Jenni Avins

It might feel like vaping has come out of nowhere, but tobacco and technology companies have been workshopping alternatives to combustible cigarettes for decades now—and largely flopping. Perhaps back in the 2000s, you encountered what appeared to be a cigarette, only to discover the “lit” end was a battery-operated light. Or a few years ago, you might have mistaken a friend’s Pax or Juul for a high-tech lighter or slim USB drive. (Were we ever so young?)

Philip Morris International is Big Tobacco’s biggest tobacco company, worth some $130 billion. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, the Switzerland-based behemoth sold about 60 billion Marlboros—the world’s most popular cigarettes, which represent less than one-fifth of PMI’s cigarette sales overall. And yet, Philip Morris executives claim the company is on a mission to “unsmoke the world.” How? By converting its countless consumers to electronic alternatives like its new IQOS device, which heats small rolls of tobacco (refills called “Heetsticks” that resemble miniature cigarettes) and creates vapor containing nicotine to be inhaled. The IQOS is already available in more than 40 countries and launching in the US this month.

“If I knew it was the end, I would start smoking immediately,” says Christina Applegate’s character to her friend, played by Linda Cardellini, in the Netflix series Dead To Me. 

You may have noticed that CBD—the non-intoxicating cannabis-derived chemical compound—can now be found in drugstores, cafés, pet stores, bars, spas, and all over the internet. Farmers have also noticed, and are planting hemp to supply the rapidly expanding industry.

Marianne Williamson, the bestselling author, activist, and spiritual leader who is running to be the democratic nominee for president in 2020, got big applause when she defended her plan to give reparations to the tune of $200 to 500 billion to the descendants of African-American slaves at Tuesday night’s debates.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the 11th hour. It’s not midnight yet, but we need to wake up, and we need to wake up fast.”

The US cannabis industry got a new green giant this week. Curaleaf Holdings, a Massachusetts-based operator of cultivation sites, processors, and dispensaries, announced a deal to acquire Grassroots Cannabis, a Chicago-based company that will give the company access to the newly legal and highly lucrative Illinois market—which by some estimates, could soon rival that of Colorado.

People feel strongly about straws, and US president Donald Trump is here to capitalize on that.

Fifty years ago today, the Apollo 11 mission put the first human on the moon. And as Quartz’s Tim Fernholz wrote this week, there is an abundance of fabulous content to consume in commemoration of this miraculous achievement: the new documentary Apollo 11;  Charles Fishman’s new book, One Giant Leap, a chronicle of the scramble to create a space travel program; Walter Cronkite’s narration of the event, via the CBS News archives.

RIP maidens and manholes. The city council of Berkeley, California, is making moves to rid its city code of gendered terms, including the pronouns “he” and “she.” The proposed changes would replace those pronouns with the singular “they” in city code, and also offer optional fields for personal gender pronouns on city forms. The city council adopted the first reading of the ordinance Tuesday, according to NBC News, and will review it again next week.

Bruce Linton, co-founder of Canopy Growth—the world’s biggest publicly traded cannabis company—was ousted today.

In a mansion overlooking Los Angeles, two women wearing leggings and sports bras recline on a countertop. Between them stands Instagram superstar Dan Bilzerian in a button-down shirt, showing off a thick beard, biceps, and a steely gaze. Nearby, a photographer shouts encouragement: “Nice! Confidence! Fierce, girls.” One of the women claws at the air like a cat. The photographer likes this; he encourages the other woman to do the same.

Join Quartz’s global lifestyle reporter Jenni Avins and membership editor Sam Grobart as they discuss Jenni’s field guide on the wild and weedy world of CBD, the cannabis-derived chemical compound that’s taking over the wellness world.

Join Quartz global lifestyle reporter Jenni Avins and global finance and economics editor Jason Karaian as they digest the events, conversations, and issues surrounding this year’s Cannes Lions festival, the annual international gathering of the advertising and media industries

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CBD is evolving at a breakneck speed. An industry that was not on most analysts’ radars just a few years ago is projected to earn around $5.7 billion in the US this year—a nearly tenfold increase since 2018. Those numbers are pushing regulators and researchers to keep up, so the news is coming fast and furious. Here are some resources to help you continue following the rapidly unfolding story of CBD.

Do you love CBD? Do you love it so much you want to declare it on a coffee mug, tank top, or a bumper sticker? You are not alone.

On a spring evening in Los Angeles, Michael Bumgarner, the co-founder of the personal care brand Cannuka, addressed a dinner party of women about cannabidiol—a key ingredient in his company’s lotions, soaps, and balms. The chemical compound more commonly known as CBD comes from cannabis, a plant that also goes by marijuana, pot, weed, ganja, and countless other names. But Bumgardner was determined to draw a distinction between that illicit stuff and his source material.

Once upon a time, the most-Googled cannabis-derived chemical compound was THC. Also known as tetrahydrocannabinol, THC was feared and revered for its ability to get users high. Today it’s CBD, or cannabidiol, that we’re dying to know more about. In December 2016, Google searches for CBD overtook those for THC, and its popularity has been climbing ever since.

Will people really pay for another streaming service? They might if it’s actually good, argued WarnerMedia entertainment chief Bob Greenblatt, onstage with HBO’s Big Little Lies star Laura Dern and Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones at the Cannes Advertising Festival on Tuesday.

You might say that Vivien Azer is the OG of cannabis analysts. A managing director at the financial firm Cowen and Company, Azer was the first major Wall Street analyst to begin covering the cannabis industry—a sector she added to her mix of beverage and tobacco companies in 2016. Three years later, the world’s biggest banks are still scrambling to cover the growing cannabis industry, which Azer projects will be worth $80 billion by 2030 in the US alone.

On a May evening in Los Angeles, about 30 women gathered at the newly opened San Vicente Bungalows—a private West Hollywood club where actors like Armie Hammer read scripts in the courtyard and annual dues run upwards of $4,000. Mostly in their 30s, the women wore their jackets draped over their shoulders and sipped champagne. As dusk faded to night, they repaired to a small upstairs room with pink-striped wallpaper and a long table set with copious flowers and pewter candlesticks. The occasion was not a celebrity’s birthday, a film’s premiere, or even the launch of a new fashion brand.

The Cannes Lions advertising conference—or, International Festival of Creativity, if you will—takes place this week on the French Riviera.

Cannabidiol, or CBD, as the cannabis-derived compound is known, is enormously popular in the US, embraced as a panacea for the modern condition. The Brightfield Group, a research firm focused specifically on the cannabis industry, pegged the US hemp-derived CBD market in 2018 at $590 million, and predicts that number will increase tenfold by the end of this year, to $5.7 billion.