Marijuana Business Magazine March 2019

California In an effort to jump-start California’s sluggish legal marijuana marketplace, a group of state lawmakers proposed a bill that would for the next three years eliminate the state’s $148-per-pound cultivation tax and reduce the state’s 15% excise tax to 11%. The bill is designed to combat the state’s entrenched black market. Meanwhile, search warrants were served at 10 inland Southern California marijuana dispensaries allegedly operating without licenses. It’s a development that could help some licensed MJ firms that have long complained about black-market operators severely impacting their sales. Colorado Three owners of the shuttered Sweet Leaf dispensary chain and cannabis grower in Colorado were sentenced to one year in prison apiece for their roles in an illegal, multimillion-dollar sales scheme in what Denver officials called the first local prosecution of a legal marijuana enterprise in the United States. Matthew Aiken, Christian Johnson and Anthony Sauro each pleaded guilty to violating the Colorado Organized Crime Act. Their plea deals stipulated one year in prison followed by one year of mandatory parole and one year of probation, to be served concurrently. The heart of the case was the practice of “looping,” in which a given customer would buy the maximum amount of marijuana allowed (an ounce) multiple times during a day. Lead prosecutor Kenneth Boyd said his team had evidence of some consumers doing this up to 40 times a day. Manage your cultivation and extraction operations in one system Connect directly to state and Canadian regulatory systems Track your plants with barcoding and RFID Manage your entire business, including POS and payroll Runs in the cloud on any device nextecgroup.com/mjbiz