Beauty retailer Sephora has released a set of baseline standards for CBD-infused products it will carry as the high-end cosmetics store adds a fourth line of hemp-derived topicals to store shelves. The Sephora CBD standards require that CBD products it sells: Include only full-spectrum or broad-spectrum CBD extracts, not... Read more
USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue addresses the nation’s state agriculture departments on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020 (Photo courtesy USDA) Federal agriculture officials are dropping the requirement that all THC testing on hemp crops must be performed at laboratories registered with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), according to industry sources.... Read more
First-time hemp farmers learned hard lessons about the cost of doing business in 2019, when many grew the crop on speculation, without harvest plans or contracts in place. Promised they could make upwards of $50,000 per acre, farmers looking for a reprieve from low crop prices and foreign tariffs... Read more
By Matt Finkelstein, BlueFire Cannabis by FutureSense Opening up the new year, NCIA and FutureSense LLC released results for the inaugural Cannabis Compensation Study. The collaborative effort sought to uncover trends in compensation and establish benchmark data, creating a singular industry-wide resource for all to use. With the initial... Read more
Georgia-Pacific, a giant in the paper-manufacturing industry, is partnering with a Canadian firm that uses hemp-based fibers for a variety of nonwoven products. Victoria, British Columbia-based Bast Fibre Technologies announced the agreement with Georgia-Pacific on Tuesday. BFT makes baby wipes and other personal-care fiber products. The company said the agreement... Read more
Colorado CBD maker Veritas Farms hired a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official to help the company research and develop new products. Daniel Connors was an analytical chemist for the FDA, where he worked to maintain the safety of the nation’s food and medical supply, Veritas said in... Read more
Virginia lawmakers have sent Gov. Ralph Northam a proposal allowing people 21 and older to smoke hemp. The bill, sponsored by Republican Delegate Danny Marshall, passed both chambers of the Legislature on Monday. Growing and cultivating hemp is legal under federal law, and farmers in Marshall’s district have embraced... Read more
Green Growth Brands, an Ohio-based cannabis retailer that owns both marijuana dispensaries and the nation’s largest chain of CBD retail locations in mall kiosks, reported $21.2 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2019, up more than 600% from the same period in 2018. The company also announced... Read more
Ellen Deutsch (This is an abridged version of a feature that appears in the February issue of Marijuana Business Magazine.) Vertically integrated cannabis producer Stem Holdings is dedicated to organic production and high–quality standards – attributes the company plans to apply to its new ventures in the hemp industry. Ellen Deutsch, Stem Holdings’ executive vice president... Read more
A Wisconsin-based hemp grower is suing an Illinois farm it hired to dry 84,000 pounds of the crop, only to have most of the product burn during the drying process, a federal lawsuit alleges. Oconomowoc-based Lake County Growers said it hired Winslow, Illinois-based Moest Holdings in October to dry... Read more
