Tag: Featured Story

Legacy, passion, quality, craft, and deep roots appear so often in cannabis brand copy that they have lost much of their power to differentiate. Stronger positioning requires more than familiar adjectives. Brands need tension, specificity, and a clear point of view that gives customers, investors, and journalists something distinct to remember.

Federal rescheduling may accelerate two distinct THC economies: a pharmaceutical channel built around federally regulated medicines and a state-licensed consumer market built around retail, experience, and brand. The more immediate business question may be what happens when intoxicating-hemp consumers need somewhere else to shop.

Natural blue is one of food science’s most stubborn formulation problems. As major food companies continue searching for scalable replacements for synthetic dyes, cannabis ingredients supplier Melt-to-Make spent years working through the same problem. Its resulting natural-blue gummies offer a small but satisfying reminder that cannabis innovation does not always follow the lead of mainstream consumer packaged goods. Sometimes, it gets there first.

Most dispensaries built loyalty programs to reward repeat shoppers. Along the way, many also built something even more valuable: a direct email audience made up of the customers most likely to spend, return, and pay attention. In an era of AI-assisted shopping and increasingly fragmented discovery, owned channels may be one of the few direct customer relationships retailers truly control.

An industry-wide end to 280E would do more than lower tax bills. A Schedule III shift could reshape cash flow, capital planning, debt management, and operational investment for cannabis businesses. Finance leaders who model scenarios now and decide how they would deploy released cash may be better positioned to strengthen their companies before competition and capital demands intensify.

Cannabis operators are putting artificial intelligence to work in inventory forecasting, reporting, marketing, customer segmentation, sales analysis, and cultivation planning. But the businesses seeing the most practical benefit are not treating AI as a replacement for people. They are using it to help existing teams move faster, spot problems sooner, and spend more time on work that requires judgment, relationships, and real-world expertise.

Cannabis operators have more software options than ever, but a bigger technology stack does not automatically create a better business. During IgniteIt’s Cannabis Capital Conference in Chicago, a panel of operators and technology leaders identified five priorities for making systems work harder: reducing tech debt, forecasting demand earlier, standardizing multi-state operations, connecting data, and measuring every investment against results.

DEA’s June marijuana-rescheduling hearing will feature seven designated private participants, and every one opposes moving cannabis to Schedule III. The federal government will make the affirmative case, while outside participants representing law enforcement, drug testing, anti-legalization advocacy, state governments, impaired-driving victims, and medical professionals challenge it. Here is who they are and what they’re likely to introduce.

Artificial intelligence may be most valuable in cannabis retail where it is least flashy: inventory management. AI-assisted tools can help dispensaries spot aging SKUs, identify stockout risks, adjust buy mixes as categories shift, forecast demand, and reduce the reactive discounting that quietly drains margin.

Medical cannabis businesses have until June 26 to preserve expedited DEA registration review. Cannabis Business Advisors founder Sara Gullickson explains why the filing should prompt a hard look at license records, ownership disclosures, product flows, SOPs, security controls, and traceability before federal oversight becomes more consequential.