USDA rolls out weekly hemp report
Here’s a page to bookmark: the USDA’s new National Hemp Report, which will be published each week.
The first edition came out yesterday. Each edition will include “retail advertised prices of hemp products nationally and by region, along with volumes and cost, insurance, and freight (CIF) values of hemp imports into the United States,” according to the announcement.
“USDA has recognized the hemp industry’s need for timely market information,” said Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt, in the announcement. “The National Hemp Report will equip stakeholders with weekly price and volume information to help guide smart business decisions.”
Curaleaf cuts back.
Pointing to a “non-SAFE Banking environment,” the company, which is one of the largest in the U.S., announced several cutbacks in an effort to “generate additional cash and improve margins.”
Specifically, the company will “exit production and cultivation facilities in California, Colorado and Oregon,” and will “consolidate cultivation and processing operations in Massachusetts to a single facility in Webster, resulting in the closure of its Amesbury facility.” It has also cut 4% of its workforce.
“Today’s announcement reflects a decision that we did not arrive at lightly, and one that makes sense for our business at this time,” said CEO Matt Darin. “We believe these states will represent opportunities in the future, but the current price compression caused by a lack of meaningful enforcement of the illicit market prevent us from generating an acceptable return on our investments.”
Darin continued: “We remain excited about our future growth prospects both domestically and internationally, and now can devote greater resources to tangible growth opportunities in emerging markets such as Europe.”
Twin study pushes back against gateway theory.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota, CU Boulder and the CU Anschutz Medical Campus conducted a study that aimed to “quantify possible causal effects of recreational cannabis legalization on substance use, substance use disorder, and psychosocial functioning, and whether vulnerable individuals are more susceptible to the effects of cannabis legalization than others.”
The twin study included more than 4,000 twins from Colorado and Minnesota found no link between cannabis legalization and an uptick in issues related to psychological, social, or substance use.
“Recreational legalization was associated with increased cannabis use and decreased [alcohol use disorder] symptoms but was not associated with other maladaptations,” researchers concluded. “Moreover, vulnerabilities to cannabis use were not exacerbated by the legal cannabis environment. Future research may investigate causal links between cannabis consumption and outcomes.”
“We really didn’t find any support for a lot of the harms people worry about with legalization,” lead author Stephanie Zellers said. “From a public health perspective, these results are reassuring.”
This research was published in the journal Psychological Medicine.
Editor’s note: this story has been updated to correct Curaleaf’s staff cut to 4%.
