• Harm reduction is an element of motivation behind the proposed restructuring. “The negative effects of cannabis use seem to be particularly high for high-potency products, high-frequency use, and youth use,” analyst Gabriel Petek writes.
• Unsurprisingly, the industry isn't super up for shifting tax modes. Zachary Pitts California Cannabis Delivery Alliance president said he was “stunned” that California would “think [this] is an acceptable solution for anything.”

Quick Hits

1. The company formerly known as Origin House, CannaRoyalty Corp., is part of Cresco Labs now that the merger has closed. New year, same consolidation.
   New Cannabis Ventures
2. Trinity County legend Bailous Eugene Smith was an old-school rabble rouser, a Vietnam vet and pot pioneer who joined a bunch of gold prospectors deep in the Trinity Alps, lived off the land, and grew weed. This week he died at 72.
   Cannabis Now

• A 2012 law that allows small companies to sell stock through online equity crowdfunding made the The Regulation A stock sale possible.

• Golden Seed has $3.2M in assets. The lifestyle brand will put the funds raised by their stock offering toward facilities expansion, debt reduction, and marketing.

• Mexico's Supreme Court was initially supposed to vote on Halloween. Lobbying against the legislation's progressive approach was so intense that politicians allowed the Oct. 31 deadline to pass.

• Congress reconvenes on February 1. A law must be passed by April 30... unless too many monied interests make a fuss, and there's like no chance of that happening, huh?

• Insiders say that because Weedmaps doesn't vet ads before going live, the platform will continue to have a small presence of illicit business.
• The report credits Sacramento consultant Jackie McGowan with the assertion that Weedmaps "apparently" scrubbed the site of roughly 2,700 underground marijuana shops and delivery services in California.

Quick Hit

1. These prize-winning weed growers are the talk of Grass Valley, Truckee, too. And to think that Nevada County didn't even allow the growing of cannabis until May. Hmmm... maybe these champs were illicit!
   The Union

• In one Trinity County reclamation operation last year, the Integral Ecology Research Center dismantled 12 illegal cannabis cultivation sites in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, removing eight miles of irrigation lines that diverted water from local watershed along with 7,560 pounds of trash.
• Once California — which easily leads the nation in trespass grows — gets as proactive about integrating traditional growers into the legal cannabis framework as South Africa, they are likely to disappear.
• According to OZY, "Up to 70 percent of the black-market cannabis in California is cultivated on illegal sites." Ruling out squat growing, which isn't an actual thing, 30% of the groceries are cultivated with cooperation of legal types. Possibly self-righteous ones who complain about the "black market" on social media.

Quick Hit

1. Ivanka Trump was invited to give the keynote speech at CES, but cannabis innovations could only muster quasi-private accolades, no up front acknowledgments. The struggle is real.
   INC.

• A distributor told Cannabis Now that his company is keeping about $15K worth of product in Metrc “purgatory.” They are waiting for California to tell them what to do with it.
• A couple of anonymous breeders said that dealing with the system was taking an unusual amount of time, in terms of cataloguing and weighing seeds.

• The Department of Agriculture granted the Santa Rosa Band of Cahuilla Indians this permission under the 2018 Agriculture Improvement Act's Domestic Hemp Production Program. Only three tribes have been allowed to use the program.

Quick Hit

• Detroit has put off opening up dispenaries until January 31. But when the Motor City does get poppin'? Cookies will be there. 
  Detroit Metro Times

• The woman in charge at the venerable brand is Stormy Simon, former President of Overstock.com, Inc.

Quick Hit

1. On February 5-6, the International Cannabis Business Conference returns to California.
   The Leaf 

• On the faultline that is cannabis' marketplace threat to alcohol, Whitney pointed to the taxes and feels California passes on to consumers, saying, “If anything, cannabis has become less of a threat because we doubled our price overnight."

• To determine how legalization has influenced frequency of sex, the research team looked at a significant data set that included “detailed questions about sexual activity and substance use” in the youth between 1997 and 2011. Their survey asked for explicit answers on past-month marijuana use and sex.
• Respondents reported a 4.3% increase in the “likelihood of having sex once or more in the past month.”

• According to the report contraceptive use is down and births are up, correspondingly.