake in any type when they're running a cannabis business. It's a lot of pressure on this group.
Curt Dalton:
It is. And because the federal law says you are a Schedule I felony drug, the anti-pot crowd is very much looking for any slip up, any stories of edibles at Halloween given out to kids and a minor getting served, any type of negative story. So it's being held up to a lot of scrutiny. I mean, CEOs like Bruce Linton, and Joe Lusardi they've talked about this. We have to be perfect. We have to show the world we can do this. It's unfair until that federal law changes. But again, little steps, at least it's there, at least the States are decriminalizing and have medical programs at this point [inaudible 00:14:08]
Jimmy Young:
The GreenWave continues to roll despite the COVID-19 crisis and the role that cannabis is playing in this pandemic is just going to be another chapter in the book as we roll towards acceptance and legalization of cannabis. And finally today we've got a strange but true story. Maybe it's not so strange anymore in this world of COVID-19. I'm sure anybody, whoever, wherever you are in the United States during this pandemic, you've probably noticed that traffic on these highways has gone way down. I mean, Curt, you even notice that locally here in Massachusetts, right?
Curt Dalton:
Definitely. It's probably 50 to 60% less cars on highways right now. It's the latest number I saw, if not more in some places.
Jimmy Young:
And what does that say about human behavior? I think I have an opportunity here to go a little bit faster on the highway to get to where I'm going. And maybe like these three guys in California got busted because they were in a caravan of black SUVs and they had over a million, just about $950,000 of cash and I believe contraband in these cars with them. And sure enough, the California Police pulled them over and what did these guys do? They threw the money out the window onto the highway and it just boggles my mind that the people that are doing these kinds of things, they're not the most sophisticated criminals, am I right?
Curt Dalton:
You can't teach stupid Jimmy. And honestly, if you're going to start running a couple of million dollars in cash and cannabis and other things up and down the California Coast maybe don't go in a caravan of a black SUVs doing 120 miles an hour but they might've want to go over that plan before they left the kitchen with the map on the table.
Jimmy Young:
Absolutely. What they need is that guy, the professor in Money Heist if everybody's watching that on Netflix. One of those binge shows. But anyway, needless to say, Curt, another busy week in the world of cannabis. As always a pleasure to chit-chat with you. We continue with our Weed Talk Now series and we've got some really good guests coming up in the next few weeks. So for now this is another edition of Weed Talk News. I'm Jimmy Young, the founder of Pro Cannabis Media.
Curt Dalton:
I'm Curt Dalton from Cannabis.Net.
Jimmy Young:
So that'll do it for another edition. Remember it's a whole new world of weed out there. Use it responsibly. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 6:
Weed Talk and in the weeds are two productions of Pro Cannabis Media supported by Revolutionary Clinics. One of the top medical cannabis dispensaries in the Massachusetts area now with three locations in Greater Boston, two in Cambridge and one on Broadway in Somerville. Rev clinics has a patient first mission. They will customize your needs as a medical patient with the proper titration and combination of strains, flavors and products. Rev clinics where the patient comes first.
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