Supply Chain
Vireo Paid $21 Million for a Florida Grow Its Landlord Bought for $14.9 Million in 2025
The Palatka buyout follows Vireo's $88.5 million purchase of its New York grow from Innovative Industrial Properties, financed with a 15% seller note now refinanced at 8.5% and a $41 million loan from Chicago Atlantic, the lender CEO John Mazarakis co-founded.
Nebraska's First Legal Cannabis Crop Is Weeks From Harvest. No Lab Is Licensed to Test It.
All four licensed growers asked the Medical Cannabis Commission to defer $36,500 a year in proposed fees until a supply chain exists. The interim chair says they were warned to plan on storage. The commission takes up its rules on Nov. 16.
Auditors: 74% of Colorado Cannabis Product Batches Went Untested for Pesticides
The state audit presented to lawmakers on Oct. 19 found potentially contaminated products sat on shelves an average of 223 days before regulators warned anyone. Sen. Rod Pelton wants to know why businesses still pick their own test samples.
A Paint Stripper Turned Up in 49 Colorado Vapes. The Testing Rule That Would Have Caught It Was Due in July.
StayCon, doing business as Craft, pulled Maui Wowie and Grape Gorilla cartridges after a private Denver lab found methylene chloride. The Marijuana Enforcement Division has still not warned consumers, and says it does not comment on investigations.
Yufang Lan Had Not Been Paid. She Died August 27, and California Began Pulling the Cannabis She Grew.
The Department of Cannabis Control suspended Joel Michaely Farms on September 8 after a warrant turned up 55,069 plants, Eagle 20 in the hoophouses and a crew living on moldy floors. Four products have been recalled so far.
Hohenheim Study Challenges Cannabis’s Drought-for-Potency Pitch
Danilo Crispim Massuela and his colleagues found that two CBD-dominant varieties responded more strongly to genetics than to imposed water stress. Their new paper offers a quieter environmental prize: lower water use with output maintained.
Exactly 16 Senators: New Hampshire Overrides Ayotte's Veto on Medical Cannabis Greenhouses
SB 468 lets each of the state's three nonprofit growers apply for one greenhouse to cut the electricity bill behind $30 eighths. Gov. Kelly Ayotte's two-sentence veto fell 16-8 in the Senate and 257-44 in the House on Aug. 19, two years after Chris Sununu killed the same idea. Now DHHS has to write the rules.
Illinois Fought Two Outdoor Cannabis Grows for Years. Now It's Proposing Razor-Wire Fields for Everyone
An Aug. 14 Department of Agriculture rule would let all cultivation centers and craft growers plant outside, for extraction only, behind an eight-foot chain-link fence. Craft growers say it turns a $5 million buildout into a $250,000 one; Curaleaf's lawsuit over a 42,900-square-foot hoop house is still pending. Comments close Sept. 28.
A Ziplock Bag in a Car Trunk: How California's Fraud Case Against BelCosta Labs Fell Apart
An administrative law judge found no fraud, no consumer harm and state evidence that sat 25 days in a police locker. Fifteen months after the DCC pulled its license, the Long Beach lab's 70-plus employees are gone, its instruments sold, and the agency has 100 days to decide whether to accept the ruling.
300 Teamsters, a Town of 1,300: Union's First Cannabis Grow-House Strike Enters Week Four
Workers at Ascend Wellness's Barry, Illinois cultivation plant walked out June 25 over $18-an-hour wages, $1,000-a-month insurance and a fired bargaining-committee member. The company calls its final offer strong and its facility open, while asking shareholders, mid-strike, to approve its path to a major US exchange.
A Box Labeled 'Phone Cases,' 40 Pounds of Pesticide: Feds Charge Employees at a Licensed Oklahoma Grow
An unsealed indictment in Muskogee charges one worker at a Seminole County medical marijuana farm with smuggling unregistered pesticides from Hong Kong and a second with unlawful pesticide distribution. The case lands as Oklahoma's licensed grower count has fallen nearly 69% since September 2023 and its governor campaigns to shut the program down.
The Cannabis Lab Crisis: Three States, Two Failed Labs, 19,000 Samples Pulled From Shelves
Oklahoma mandates a recall of every product Greenleaf Labs touched over two years. New York pulls 55 lots tested by Keystone. Maine pulls a single grower's flower at 18 times the state mold limit. In Oklahoma and New York, the failure was the labs; in Maine, the flower was never tested at all.