When Malek Asfeer immigrated to the United States from Saudi Arabia in 2011, he viewed cannabis much like heroin or cocaine: as a dangerous substance to avoid at all costs. Yet he soon found himself on the front lines of CBD and hemp legalization efforts in America.
Asfeer began volunteering for Realm of Caring, the cannabis nonprofit co-founded by Paige Figi (mother of now-deceased medical marijuana patient Charlotte Figi) and the Stanley brothers (the family of cannabis breeders behind the Charlotte s Web CBD strain). Eventually becoming the organization s art director in 2015, Asfeer produced video testimonials sharing the experiences of cannabis and CBD users. Now he wants to tell similar stories in the Middle East.
Studies that include potential therapeutic applications on humans require approval from the Food and Drug Administration and an institutional review board, says Kinney, while the Schedule I designation separates marijuana from other therapeutics that are considered.
On top of FDA and IRB approval, researchers handling marijuana must also receive a Schedule I license issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration. After making it through that obstacle, researchers must then get their plant material through the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s Drug Supply Program, which sources its marijuana exclusively from the University of Mississippi. (A 2017 study found that the cannabis grown at Ole Miss looks nothing like weed in legal dispensaries, with the Mississippi product containing roughly one-third of the THC found in weed from Colorado, California and Washington.)
“Colorado continues to be the epicenter of the growing cannabis industry, so we’re excited by the company’s smart decision to relocate and create jobs in our beautiful state. Colorado’s cannabis industry offers strong growth potential, and this move speaks volumes about our state’s cannabis industry and community as a whole,” Polis says in a statement.
Colorado s marijuana business regulations, state taxes and lawmakers drove Slang s decision to put more resources in the Rocky Mountains instead of other legal pot markets, according to CEO Chris Driessen. The regulations aren’t nearly as conducive to business [in California] as they are here,” he explains. “When you look at the industry here, when you look at the regulations, and now when you look at the politicians and what they’re doing to support and grow this industry I want to be somewhere where they want us, and obviously we are wanted here.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing for nearly nine months now, Colorado s marijuana industry has thrived with record-high sales throughout the year. But weed-adjacent retail businesses, considered non-essential by local and state government, haven t been as flush.
Smoke shops and CBD stores were among retail businesses that were deemed non-critical and forced to close during Colorado’s first stay-at-home phase in March. Marijuana dispensaries remained open during the most restrictive phase of pandemic closures, but both hemp-derived CBD retailers and head shops (many of which sell CBD and hemp products) were only allowed to reopen once the state moved into the Safer at Home phase in April. As the pandemic continues, these pot-adjacent operations have been forced to change their business models, which have brought mixed experiences and results.