At first glance, the Skittles package appears to be just like the one sold in the candy aisle of a supermarket: It has block letters filled in with white, a flowing rainbow and a red candy that replaces the dot above the letter “i.”
A closer look reveals some small differences: a background pattern of small, stylized marijuana leaves; a warning label; and numbers that reveal the amount of THC, the intoxicating substance in cannabis, in each piece of candy.
The images are included in a lawsuit that the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, owned by the candy behemoth Mars Inc., filed in May against five companies for selling cannabis-infused edibles that look like our old friends Skittles, Starburst and Life Savers. Though the suit focuses on intellectual property rights, the plaintiffs also argue that the copycat products could lead people, particularly children, to mistakenly ingest drugs.
recreational marijuana consumption roamed by pandemic-stressed adults.
In recent years, lawsuits similar to the one filed by Wrigley have been brought by the Hershey Company (against TinctureBelle for products resembling Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Heath bars, Almond Joy bars and York peppermint patties), Mondelez International (against a company hawking Stoney Patch Kids) and Ferrara Candy Company (against a store selling Medicated Nerds Rope). These lawsuits have all been settled, with the smaller companies agreeing to halt production and sales of the offending products.
Many public health officials fret that without proper regulation, accidental ingestion cases will continue to rise among children as the availability of edibles grows. Some poison control centers have already observed this trend in their data.
For example, there were 122 cases of exposure to THC for children under 5 in Washington State in the first nine months of 2020, compared to 85 for the same time period in 2019. The most common side effects reported included vomiting, lethargy and chest pain.
the illegal market is still thriving.
“When companies like these create headlines for doing what we’ve purposely avoided at Wana, I feel anger and frustration,” said Joe Hodas, the chief marketing officer at Wana Brands, a Colorado company that sells cannabis-infused products.
A recent review of the websites belonging to defendants in the Wrigley suit turned up cannabis-infused offerings like Stoner Patch Dummies, the Worlds Dankest Gushers, Gasheads Xtremes Sourfuls, Trips Ahoy, Buttafingazzz and Caribo Happy Cola.
“The situation has become more and more egregious,” said Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesman for the National Confectioners Association, a trade organization in D.C. with 350 members, including Mars Inc., Hershey’s, Ferrara and Mondelez. “The cannabis companies cannot and should not be allowed to tarnish existing brands at will. It creates consumer confusion.”
joined the list), and 18 of them, including New York, have legalized recreational marijuana as well. Though sales in New York are not expected to begin until 2022 at the earliest, businesses are rushing to grab real estate and prepare for the market’s opening. Some are already selling Delta-8-THC, derived from hemp, in candy form.
an infamous commercial spot.
considered 1 to 2 milligrams of THC, but effects vary based on many factors, like body weight and how much food the consumer ate that day.
Accidental consumption can affect anyone, but, Dr. Schauer said, “it has primarily impacted children because they can confuse cannabis edible products with other edible products, because most edibles look like candy or cookies or cake.” She pointed to reports compiled by poison control centers in Colorado and Washington, the two earliest states to legalize recreational cannabis use, in 2012.
Between 2014 and 2018, annual calls to the Washington Poison Center about children under 5 being unintentionally exposed to cannabis nearly tripled, rising from 34 to 94. In 2017, Washington State began requiring that all edibles have a logo stating “Not for Kids” (not that this will mean much to a 2-year-old).
edibles are the leading method by which children under 5 accidentally consume cannabis. In 2019, in Colorado, 108 people under the age of 19 were accidentally exposed to cannabis. In 2011, the year before the state legalized recreational use, that number was 16.
Like Washington, Colorado now requires packaging of edibles to include a warning symbol. The state also bans the use of the word “candy” on any marijuana packaging, and the sale of edibles that look like people, animals or fruit.
Dr. Schauer said other ways to reduce the risks of accidental ingestion include mandating childproof packaging, requiring that each edible item in a package is individually wrapped, limiting the potency of each individual edible, and educating consumers who live with children on how to store their cannabis products.
Making packages that will not catch the eye of a child is important, she said. In Canada, for example, where cannabis is legal, federal law requires packaging to have a uniform color and a smooth texture, and not to have cutout windows, scents, sounds or inserts (among other requirements).
Despite the stringency of Canada’s laws, as recently as mid-May, a child was hospitalized in the province of New Brunswick after eating Stoneo cookies that were made to look like Oreos, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In America, state laws are far less strict; for the most part, they prohibit the inclusion of cartoon characters and make general statements about how the packaging should not appeal to a child.
“The risks can be much more limited than we’ve seen them be so far,” Dr. Schauer said.
Mr. Hodas has three children, aged 12, 17 and 19. He has been in the cannabis industry for more than seven years. When he has products at home, he keeps them secure in bags made by StashLogix. It may not slow down a motivated 15-year-old, but it will stop a toddler, he said.
“If you have it locked up, and you keep in a place where they can’t reach it or see it, that’s the best way to prevent ingestion,” Mr. Hodas said.
To parents of a certain age, the situation may bring to mind the 1983 public service announcement “We’re Not Candy,” in which a barbershop quartet of singing pills on television advises children “to have a healthy fear of us.”
That the products now under scrutiny are a form of candy, just enhanced — and that no one is watching the same screen anymore — makes it difficult to imagine a marijuana meme so memorable.
At first glance, the Skittles package appears to be just like the one sold in the candy aisle of a supermarket: It has block letters filled in with white, a flowing rainbow and a red candy that replaces the dot above the letter “i.”
A closer look reveals some small differences: a background pattern of small, stylized marijuana leaves; a warning label; and numbers that reveal the amount of THC, the intoxicating substance in cannabis, in each piece of candy.
The images are included in a lawsuit that the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, owned by the candy behemoth Mars Inc., filed in May against five companies for selling cannabis-infused edibles that look like our old friends Skittles, Starburst and Life Savers. Though the suit focuses on intellectual property rights, the plaintiffs also argue that the copycat products could lead people, particularly children, to mistakenly ingest drugs.
recreational marijuana consumption roamed by pandemic-stressed adults.
In recent years, lawsuits similar to the one filed by Wrigley have been brought by the Hershey Company (against TinctureBelle for products resembling Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Heath bars, Almond Joy bars and York peppermint patties), Mondelez International (against a company hawking Stoney Patch Kids) and Ferrara Candy Company (against a store selling Medicated Nerds Rope). These lawsuits have all been settled, with the smaller companies agreeing to halt production and sales of the offending products.
Many public health officials fret that without proper regulation, accidental ingestion cases will continue to rise among children as the availability of edibles grows. Some poison control centers have already observed this trend in their data.
For example, there were 122 cases of exposure to THC for children under 5 in Washington State in the first nine months of 2020, compared to 85 for the same time period in 2019. The most common side effects reported included vomiting, lethargy and chest pain.
the illegal market is still thriving.
“When companies like these create headlines for doing what we’ve purposely avoided at Wana, I feel anger and frustration,” said Joe Hodas, the chief marketing officer at Wana Brands, a Colorado company that sells cannabis-infused products.
A recent review of the websites belonging to defendants in the Wrigley suit turned up cannabis-infused offerings like Stoner Patch Dummies, the Worlds Dankest Gushers, Gasheads Xtremes Sourfuls, Trips Ahoy, Buttafingazzz and Caribo Happy Cola.
“The situation has become more and more egregious,” said Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesman for the National Confectioners Association, a trade organization in D.C. with 350 members, including Mars Inc., Hershey’s, Ferrara and Mondelez. “The cannabis companies cannot and should not be allowed to tarnish existing brands at will. It creates consumer confusion.”
joined the list), and 18 of them, including New York, have legalized recreational marijuana as well. Though sales in New York are not expected to begin until 2022 at the earliest, businesses are rushing to grab real estate and prepare for the market’s opening. Some are already selling Delta-8-THC, derived from hemp, in candy form.
an infamous commercial spot.
considered 1 to 2 milligrams of THC, but effects vary based on many factors, like body weight and how much food the consumer ate that day.
Accidental consumption can affect anyone, but, Dr. Schauer said, “it has primarily impacted children because they can confuse cannabis edible products with other edible products, because most edibles look like candy or cookies or cake.” She pointed to reports compiled by poison control centers in Colorado and Washington, the two earliest states to legalize recreational cannabis use, in 2012.
Between 2014 and 2018, annual calls to the Washington Poison Center about children under 5 being unintentionally exposed to cannabis nearly tripled, rising from 34 to 94. In 2017, Washington State began requiring that all edibles have a logo stating “Not for Kids” (not that this will mean much to a 2-year-old).
edibles are the leading method by which children under 5 accidentally consume cannabis. In 2019, in Colorado, 108 people under the age of 19 were accidentally exposed to cannabis. In 2011, the year before the state legalized recreational use, that number was 16.
Like Washington, Colorado now requires packaging of edibles to include a warning symbol. The state also bans the use of the word “candy” on any marijuana packaging, and the sale of edibles that look like people, animals or fruit.
Dr. Schauer said other ways to reduce the risks of accidental ingestion include mandating childproof packaging, requiring that each edible item in a package is individually wrapped, limiting the potency of each individual edible, and educating consumers who live with children on how to store their cannabis products.
Making packages that will not catch the eye of a child is important, she said. In Canada, for example, where cannabis is legal, federal law requires packaging to have a uniform color and a smooth texture, and not to have cutout windows, scents, sounds or inserts (among other requirements).
Despite the stringency of Canada’s laws, as recently as mid-May, a child was hospitalized in the province of New Brunswick after eating Stoneo cookies that were made to look like Oreos, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In America, state laws are far less strict; for the most part, they prohibit the inclusion of cartoon characters and make general statements about how the packaging should not appeal to a child.
“The risks can be much more limited than we’ve seen them be so far,” Dr. Schauer said.
Mr. Hodas has three children, aged 12, 17 and 19. He has been in the cannabis industry for more than seven years. When he has products at home, he keeps them secure in bags made by StashLogix. It may not slow down a motivated 15-year-old, but it will stop a toddler, he said.
“If you have it locked up, and you keep in a place where they can’t reach it or see it, that’s the best way to prevent ingestion,” Mr. Hodas said.
To parents of a certain age, the situation may bring to mind the 1983 public service announcement “We’re Not Candy,” in which a barbershop quartet of singing pills on television advises children “to have a healthy fear of us.”
That the products now under scrutiny are a form of candy, just enhanced — and that no one is watching the same screen anymore — makes it difficult to imagine a marijuana meme so memorable.
In New York and New Jersey, the race is on to grow legal weed.
In Orange County, N.Y., there are plans to build a large cannabis cultivation and processing plant on the grounds of a defunct state prison.
About 25 miles south, over the border in New Jersey, an industrial complex once owned by the pharmaceutical giant Merck will be converted into an even bigger marijuana-growing hub.
In Winslow, N.J., about 30 miles outside Philadelphia, a new indoor cultivation complex just celebrated its first harvest.
The advent of legalized adult-use marijuana in New York and New Jersey is an entrepreneur’s dream, with some estimating that the potential market in the densely populated region will soar to more than $6 billion within five years.
medical marijuana market, the supply of dried cannabis flower, the most potent part of a female plant, has rarely met the demand, according to industry lobbyists and state officials. At the start of the pandemic, as demand exploded, it grew even more scarce, patients and business owners said.
The supply gap has narrowed as the statewide inventory of flower and products made from a plant’s extracted oils more than doubled between March of last year and this spring. Still, patients and owners say dispensaries often sell out of popular strains.
“There’s very little stock,” said Shaya Brodchandel, the chief executive of Harmony Foundation in Secaucus, N.J., and president of the New Jersey Cannabis Trade Association. “Almost no wholesale. As we harvest we’re putting it straight into retail.”
Harmony purchased the former Merck site in Lafayette, N.J., late last year and is awaiting permits to begin construction, Mr. Brodchandel said.
Oregon, which issued thousands of cultivation licenses after legalizing marijuana six years ago, has an overabundance of cannabis. But many of the other 16 states where nonmedical marijuana is now legal have faced supply constraints similar to those in New York and New Jersey as production slowly scaled up to meet demand.
“There’s always a dearth of flower in a new market,” said Greg Rochlin, chief executive of the Northeast division of TerrAscend, a cannabis company that operates in Canada and the United States and this month opened New Jersey’s 17th medical marijuana dispensary.
In New York, where the medical marijuana program is smaller and more restrictive than New Jersey’s, the menu of products includes oils, tinctures and finely ground flower suitable for vaping. But the sale of loose marijuana buds for smoking is prohibited, and only 150,000 of the state’s 13.5 million adults who are 21 or older are registered as patients.
With modest demand, there has been little incentive to boost supply. Until now.
Adult-use marijuana sales could begin within a year in New Jersey and in early 2023 in New York, industry experts predict.
Mid-Orange Correctional Facility, which was closed in 2011.
Citiva, a competitor, is also building a new production hub there. A cannabis testing lab and a CBD extract facility, urbanXtracts, are already there.
“We’re calling it a cannabis cluster,” said Michael Sweeton, Warwick’s town supervisor.
“It is the definition of irony,” he added about the reinvented role for a correctional facility that boomed during the war on drugs, imprisoning 750 men at a time and providing 450 jobs.
hemp farmers will play an important role in the effort to generate enough cannabis to satisfy what is quickly expected to become one of the country’s largest marijuana markets.
THC, is used to make CBD oil.
New York’s law also permits individuals to grow as many as six marijuana plants for personal use; New Jersey’s legislation does not allow so-called home grow.
In the coming months, both states are expected to issue regulations to govern the new industry. Each has framed legalization as a social justice imperative and has dedicated a large share of the anticipated tax revenue to communities of color disproportionately harmed by inequities in the criminal justice system.
Trying to balance the goal of building markets focused on social and racial equity against the inherent dominance of multistate corporations with early toeholds in the region will be crucial, officials in New York and New Jersey said.
“They should have that ability to help jump start the market,” Norman Birenbaum, New York’s director of cannabis programs, said about the 10 medical marijuana companies already licensed to operate in the state. But it should not come “at the expense of new entrants,” he said.
Jeff Brown, who runs New Jersey’s cannabis programs, said the market has room — and a crucial need — for newcomers.
The state’s current operators, he said, “are not by themselves going to be able to supply the personal-use market.”
court challenge, and some of the 12 current operators, Mr. Brown said, have been slow to take full advantage of their ability to expand.
This has resulted in caps on the amount of cannabis that can be sold to patients in a single visit. Lines to enter stores, intensified by Covid-19 regulations, are common.
“You can’t always find the strain that you may have found works best for your condition,” said Ken Wolski, a retired nurse who now leads the Coalition for Medical Marijuana, a nonprofit advocacy group. “And that’s a very frustrating thing for patients.”
expansion of a medical marijuana program that had languished under his predecessor, Chris Christie, a Republican.
price of flower in New Jersey hovers between $350 and $450 an ounce before discounts. In California, the average price of an ounce of premium marijuana was about $260, according to priceofweed.com, a frequently cited price directory.
“Popular products run out and prices are still higher than we’d like to see them,” Mr. Brown said. “The key to all that is more competition.”
Last month, Curaleaf, which operates a dispensary and two cultivation facilities in New Jersey, eliminated its half-ounce limit on sales of flower after a strong yield at its new indoor-grow facility in Winslow, said Patrik Jonsson, the company’s regional president responsible for seven Northeast states.
large cultivation facility in Boonton, N.J., operated by TerrAscend, put hundreds of plants into bundles of coconut coir in early 2021 to begin a four-month growing and drying process. Tiered platforms are now filled with rows of pale green and purple-hued plants.
TerrAscend’s new dispensary, in Maplewood, N.J., drew a line of customers within hours of opening earlier this month.
Stuart Zakim, one of the first people in line, talked to a cashier — the “budtender” — about alternatives to the product he originally requested but was told was not in stock.
“You’re not waiting in the dark for your dealer anymore,” said Mr. Zakim, a longtime medical marijuana patient. “You’re walking into a beautiful facility.”
“The supply issue,” he added, “is really the biggest issue.”
In New York and New Jersey, the race is on to grow legal weed.
In Orange County, N.Y., there are plans to build a large cannabis cultivation and processing plant on the grounds of a defunct state prison.
About 25 miles south, over the border in New Jersey, an industrial complex once owned by the pharmaceutical giant Merck will be converted into an even bigger marijuana-growing hub.
In Winslow, N.J., about 30 miles outside Philadelphia, a new indoor cultivation complex just celebrated its first harvest.
The advent of legalized adult-use marijuana in New York and New Jersey is an entrepreneur’s dream, with some estimating that the potential market in the densely populated region will soar to more than $6 billion within five years.
medical marijuana market, the supply of dried cannabis flower, the most potent part of a female plant, has rarely met the demand, according to industry lobbyists and state officials. At the start of the pandemic, as demand exploded, it grew even more scarce, patients and business owners said.
The supply gap has narrowed as the statewide inventory of flower and products made from a plant’s extracted oils more than doubled between March of last year and this spring. Still, patients and owners say dispensaries often sell out of popular strains.
“There’s very little stock,” said Shaya Brodchandel, the chief executive of Harmony Foundation in Secaucus, N.J., and president of the New Jersey Cannabis Trade Association. “Almost no wholesale. As we harvest we’re putting it straight into retail.”
Harmony purchased the former Merck site in Lafayette, N.J., late last year and is awaiting permits to begin construction, Mr. Brodchandel said.
Oregon, which issued thousands of cultivation licenses after legalizing marijuana six years ago, has an overabundance of cannabis. But many of the other 16 states where nonmedical marijuana is now legal have faced supply constraints similar to those in New York and New Jersey as production slowly scaled up to meet demand.
“There’s always a dearth of flower in a new market,” said Greg Rochlin, chief executive of the Northeast division of TerrAscend, a cannabis company that operates in Canada and the United States and this month opened New Jersey’s 17th medical marijuana dispensary.
In New York, where the medical marijuana program is smaller and more restrictive than New Jersey’s, the menu of products includes oils, tinctures and finely ground flower suitable for vaping. But the sale of loose marijuana buds for smoking is prohibited, and only 150,000 of the state’s 13.5 million adults who are 21 or older are registered as patients.
With modest demand, there has been little incentive to boost supply. Until now.
Adult-use marijuana sales could begin within a year in New Jersey and in early 2023 in New York, industry experts predict.
Mid-Orange Correctional Facility, which was closed in 2011.
Citiva, a competitor, is also building a new production hub there. A cannabis testing lab and a CBD extract facility, urbanXtracts, are already there.
“We’re calling it a cannabis cluster,” said Michael Sweeton, Warwick’s town supervisor.
“It is the definition of irony,” he added about the reinvented role for a correctional facility that boomed during the war on drugs, imprisoning 750 men at a time and providing 450 jobs.
hemp farmers will play an important role in the effort to generate enough cannabis to satisfy what is quickly expected to become one of the country’s largest marijuana markets.
THC, is used to make CBD oil.
New York’s law also permits individuals to grow as many as six marijuana plants for personal use; New Jersey’s legislation does not allow so-called home grow.
In the coming months, both states are expected to issue regulations to govern the new industry. Each has framed legalization as a social justice imperative and has dedicated a large share of the anticipated tax revenue to communities of color disproportionately harmed by inequities in the criminal justice system.
Trying to balance the goal of building markets focused on social and racial equity against the inherent dominance of multistate corporations with early toeholds in the region will be crucial, officials in New York and New Jersey said.
“They should have that ability to help jump start the market,” Norman Birenbaum, New York’s director of cannabis programs, said about the 10 medical marijuana companies already licensed to operate in the state. But it should not come “at the expense of new entrants,” he said.
Jeff Brown, who runs New Jersey’s cannabis programs, said the market has room — and a crucial need — for newcomers.
The state’s current operators, he said, “are not by themselves going to be able to supply the personal-use market.”
court challenge, and some of the 12 current operators, Mr. Brown said, have been slow to take full advantage of their ability to expand.
This has resulted in caps on the amount of cannabis that can be sold to patients in a single visit. Lines to enter stores, intensified by Covid-19 regulations, are common.
“You can’t always find the strain that you may have found works best for your condition,” said Ken Wolski, a retired nurse who now leads the Coalition for Medical Marijuana, a nonprofit advocacy group. “And that’s a very frustrating thing for patients.”
expansion of a medical marijuana program that had languished under his predecessor, Chris Christie, a Republican.
price of flower in New Jersey hovers between $350 and $450 an ounce before discounts. In California, the average price of an ounce of premium marijuana was about $260, according to priceofweed.com, a frequently cited price directory.
“Popular products run out and prices are still higher than we’d like to see them,” Mr. Brown said. “The key to all that is more competition.”
Last month, Curaleaf, which operates a dispensary and two cultivation facilities in New Jersey, eliminated its half-ounce limit on sales of flower after a strong yield at its new indoor-grow facility in Winslow, said Patrik Jonsson, the company’s regional president responsible for seven Northeast states.
large cultivation facility in Boonton, N.J., operated by TerrAscend, put hundreds of plants into bundles of coconut coir in early 2021 to begin a four-month growing and drying process. Tiered platforms are now filled with rows of pale green and purple-hued plants.
TerrAscend’s new dispensary, in Maplewood, N.J., drew a line of customers within hours of opening earlier this month.
Stuart Zakim, one of the first people in line, talked to a cashier — the “budtender” — about alternatives to the product he originally requested but was told was not in stock.
“You’re not waiting in the dark for your dealer anymore,” said Mr. Zakim, a longtime medical marijuana patient. “You’re walking into a beautiful facility.”
“The supply issue,” he added, “is really the biggest issue.”
It has been only five weeks since New York State legalized the use of recreational marijuana. The board that will oversee the rollout has yet to be appointed, let alone rules set for how licenses will be issued to cannabis businesses. The sale of legal pot in the state is still a year away. And, of course, marijuana remains illegal on the federal level.
But already the rush is on to get a piece of what could be a $4.2 billion industry in the Empire State.
Brokers are talking to landlords about leasing storefronts to dispensaries. Representatives of out-of-state cannabis businesses are flying in to scope out properties. And suppliers of medical marijuana are expanding in the hope that they will be able to branch into recreational sales.
Agricultural land upstate is now marketed as being “in the green zone” for hemp farming or the construction of grow houses for cultivating marijuana.
may soon change.
heated discussions among local officials, some of whom “can’t fathom the idea of the devil’s lettuce businesses within their borders,” said Neil M. Willner, co-chair of the cannabis practice at Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld, a New York City law firm.
But the pandemic may have softened the stance of some officials, given the jobs and tax revenue that cannabis businesses can generate after the protracted health crisis has decimated both. The state estimates that the new industry could bring it $350 million in annual revenue and create 30,000 to 60,000 jobs.
Meanwhile, funding is pouring into the industry in anticipation of possible federal legalization, some lenders will now do business with cannabis companies, and real estate investment trusts have sprung up to serve marijuana interests.
an increase in purchasing over leasing in the past year.
“Going forward, when banking becomes more normalized for us — when we have the opportunity to get real estate debt in the way traditional industries do — we would have a preference for owning real estate,” said Barrington Rutherford, senior vice president of real estate and community integration at Cresco Labs, a cannabis company with operations in several states.
law firms, consultants, insurance agents and accountants specializes in helping clients jump through regulatory hoops. A listing service that is the industry’s answer to Zillow offers a wide range of real estate, from $65,000 lots in an industrial park in Lexington, Okla., to a $109 million, 45,000-square-foot grow house in San Bernardino, Calif.
The brick-and-mortar side of cannabis real estate has also evolved.
As cultivation of marijuana has become more sophisticated, grow houses have expanded — they can be 150,000 square feet or more, with high ceilings, heavy-duty ventilation, lighting and security. Processing typically occurs in separate buildings with high-tech machinery.
dispensaries are increasingly stylish, offering a rarefied retail experience. Accomplished architecture and design firms have gotten into the act. There are even companies that specialize in kitting out dispensaries and other cannabis real estate.
And as marijuana gains broader public acceptance — and some celebrity glamour, with Jay-Z’s Monogram and Seth Rogen’s Houseplant — stores are opening in prominent locations near traditional retailers.
“We’re next to Starbucks in downtown Chicago,” Mr. Rutherford said. “In Philadelphia, the store we’re opening is a half block from Shake Shack and down the block from Macy’s.”
“We are building a portfolio of sites that would be enviable by any retail organization,” he added.
The New York State law also provides for licenses for “consumption sites,” and this is expected to give rise to clublike lounges and cannabis cafes. The prospect of such convivial settings has led to predictions that New York City may become the next Amsterdam.
These new storefront uses would appear to be a godsend for New York’s retail real estate market, where availability has increased and rents have fallen.
“A few years ago, when the market was stronger, it was harder to find landlords willing to play ball,” said Benjamin S. Birnbaum, a broker at the real estate services firm Newmark. “What’s changed, because of the pandemic, is that every landlord is willing to talk about it.”
in a recent CNBC interview.
Regardless of size, opening a dispensary can be complicated and expensive, in part because states have required that would-be retailers have control of a site, through a lease or option to lease, before they can apply for a license. But the number of licenses in some states is limited, with no guarantee a business will get one.
In Oregon, some applicants had to wait so long — one or two years, said Andrew DeWeese, a lawyer with Green Light Law Group in Portland — they eventually gave up and essentially sold their place in line.
“It’s a Catch-22,” said Kristin Jordan, a cannabis lawyer in New York City. “You want to secure real estate, but you don’t want to jump the gun.”
Still, the prospect of operating in New York, a state with more than 19 million residents and a major tourist destination, is so enticing that cannabis companies are getting their ducks in row.
Companies that have medical dispensaries, which have been operating since 2016, are in an enviable position because it is believed they will have an advantage in securing additional licenses.
Cresco Labs has four medical dispensaries in New York, including one in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. It is unclear whether the state will allow recreational marijuana to be sold at those locations, but Mr. Rutherford is hedging his bets, adding parking and in some cases expanding by leasing a storefront next door to an existing space.
“We are making sure those stores are ready for the future adult use market,” he said.
CANBERRA, Australia — An Australian driver who filmed four dead and dying police officers who had been hit by a truck on a freeway was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 months in prison for what a judge described as a “heartless, cruel and disgraceful” act.
The driver, Richard Pusey, 42, a mortgage broker, had pleaded guilty in a court in the state of Victoria to a rarely prosecuted charge of outraging public decency over his commentary in crash-scene videos he shot with his phone. It was the first time the charge had been prosecuted in the state since 1963.
The most serious charge against him was reckless conduct endangering persons, which could carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison. But the judge, Trevor Wraight, sentenced Mr. Pusey to 10 months in prison, backdated to when he was arrested 296 days ago. While Mr. Pusey’s sentence is almost completed, he is likely to remain in custody for unrelated matters.
The police pulled Mr. Pusey over in April 2020 for driving a Porsche at 93 miles per hour on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway. (The speed limit was 62 m.p.h.) They were considering impounding his car when a truck crashed into the officers, the Porsche and two police cars in an emergency stopping lane.
Mr. Pusey, who avoided injury because he had been urinating behind roadside bushes at the time, did not help the officers but instead pulled out his phone and filmed the scene, officials said. His profanity-laden commentary included “he’s smashed,” “justice,” “absolutely amazing” and “beautiful.”
When a bystander who came to the aid of the stricken officers asked Mr. Pusey to help, he replied, “They’re dead,” and continued filming.
“Your conduct,” Judge Wraight said to Mr. Pusey in court, was “heartless, cruel and disgraceful.”
The judge noted that Mr. Pusey had a personality disorder, which might go some way to explaining his behavior, but he said the case outraged public decency.
Mr. Pusey also pleaded guilty to speeding offenses and possessing ecstasy; he tested positive for that drug and cannabis after he was pulled over. He was also fined 1,000 Australian dollars ($773) and barred from driving for two years.
Two weeks ago, the driver of the truck that struck the four officers was sentenced to 22 years in prison. The driver, Mohinder Singh, had pleaded guilty to four counts of culpable driving causing death, three charges of drug trafficking and one count of possessing illicit drugs.
He had been impaired by drugs and sleep-deprived when his vehicle hit the officers, officials said.
PARIS — The French government plans to introduce a bill aimed at closing a legal loophole that allowed the man who killed a Jewish woman in an anti-Semitic frenzy in 2017 to escape trial because a court found that he was in a delirious state brought on by cannabis.
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said Sunday that the bill would be presented in time for a vote by Parliament this summer and fill the “juridical void” that currently makes it impossible to “take account of the voluntary intake of toxic substances” leading to delirium in the commission of crimes.
France’s highest court ruled earlier this month that Kobili Traoré, who beat the woman, Sarah Halimi, before throwing her out the window of her Paris apartment to her death, could not be tried because he had no “discernment or control” over his acts. It upheld a verdict by a lower court to the effect that under current French law the origin of Traoré’s disturbed condition — intake of drugs — was immaterial.
The verdict set off a storm of protest from French and international Jewish groups. It also led to a large demonstration by French Jews in Paris on Sunday, and smaller ones in other cities, including Lyon and Marseille.
President Emmanuel Macron expressed his dissent with the ruling, unusual in a judicial matter, saying in an interview with Le Figaro that, “Deciding to take drugs and then ‘becoming mad’ should not in my eyes remove your criminal responsibility.”
The highest court, known as the Court of Cassation, recognized the anti-Semitic nature of the crime — “a frenzied anti-Semitic act,” according to the report of one psychiatrist — but said in effect that its hands were tied by the law. Mr. Traoré has admitted the killing and is in a psychiatric institution.
More than 20,000 people joined the protest in Paris on Sunday, according to the Interior Ministry, holding banners that said, “Killed because she was Jewish” and “Victim of a judicial shipwreck.” Before the demonstration, a top French judicial council expressed concern, calling for respect of the independence of the judiciary and a measured tone in discussion of the case.
The demonstration was attended by Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, who has said a street in the capital would be named after Ms. Halimi, who was 65. Other prominent attendees included Xavier Bertrand, a center-right candidate in the presidential election next year, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, the author and philosopher who has been active in denouncing rising anti-Semitism in France. Several speakers called for the new law, if enacted, to be called the “Sarah Halimi law.”
In a long interview with the magazine Marianne, Paul Bensussan, one of the psychiatrists asked to examine Mr. Traoré, tried to explain his rationale for finding him unfit for trial.
Mr. Traoré, he said, was hallucinating well before the murder itself, engaging in long soliloquies, responding to imaginary voices and consulting an exorcist. The level of THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis, found in his body was low to moderate, leading him and other psychiatrists to conclude that the drug “was a cofactor not the cause” in the assailant’s “blast of delirium.”
The sight of a menorah, and the fact Ms. Halimi was Jewish, “were the spark,” said Mr. Bensussan, who is Jewish. “The crime was that of a madman, but his crime was anti-Semitic because in his delirium he equated Jews with the devil. Public indignation and that of the Jewish community are, I believe, related to the false idea that recognizing insanity and the lack of penal responsibility mean denying the anti-Semitic dimension of the act.”
The intricacies of this argument appear to have done nothing to calm anger in France’s large Jewish community.
Mr. Macron, in his interview in Le Figaro, said that he wanted the justice minister to present a bill to change the law “as soon as possible.” Mr. Dupond-Moretti has now done that.
Inside a state-of-the-art lab, tucked in an industrial neighborhood on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, employees wearing protective suits move around two clear boxes, careful not to disrupt the tubes and sensors that keep temperature and humidity constant. Inside the boxes are mushrooms.
But not just any mushrooms. They are psychedelic — “magic” — mushrooms that the start-up Numinus Wellness believes one day may be used to treat mental health conditions as varied as depression, substance abuse and anxiety.
Welcome to the ’Shroom Boom. While Numinus is using mushrooms to make mind-altering therapies, other mushroom growers are promising other benefits, like strengthening immune systems or reducing inflammation. Mushrooms are showing up in all sorts of wellness products, pushing them into the mainstream and making mushrooms a major force in the flourishing, multibillion-dollar wellness market.
legalize psilocybin, the main active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, for the treatment of certain mental health conditions in supervised settings. In March, the New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang said New York State should legalize psychedelic mushrooms, a stance he raised in 2019 when he was a Democratic presidential candidate.
Regulators in the United States and Canada are taking baby steps toward allowing limited use of psychedelic mushrooms, which produce visual and auditory hallucinations over a few hours after ingestion, for the treatment of certain mental health conditions. Popular as part of the counterculture in the 1960s, magic mushrooms were deemed illegal in the United States in the 1970s.
public offering. Another psychedelic company, MindMed, has financial backing from Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank.”
New York in March. But some analysts and many of the companies themselves caution that the path for psychedelics will most likely be very different.
study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine that found use of psilocybin relieved anxiety and depression in people with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. A second, small study involving 24 participants conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers that was published in JAMA Psychiatry found that those who received psilocybin-assisted therapy showed improvement as well.
“The magnitude of the effect we saw was about four times larger than what clinical trials have shown for traditional antidepressants on the market,” Alan Davis, adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in an announcement about the study’s results.
The Food and Drug Administration has put at least two psychedelic mushroom compounds on the fast track for approval to treat depression.
Last year, Canada began allowing a limited number of people with terminal illness to use psychedelic mushrooms. Currently, Numinus is working toward a psilocybin-assisted therapy trial for patients with substance abuse disorders.
And while regulators in the United States are taking a new look at psychedelic mushrooms, psilocybin is still a Schedule 1 drug and would need to be reclassified by regulators.
Despite those hurdles, though, Mr. Nyquvest sees the potential for a broader use of psychedelic mushrooms around wellness, beyond what he called “treating really heavy indicators” of substance abuse and depression.
“The same way you go to the dentist to take care of the teeth, we need to think about taking care of the brain and mental well being.”
The gritty neighborhood is in one of Canada’s most dreamy and picturesque cities, on about 15 blocks that are among the poorest and the most squalid in the country.
An epicenter of Canada’s opioid crisis, the area has become a stark symbol of urban poverty, addiction and social marginalization in one of the world’s wealthiest nations, but also one of resilience, community and progressive social policies.
1,724 deaths in the province from drug overdoses, or an average of about 4.7 deaths a day, according to the British Columbia Coroners Service.
The vaccination program comes as British Columbia’s health care system is under severe strain because of the pandemic with hospitalizations reaching new heights. As of Friday, the province had recorded 123,000 cases of Covid-19, of which 1,550 people have died.
Meanwhile, in the Downtown Eastside, the virus appears to have been largely contained. In mid-February, the neighborhood had about 75 cases of the coronavirus in one week, according to the local health authority. Today, about 7,500 local residents have been vaccinated and cases have trickled down to about five this week.
Alana Paterson, a photographer for The New York Times, set out with her camera to document the vaccination program in action. A Vancouver resident herself, she told me she was heartened by the way dedicated nurses had managed to establish trust in a community with a strong distrust of authority. Some residents had told the nurses they were too afraid to get vaccinated.
@DanBilefsky
Trans Canada
greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the Paris Agreement, largely because of the oil sands. (An update: Mr. Trudeau raised Canada’s target for emissions reductions to 40 to 45 percent, Mr. Biden committed the United States to a 50 percent reduction).
When Mr. Trudeau legalized recreational marijuana, many investors had dreams of wealth from getting in on the ground floor of the nation’s newest legal vice. Two and a half years later, the industry continues to retreat and remains burdened with dizzying losses.
In a decision that angered civil liberties groups, a court in Quebec largely upheld the province’s law barring public sector employees from wearing religious symbols while on the job.
A Bloc Québécois member of Parliament acknowledged that he was the source of a leaked screenshot showing William Amos, a Liberal member from Quebec, appearing nude on Zoom by mistake during a House of Commons session last week.
In her review, Jeannette Catsouliswrote that “The Marijuana Conspiracy,” a new film set in Canada in 1972 dramatizing an actual experiment to test the effects of cannabis on young women, is an “agonizingly gauche movie” that “feels like a missed opportunity for a searing ethical investigation.”
This week, Patrick Marleau surpassed the record for the greatest number of games played in the N.H.L. set by Gordie Howe, another native of Saskatchewan, in 1961.
This week’s Trans Canada section was compiled by Ian Austen, The Times’s Ottawa correspondent.
How are we doing? We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.
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Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency started as a joke, now has a market value that can’t be laughed at: more than $50 billion. On Tuesday, traders of Dogecoin were trying to push up the price to coincide with 4/20, or April 20, a date associated with smoking cannabis.
On Twitter, the hashtags #DogeDay and #Doge420 were trending. Dogecoin’s price, which has surged lately, fluctuated between gains and losses on Tuesday, trading at about 40 cents, according to Coindesk. A month ago, it was about 5 cents.
The ripple effects of the boom in crypto markets are being felt far and wide. Coinbase, the cryptocurrencies exchange that went public last week and is helping force the industry into the mainstream, has a market value of $66 billion. Central banks have ramped up plans to explore digital currencies to offer people an secure alternative to cryptocurrencies, which are out of their control. On Monday, the Bank of England was the latest to announce it was looking into a central bank digital currency.
On Tuesday morning, prices of cryptocurrencies and related stocks slipped lower. Bitcoin’s fell 1 percent, trading just above $55,000. Shares in Coinbase and Riot Blockchain were slightly lower in premarket trading.
