Forget stars’ homes. These tours visit pot growers and bong makers
In Napa and Sonoma, tour bus operators ferry oenophiles between tasting rooms and vineyards. In Hollywood and environs, they shepherd the starstruck past the homes of the rich and famous.
Now they’re giving customers a mind-expanding look at one of Los Angeles’ burgeoning industries: pot.
Since recreational use of marijuana became legal a year ago, a pot tourism business has emerged, taking visitors behind the scenes of California’s estimated $7-billion cannabis industry.
Plans for a state-backed pot bank aren’t feasible, a study says
Hopes that California might create a public bank to serve the state’s legal marijuana industry are nothing but a pipe dream, the authors of a new feasibility study told state officials Thursday.
“In the end we were not able to find any approach to doing this that makes any sense whatsoever,” said William Roetzheim, founder and chief executive of Level 4 Ventures, the consulting firm hired to carry out the study for the State Treasurer’s Cannabis Banking Working Group.
California voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016 to legalize growing, possessing and selling marijuana for recreational use. But since cannabis remains illegal under federal law, most banks— which are federally chartered and insured by the FDIC — refuse to hold weed money.
Santa Cruz marijuana company fined $50,000 for explosion that badly burned employee
A Santa Cruz-based marijuana manufacturing company is being fined more than $50,000 by state regulators for safety violations after an employee was severely burned in a propane explosion, officials have announced.
An employee at Future2 Labs Health Services was working alone inside a 128-square-foot portable storage container in Watsonville on June 19, extracting oil from cannabis leaves with propane, when a spark ignited the tank and it exploded. The worker was hospitalized with severe burns, according to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
“The process of using a highly flammable gas to extract oil from cannabis leaves is dangerous,” Cal/OSHA Chief Juliann Sum said Thursday in a prepared statement.
FDA casts shadow on hemp win, calling CBD products illegal
The hemp industry still has work ahead to win legal status for hemp-derived cannabidiol, or CBD oil, as an ingredient in food or dietary supplements despite the big farm bill President Trump signed this week designating hemp as an agricultural crop.
CBD oils have become increasingly popular in lotions, tinctures and foods, but their legal status has been murky and the Food and Drug Administration has sent warning letters to some companies making health claims for CBD.
In a statement following Thursday’s bill signing in Washington, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb restated his agency’s stance that CBD is a drug ingredient and therefore illegal to add to food or health products without approval from his agency.