BURN AFTER READING II
Welcome to the second edition of Burn After Reading! This is my newsletter on cannabis (and other things).
For this week’s Cannabis Confidential, I wrote about Greatest Hits, a vertically integrated cannabis company that is using a music-theme (a la Hard Rock Cafe) to help differentiate their retail store and future product lines from others.
I think the connections between cannabis and music is obviously enough that this may work for them, but it brought up a related topic that’s been on my mind for sometime: Does good dispensary design really move the needle when it comes to sales numbers?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t really care if the dispensary (or liquor store) I frequent has appealing interior and exterior design. If you give me two dispensaries that are the same difference from my house and have the same exact prices and selection, it might be enough to get me to choose one over another — but it’s really not a priority for me.
Now I’m not going to fall for the common fallacy you see in the cannabis industry, where everyone assumes their behavior as an individual consumer is the norm for everyone. There may be some consumers out there who really care about what the dispensary they’re shopping at looks like, and there may be some situations where having a decked-out shop helps attracts visitors, particularly in places with a large amount of tourists who are looking for a memorable shopping experience for their first legal purchase.
But for me, it’s simple: Your store can be a glorified shipping container, just give me some quality eighths that don’t cost over 50 bucks.
Some things I read (or heard) this week.
You’ll be shocked to learn that yet another state-level cannabis business trade association is lobbying against social equity. This time, it’s the Arizona Dispensaries Association, who successfully lobbied to defeat a bill that would have made it easier for social equity applicants to find locations that allowed their businesses to succeed.
The ADA has some weak excuses for their opposition, but what can’t be denied is the fact that their lobbyist sent an email to the Arizona League of Cities and Towns warning that there would be “dispensaries on every corner” if the bill was passed.
[The bill would only add 39 dispensary licenses, which leads me to conclude that the state of Arizona has a very small amount of corners]
Advocates in Arizona are pointing the finger at national cannabis company Trulieve as one of the members of ADA who was behind the push against the bill.
Folks in Massachusetts are all too familiar with these types of shenanigans from associations representing dispensaries. In 2021, the Commonwealth Dispensary Association filed a lawsuit that attempted to block the state from implementing new regulations that would limit delivery licenses to social equity participants for a duration of three years. The CDA eventually dropped the lawsuit after a bunch of businesses fled from the organization and activists threatened a boycott.
It’s basically a rule of thumb at this point: If your state has a cannabis business association comprised mostly of multi-state operators and other large, well capitalized companies, just assume they are up to something shady.
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Here’s an interesting tidbit I learned at Worcester Business Journal’s Cannabis Forum this week: The KushKart — a Mass adult-use cannabis business that is due to launch in the coming months — is planning on using electric vehicles for their delivery fleet. The company is working with a local KIA dealership to obtain the vehicles, which will need some additional modification to meet the security requirements for vehicles in Massachusetts, including things like lock boxes, cameras, and GPS tracking.
As far as I can tell, they’ll be the first cannabis company in Massachusetts will operate an electric fleet.
You can help out Kushkart (and the planet) by encouraging your local dispensary to install an EV charger in their parking lot.
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Well, Well, Well. It’s finally happened. A few years after the Red Sox’s AAA affiliate fled Rhode Island for the greener grass of Central Mass, the Worcester Red Sox ( aka the WooSox) are finally acknowledging their past history as the Pawtucket Red Sox (aka the PawSox). Saturday, July 9th will be “Paw Sox Heritage Day” at Polar Park. The team will wear Paw Sox throwback jerseys, and there’s a number of nods to Rhode Island planned throughout the day. Even Paws (the old PawSox mascot) is coming out of hibernation for the event.
In their inaugural season, the WooSox pretty much avoided all references to their former life in Rhode Island. That started to change in the lead up to this year’s season, when they slowly started posting photos and highlights from their days in Pawtucket. Paw Sox Heritage Day is their biggest attempt yet to mend fences with Rhode Islanders, many of whom did not take kindly to the team abandoning them.
I have always had incredibly conflicting feelings regarding the Polar Park project in Worcester. On one hand, I had a deep love of minor league baseball, and regularly attended PawSox games at McCoy Stadium as a child, so it’s cool to have them playing a few miles away in a beautiful new stadium. On the other hand, I don’t support publicly financed stadium deals — particularly this one — which experts almost universally decried as a bad and risky deal for the city.
That being said, the stadium has been built. There’s no un-building it. So come by Worcester and check out a game, and maybe shop at some local businesses while you’re here. Major Bloom — Worcester's first Black-owned dispensary — is just a few blocks away.
Two musings.
Last Friday, I attended Lester Grinspoon Reconsidered, an event at UMass Amherst to honor the legacy of the late Harvard professor and cannabis pioneer that we lost back in 2020. It was a fitting tribute to the legendary cannabis figure, and there was an amazing line-up of drug policy all-stars in attendance. It’s great to know that UMass is preserving his papers for future generations. Their Drug Policy Archive is performing an important service in documenting the history of the movement.
If you missed out on LesterFest, videos of the panels should be posted to UMass Library’s Youtube page soon, so keep an eye out. Hopefully this becomes an annual event.
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I think Rob Delaney summed up my feelings about Joe Biden’s response (or lack thereof) to recent Supreme Court decisions.
Personally, I’ve seen enough. The second the 2022 midterms are over — regardless of the result — we need to start talking about who is going to be the Democrat’s nominee in 2024, because it simply cannot be Joe Biden. We already have ample evidence that he’s not capable of being the leader we need at this point in time.
Welcome Distraction of the Week.
Last Saturday marked Bourdain Day, the unofficial holiday to commemorate the life of Anthony Bourdain.
I don’t think there’s a writer that has had a bigger impact on the way I perceive the world than Bourdain. His career decision to abandon being a full-time chef to instead write about cooking was a huge influence on my decision to leave the cannabis industry to do the same. I’m not under the delusion that I’ll be penning a masterpiece like Kitchen Confidential anytime soon, but his way of using food to talk about and frame bigger issues is exactly what I hope to do for cannabis.
I recently listened to the audio book of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography. It was a painful listen considering that I knew the last few chapters were going to be particularly difficult to get through, but it helped bring a lot of closure to a loss that still stings over four years later.
So let’s not dwell on the darkness. Instead, here’s three classic episodes of Bourdain’s shows that you should check out:
No Reservations: Beirut (S2). Starting as any normal episode of No Reservations would with food and culture, things quickly start to go south as Bourdain finds himself in the midst of the 2006 Lebanon War. This episode earned Bourdain and the show their first Emmy nomination.
No Reservations: New Orleans (S4). Visiting New Orleans just two years after Hurricane Katrina, this episode offers a frank depiction of a city that had not yet recovered — despite what the Bush administration was saying at the time. Bourdain was even willing to squash his longstanding beef with Emeril to talk about how to get the city back on track.
Parts Unknown: Iran (S4). Bourdain got to make a long awaited trip to Iran in 2014, and it resulted in one of the more informative episodes he ever created. Filmed in a brief period of time where peaceful relations between Iran and the U.S. seemed possible, the episode was a nuanced depiction of the country and displayed the overwhelming warmth that Iranians show to visitors. Shortly after participating in the episode, journalist Jason Rezaian was imprisoned by the Iranian government, where he remained until 2016.
Most No Reservations episodes can be found on the dumpster fire that is Discovery+ (thankfully, a 7-day free trial is available) while Parts Unknown is available on CNN+ HBO Max.
Cat Picture of the Week.
Jorts!
Where do I begin with Jorts…. ah, let’s just have Wikipedia explain:
Half union activist, half adorable office cat, Jorts has taken leftist twitter by storm in recent months with their adorable antics.
Jorts is basically if Eugene Debs was reincarnated in cat form and had a natural ability to create internet memes. When not posting adorable selfies, they use their large following to push for worker’s rights and to call out corporations and politicians.
I don’t blame you for wanting to avoid the cesspool that is twitter, but please take a minute to bookmark Jort’s page and check it out from time to time. They are truly a beacon of orange sunshine.