Cannabis Business Times

09/10/2026

🚨 Is your best-selling strain actually profitable? 🚨

Join us on Sept. 22 for a no-cost webinar on how costing, inventory, equipment, and complexity distort profitability.

( Registration here 👉 https://bit.ly/4cnVtCy )

Traditional costing methods can hide what cannabis truly costs to produce, leaving operators to make pricing, production, and investment decisions using margins that may not reflect reality.

This webinar will examine five common sources of margin distortion, including cost averaging, inventory treatment, equipment utilization, and SKU complexity, and show how actual resource consumption can provide a clearer picture of product economics.

Attendees will leave with practical ways to evaluate:

🪴 where capital is consumed,
🪴 which products and processes actually contribute to profitability, and
🪴 whether the margins guiding their decisions can withstand scrutiny.

Reserve your spot now: https://bit.ly/4cnVtCy

🎤 Live Q&A – Bring your questions!

(Can’t make the live event? You can still register, and we will record the webinar and send the video to you after the event, so you can watch it later!)

09/10/2026

The D.C. Circuit Court rejected a motion to halt the Trump administration's Schedule III cannabis order: “Petitioners have not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit won’t halt the Trump administration’s order that reclassified medical cannabis.

09/09/2026

The deadline to enter Cannabis Business Times’ “Best Cannabis Companies To Work For – 2027” is approaching … and ranking can have a significant upside for your business!

(Don’t wait! Enter now 👉 https://bit.ly/4qj16rm )

Whether you’re a cultivator, dispensary, brand, law firm, technology or solutions provider, consultancy, PR firm or any other company serving the cannabis industry, ranking as a “Best Cannabis Company to Work For” can benefit your business and its bottom line.

Here are 4 critical ways:

1. It is an effective recruitment tool. When recruiters and job seekers see that your company ranks as a “Best Company,” it makes your company far more appealing by highlighting the importance your company places on fostering a positive work environment. This is crucial in the competitive cannabis job landscape.

2. It helps with employee retention. Ranking as a “Best Company” reinforces the pride your company takes in creating a great place to work and can instill pride among your employees who contribute to that culture. (With the cost to replace an employee averaging at around 50% of their salary, keeping employees is crucial to the bottom line.)

3. It can boost sales. Ranking as a “Best Company” shows your customers and prospects that your company prioritizes doing “good for people,” a priority that inspires 60% of customers to be willing to pay more for products, according to Bentley University and Gallup’s “Force for Good Study.”

4. It can increase customer loyalty. 81% of customers said they must be able “to trust the brand to do what is right,” found an Edelman report. That report also found that nearly three in 10 (29%) respondents said how a company treated its employees was the most important factor in deciding whether to become a loyal customer.

Don’t wait. Enter your company now to start gaining these important advantages in the competitive cannabis market!

The deadline to enter is Oct. 2, 2026: 👉 https://bit.ly/4qj16rm

(All ranking companies will receive the Cannabis Business Times' "Best Cannabis Companies to Work For - 2027" logo to use on their websites, in marketing materials, booth displays, recruitment efforts, and more.)

09/08/2026

A 29-day reprieve on the impending ban on many h**p products doesn't give small businesses enough time to make the decisions required to keep their companies running, Dylan Raap, CEO and founder of cannabis and h**p business Upstate Elevator, argues in a new CBT op-ed.

Raap asks Congress to "Tell us what the rules are and give us enough runway to live by them."

The one-month reprieve on the impending ban on many h**p products doesn't give small businesses enough time to make the decisions required to keep their companies running. Dylan Raap, CEO and founder of cannabis and h**p business Upstate Elevator, asks Congress to ‘tell us what the rules are and g...

09/08/2026

🚨 SPECIAL REPORT: Understanding these three common sources of inventory loss can help cannabis retailers maintain accuracy and stay compliant.

(View the report 👉 https://bit.ly/4zP5PWl )

For cannabis retailers, shrink and inventory variances aren’t just a profit leak; they’re a compliance liability. METRC, the Cannabis Act (Canada), and state/provincial regulators require accurate, verifiable audit trails. Variances can trigger fines, corrective audits, or even license suspension.

As dispensaries scale, manual reconciliation breaks down. Multi-store operators face inconsistent audits, training gaps, varied workflows, and delayed visibility – making it nearly impossible to maintain accuracy across locations.

But there’s a solution …

In this month’s special report, the experts at Solink – the trusted leader in AI vision intelligence for security, loss prevention, and operations – break down three common causes of discrepancies in cannabis retail (and how to avoid them):

1. Internal Theft and Diversion
2. Human Error
3. Operational Issues

In an industry where precision is profit – and compliance is survival – retailers need a way to see, trace, and prove what happened to every gram.

Don’t miss these insights to help your business prevent loss, protect compliance, and drive measurable ROI.

This report is available through September 2026 only 👉 https://bit.ly/4zP5PWl

09/08/2026

The most prominent cannabis prohibition group in the U.S. continues to use the “social welfare” arm of its organization to fund a ballot measure aimed at eliminating Massachusetts’ adult-use cannabis program through dark money contributions.

Smart Approaches to Ma*****na (SAM) Action Inc. contributed $1.55 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 and another $1.63 million so far in 2026 to the Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts Inc., according to a campaign disclosure report filed Sept. 4.

The campaign spent more than $1.8 million of that funding toward the signature-gathering process. As of Sept. 4, it still had $980,000 left to spend ahead of the November election, as Labor Day often marks a transition for ballot campaigns to deploy political advertising dollars to try to sway the electorate.

The campaign behind a 2026 ballot question to repeal the state’s adult-use legalization laws still has $1 million left to spend ahead of the midterms.

09/03/2026

💡 Special Report 💡

Shrink in cannabis retail is real, costly and risky.

(View the report here 👉 https://bit.ly/4zP5PWl )

Cannabis is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, valued at US$70.7 billion in 2025 (Statista) and expected to exceed $216 billion by 2033 (Grand View Research).

With rapid growth comes a wide margin for loss. Shrink is a double-edged threat for cannabis retailers – it drains profit and puts compliance at risk. In an industry where every gram is logged and regulated, even small discrepancies can become major financial and regulatory problems.

Because cannabis products are high-value and tightly controlled, shrink carries higher stakes than traditional retail. Even the 1.6% retail-wide average shrink rate (NRF) can translate into six- or seven-figure losses for a busy dispensary.

So, how can operators prevent loss, protect compliance and drive measurable ROI?

In this month’s special report, the experts at Solink – the trusted leader in AI-driven video intelligence for security, loss prevention and operations – break down common causes of discrepancies in cannabis retail, why legacy systems fail to address the issue, and how video AI solves the biggest cannabis shrink challenges.

This report provides operators with:

🪴 3 common sources of inventory loss
🪴 5 shortcomings of traditional systems
🪴 5 ways video intelligence and AI fix the problem

Video intelligence delivers what legacy tools can’t for your cannabis business – proof, pattern recognition and proactive prevention. And the right system will do all this without requiring you to add headcount or replace hardware.

This report is available through September 2026 only – Get it while it’s here!

Download it here 👉 https://bit.ly/4zP5PWl

09/03/2026

🏆Is your company a great place to work? Get the recognition your company deserves. 🏆

Enter now (👉 https://bit.ly/4qj16rm ) for your chance to rank as one of Cannabis Business Times’ “Best Cannabis Companies to Work For – 2027.”

CBT’s 8th annual “Best Cannabis Companies to Work For” is accepting entries from all cannabis businesses – plant-touching and ancillary.

Hear what some previous “Best Cannabis Companies” have to say about the benefits of ranking:

📣“Being recognized as a ‘Best Company’ is about far more than receiving an award. It's a reflection of a belief that has always guided us: When you genuinely invest in your people, they naturally invest in the people they serve. That's why we're proud to display the ‘Best Company’ logo throughout our events, partnerships, community initiatives, and customer communications. … Long before we speak about our services, that emblem communicates something important: that we believe business succeeds when people flourish.”
- Clarke Lyons, vice president of brand marketing and growth at Paragon Payroll, which ranked as a “Best Cannabis Company to Work For” in 2025 and 2026

📣 “Being named one of Cannabis Business Times’ ‘Best Cannabis Companies to Work For’ multiple years in a row means a lot to us because it reflects the culture our team has built together. We use the recognition on our website because it tells customers, partners, and future employees something important about Summit Made: The quality of the product starts with the quality of the team behind it.”
- Holden Farahani, CEO of Summit Made, which ranked as a "Best Company" in 2024, 2025 and 2026

Enter now 👉 https://bit.ly/4qj16rm

Don’t Wait! The Registration Deadline is Oct. 2, 2026.

09/03/2026

President Donald Trump signed the continuing resolution, H.R. 6500, officially delaying the federal government's ban on most intoxicating h**p THC products until Dec. 11, 2026.

The chamber voted to back the Senate’s plan to delay the federal government’s ban on certain h**p-derived cannabinoid products until Dec. 11.

09/03/2026

Brothers Grimm Seeds CEO Laura Campanella shares how she has been working with others to raise awareness about and lobby against regulatory changes that will force cannabis genetics underground or destroy businesses and decades of breeding work.

In an interview with Cannabis Business Times, Campanella shares what motivated her to lobby Washington lawmakers and launch a tissue culture business, and why she’s frustrated to see this h**p provision barely exposed for what it is: a rattling shock to the backbone of the cannabis seed industry.

"We got involved because we saw how this has become pretty low on the totem pole for anybody to even be aware of it."

Brothers Grimm Seeds CEO Laura Campanella shares how she has been working with others to raise awareness about and lobby against regulatory changes that will force underground or destroy genetics, businesses and decades of breeding work.