Today’s cannabis industry is a constantly shifting landscape of legal developments, policy changes, company fortunes, and product innovations. After you’re done reading our latest field guide, check out this selection of people, organizations, and outlets to help you keep up.
Keeping up with the news(letters)
- Marijuana Business Daily publishes great data insights in addition to US, international, and hemp industry editions of the news and newsletters.
- WeedWeek, helmed by Alex Halperin (who has also written about cannabis for Quartz), puts out California and Canada editions in addition to its general newsletter, which covers a wide array of business and political news aggregated from outlets including WeedWeek’s own robust site. Halperin also cohosts a weekly podcast with journalist Donnell Alexander.
- Marijuana Moment’s newsletter aggregates both US and international legal developments in the weed world, and links to related stories about cannabis culture, business, and science. The website is also updated regularly with original news stories and features a bill tracker for keeping up with cannabis legislation. Editor and longtime cannabis reform activist Tom Angell is also a good Twitter follow.
- Politico publishes regular cannabis coverage on its site, and also offers a members-only guide to the industry and Morning Pro newsletter, which is cowritten by Mona Zhang, formerly of cannabis newsletter Word on the Tree.
- Many US newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Boston Globe feature cannabis news as part of their regular coverage.
Focused insights
- Vivien Azer, a managing director at the financial firm Cowen and Company, covers the cannabis sector in addition to beverages and tobacco, and publishes regular reports on earnings.
- The Canna Law Blog, from the attorneys at the US firm Harris Bricken, discusses practical aspects of cannabis law and their impacts on the industry.
- For data on the industry, see: BDSA, New Frontier, and Headset.
- For news and advocacy for safe and legal cannabis access, NORML is fairly comprehensive in the US.
Two long reads that informed our state-of-play
- Ben Schreckinger and Mona Zhang’s tick-tock of Medmen’s downfall for Politico, “Lavish Parties, Greedy Pols and Panic Rooms: How the ‘Apple of Pot’ Collapsed,” is full of smart insight and delicious detail.
- Matt Soller’s 2016 Atlantic article “How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul” (which led to his book Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy) is about how the democratic party lost its anti-monopoly bent in the years following Watergate, and the consequences for American business and workers.
Bonus: an intriguing new podcast
- The Syndicate, a new 8-episode narrative podcast from investigative reporter Chris Walker, follows the story of a group of college buddies in Colorado who use skydiving planes to start a long-running and lucrative weed smuggling ring. This promises to be an intriguing look at the consequences of US cannabis legislation, which makes those who sell across state lines into outlaws.