Cannabis Consumption Lounges Are Coming to More Cities: Is ‘Cannabis Cafe Culture’ Actually Good for the Industry?
Long before cannabis dispensaries were the norm, socially consuming weed had designated places of its own. Sometime around the 70s and 80s, Amsterdam’s coffeeshops marked the beginning of the world’s first public consumption lounges, where consumers could visit to buy legal and regulated weed, followed by a few hours of enjoyment in a relaxed atmosphere […]
While America Argues About CBD, Europe Quietly Fixed the Part That Matters
For all the noise around CBD in the United States, from Farm Bill loopholes to state-by-state confusion, the conversation almost never lands on the thing that actually affects the person buying a bottle: can you trust what is in it? Across the Atlantic, that question has been answered better, and not through louder marketing. It […]
The US Weed Bubble: Why Your Dispensary Habit Can Get You Killed Somewhere Else in the World
Americans have gotten comfortable. Forty-plus states have some form of legal cannabis on the books, dispensaries have started to look like Apple Stores, and an entire generation of consumers has grown up assuming weed is basically fine everywhere now. It is not fine everywhere now. It is barely fine in most of the country, and […]
Weed Could Replace Millions of Opioid Prescriptions If We Let It
Opioids have caused one of the deadliest health crises in the history of the United States. These drugs have notoriously caused hundreds of thousands of deaths alone, primarily through overdoses of synthetic opioids including prescription painkillers, fentanyl, and heroin. In 2024 alone, approximately 54,700 deaths were caused by opioids alone, while around 88% of opioid […]
Q&A: Hirsh Jain on Cannabis Rescheduling, Interstate Commerce and the Next Wave of Market Growth
Cannabis federal reform has finally reached a historic moment. Medical cannabis is moving through the rescheduling process after decades under federal prohibition, marking one of the biggest developments in the industry’s history. The final outcome could determine how companies expand, whether cannabis can move across state lines, and which markets become the next major opportunities. […]
Employers Are Finally Dropping the Pee Test, and It’s About Time for Cannabis Users
There’s a specific kind of American ritual that’s always struck me as bizarre when you actually think about it: showing up for a job interview, getting the offer, and then being handed a plastic cup and directed to a bathroom so a stranger can verify what you did with your own body on your own […]
Where Weed Is Legal in 2026: The 50-State Fact Sheet
Every year I tell myself this list won’t need updating much. Every year I’m wrong. Georgia just became the 41st state with a comprehensive medical program, Virginia finally unveiled a retail framework for a recreational market that’s technically been legal for five years, and the federal government spent the year deciding whether to reschedule the […]
Your Second Amendment Rights Are Now Safer Than Your Weed
Nine to zero. That’s the score from the Supreme Court’s June 18th ruling in United States v. Hemani, and for once, every justice in that building agreed on something involving cannabis. The Court ruled that the federal government cannot restrict gun ownership based solely on the fact that someone uses marijuana, finding that certain prosecutions […]
The Weed Generation Had Kids, Capitol Hill Didn’t Notice.
Somewhere in America right now, a parent is putting a toddler to bed, closing the door, and rolling a joint. Not a headline. Not a scandal. Just a Tuesday. And the politicians writing the laws that govern that parent’s life are, on average, old enough to be that toddler’s grandparent. That’s not a jab. It’s […]
Study Finds Colder BHO Extraction Produces Cleaner Cannabis Concentrates
New research from Abstrax suggests that extraction temperature may be one of the most important process controls for producing cleaner hydrocarbon cannabis extracts. The peer-reviewed study found that colder butane extraction significantly reduced the levels of wax-derived hydrocarbons in the final concentrate while preserving cannabinoids and terpenes. The researchers also identified the long-chain n-alkanes that […]