• In addition to selling its Scottsdale and Tempe dispensaries, MedMen is also getting rid of its Illinois factory, closing out a period of extensive purchasing and focusing on current market strongholds.
• “My biggest mistake of the last 12 months was not going through this restructuring sooner, and the market will tell you that, and the market has told us that for the last six months,” CEO Adam Bierman said. The company has laid off 300 in recent months.
• MedMen’s stock slid across 2019, ending the year at $.44 per share.

Quick Hit

1. Legalization and home growing in Peru, Colombia, and Argentina are something you likely only think about if you have relatives in those countries to show off for. However, companies such as Canopy, Aurora, and Cronos sure are thinking about those issues.
   Green Entrepreneur 

• Neither the California Department of Food and Agriculture or Bureau of Cannabis Control are talking, as their investigations are ongoing. But since March’s half-ton seizure of weed from an unlicensed processing facility in San Luis Obispo County, discussion has grown around the state’s claim that Lowell put unregulated cannabis into the market and thereby undermined the legal market.

• Lowell Farms doesn't appear to have directly disputed the allegations about having used an unlicensed facility for several months, but it said it hasn’t put any untested product into the market.  
• The author asserts that a scenario exists in which both the state and Lowell “could be ‘right.’”
• Meanwhile, Eater wonders if the lawsuit has anyting to do with Lowell changing the name of its West Hollywood restaurant just after debuting to coverage that small business owners dream of.

• People of color in and around West Coast legal weed circa 2019 have previously heard the mixed company version. Why can't more be done? (A quick answer is that California could have started out offering $20M available in small business loans, as Illinois has.)
• Apparently referring to the state level Rocourt says "there should have been just a tax thing. There's so much emphasis put on incubating and job creation for minorities. I feel like for companies the best and easiest thing to do is just put a tranche of money into something and have leadership at the state level dole that money out to qualified [Equity] applicants." He added, "I'm very happy to say it's still part of the conversation, it's not forgotten about."

• The attorney general's office is expected to have to approve the prospective initiative's title, summary, and fiscal impact report.
• If approved, adults 18 and older would be permitted to possess and cultivate psylocibin mushrooms for personal use.

Quick Hit

• Hallucinogenic drugs are having the little moment that’s bound to precede its big one. Drug Journo Michelle Janakian takes readers to communities beyond amateur analysis “psychedelic societies” and “integration circles.”
  Twitter

• Unlike UC Davis, whose pot scholars are limited by the school's lack of a DEA license, UC San Diego’s School of Medicine's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research does have one, in addition to the $2M Prop. 64 provides. Because the center has a DEA license, the school has received about $7M in National Institutes of Health grants over the past two decades.

• When the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors amended a cannabis ordinance to allow a new owner — an arrangement previously prohibited ownership change— the decision instantly raised the value of the property. Local agencies intervened, avoiding a massive kerfuffle.
• What does the Emerald Triangle's future hold? In Mendo, ordinance changes include a possible increase in cultivation canopy area allowed, which some fear will attract takeover-minded corporate big boys (and girls).

• LightLab creator Orange Photonics has been working with law enforcement "to ensure that folks on the cannabis side are doing what they are allowed to do," according to Dylan Wilks, Orange Photonics' Chief Technology Officer.
• Your county, too, can have a LightLab kit, for a light $1,350.

Quick Hit

• The sweeping economic implications of a maturing marketplace mean that serious entrepreneurs are creating efficiencies for profit margins.
  Cannabis Industry Journal

• “We’re using the word ‘disposable,’ where people believe they can throw these in the trash,” said Up Kindness Executive Director Shira Lane. “Really, you can’t. You can’t throw them in the trash. You can’t recycle them. There’s nothing you can do about them, and many people are just collecting them in their homes, not knowing what to do.”

• Up Kindness also opened an art exhibit designed to bring awareness to the issue on Dec. 15. All pieces are made of empty cartridges that have not touched the plant.

Quick Hit

1. Arizona-based MSO Harvest Health and Recreation purchased a 32,000 square foot cultivation facility in a suburb or Las Vegas. The former MJardin grow cost Harvest $35M and gives the MSO an even bigger Nevada footprint.
   New Cannabis Ventures

• The partnership was born of "one of those nights hanging out" and figuring out how the two Sonoma County CEOs might collaborate.
• After Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms put the kibosh on a concoction made up of hops and THC, AbsoluteXtracts and the Heineken-owned Lagunitas infused beer flavored water with cannabis. The product is called Hi-Fi Hops.

• "Pot cafes are an inversion of the normal stoner public experience. Instead of getting high and fearing everyone around you knows you are high, at a pot cafe, you're high but you know all of these strangers around you are also high. It's almost more disconcerting." More of a "you" thing than a problem with the unnamed dispensary under review.

Quick Hit

1. Let us look back hazily at a decade of weed hype. Writer Jimi Devine has some wild ideas on the federal legalization slog, the War on Drugs and, of course... strains.
   Cannabis Now