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Gov. Hochul pushes tech companies to delist unlicensed cannabis shops.
In New York yesterday, Gov. Kathy Hochul held a press briefing to push her enforcement plan that is in her proposed budget. But she went further, and took the opportunity to talk about “the role of social media and the big tech companies” in combating unlicensed sales.
“Right now, they’re allowing the sowing of a lot of confusion in the marketplace. I think the vast majority of customers, we hope, will want to buy safe, tested products from licensed dealers. And if you type in ‘cannabis dispensaries’ in Google Maps or Yelp you’ll get a long list of unlicensed, illegal vendors,” she said.
She then asked if anybody had a phone on them to demonstrate what shows up on such a search.
“And people assume just because you see it on Google or one of the trusted platforms that they must be legal, right?” she continued.
Then, when someone gave her their phone with the results, she said “Oh my gosh” and then asked, “So, are all these legal?” The answer was, of course, no. She then held up the phone and said, “This is what we have to stop.”
“We’ve been in touch with these companies, these platforms, and we’ve told them flat out ‘you need to change this.’ Now I don’t expect them to track down and know who the illegal operators are. They would tell us that they’re not required to. So I say to them: let us help you, let us give you the list of legal vendors. I know who’s legal, we all know who’s legal. And then you have a responsibility to make sure that you’re not posting the location of illegal shops. Now I’m calling on all these platforms to step up, do the right thing, and be part of the solution. Don’t be complicit in helping to jeopardize the public health and the livelihoods of these legitimate business owners,” she said.
Cannabis Wire has reached out to Google on this very topic since last summer. After the 14th attempt to get answers, a Google spokesperson responded, but didn’t answer our specific questions.
“We display places that people can visit or interact with in the real world by using a variety of sources, including third-party information and feedback from our community. If we can confirm that a business has closed for any reason – including license issues – we’ll reflect that it’s closed in the listing. We also prohibit cannabis ads in New York and remove them upon detection, often before they ever run,” a Google spokesperson told Cannabis Wire.
…on the note of Hochul’s budget.
It also includes a proposal to end the potency tax on cannabis. This week, the Cannabis Association of New York (CANY) wrote a letter to House and Senate leaders to urge them to support Hochul’s plan.
The plan, they wrote, “presents a significant opportunity to simplify tax collection and alleviate burdens on small marijuana businesses.”
NIH-funded study finds more heart concerns among cannabis consumers.
Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco conducted a study that “examined the association between cannabis use and cardiovascular outcomes among the general population, among never‐tobacco smokers, and among younger individuals.” The study focused on cannabis smoking.
They analyzed data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey from 27 states and two territories between the years 2016 and 2020.
“Cannabis use is associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes, with heavier use (more days per month) associated with higher odds of adverse outcomes,” researchers concluded.
The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), within the National Institutes of Health.
This research was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
86% of Californians polled said it was “important” to buy cannabis from legal sources.
The vast majority of Californians see the value in buying cannabis from legal sources, according to polling data released this week by the Department of Cannabis Control (and conducted by FM3 Research as part of the broader Real California Cannabis campaign).
Of the over 1,000 people surveyed, a total of 86% said that it is “important to purchase cannabis from the legal market.” Meanwhile, 72% “believe consumers have a responsibility to ensure they are purchasing from a licensed retailer.”
But, consumers are having difficulty distinguishing between licensed and unlicensed retailers, because 44% percent said it was “easy to identify if a retailer was licensed,” while 42% said it was “difficult to tell if a retailer was licensed or unlicensed.”