Marijuana Tourism in Seattle? Kind Bud, Craft Beer and Cool Cocktails

When Washington state legalized recreational marijuana use last July, Seattle’s tourism industry saw a new opportunity. Could Seattle become a hub for marijuana tourism, with eager visitors piling into local hotels and Airbnbs for an opportunity to try some of that famous Seattle marijuana? The answer, in a word: yes.

A guide for marijuana smokers put out by Seattle’s city government says adults over 21 can buy up to one ounce of marijuana, 16 ounces of edibles (think “hash brownies,” or Dixie Elixirs & Edibles’ higher-end munchables), 72 ounces of liquid marijuana, or seven grams of marijuana concentrate per visit to a state-licensed store. You can’t smoke your marijuana in public view, and you can’t take it out of state with you. And don’t even think of driving high.

But just because it’s legal doesn’t mean you can do it anywhere. Smoking regulations mean you can’t just light a pipe inside most hotels or hostels; the same smoking provisions that ban cigarettes also ban smoking marijuana. Insurance companies may also prohibit marijuana use inside, say, a restaurant or coffee shop. Meanwhile, not one person I spoke with for this story quite understands what “public view” means. Is it illegal if you smoke it by a window? Is a rooftop illegal? Entrepreneurs—and eager smokers—are trying to figure it all out.

“We’re trying to decipher what’s possible for tourists,” Blandford says. “There’s no national market research. In addition, just because it’s legal here, it doesn’t mean you can just walk down the street and smoke. It’s for private consumption. The vast majorities of venues have no smoking policies of any kind, so it’s an interesting challenge.”

Right off the bat, Visit Seattle said that one of the most likely prospects for marijuana tourism—pot-smoking cruises on the Puget Sound—would be impossible because they fall under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard rather than Washington state. Advertising of any sort also becomes an issue because of conflicting federal and state regulations on marijuana use. And, Blandford adds, many established companies simply don’t want to risk negative PR by offering services geared towards pot tourists.

Other prospects are still evolving, Blandford added, because the supply of legal marijuana in Washington state is still relatively low. As growers switch to legal compliance and a new wave of “weedpreneurs” begin businesses, they still have to navigate bureaucracy that outlaw illegal marijuana growers and distributors don’t.

The tourism agency views marijuana smokers as a niche audience similar to convention attendees, LGBT travelers, and wine tourists. In time, Visit Seattle thinks that they’ll also benefit the city just like those other groups have.

“Marijuana tourism is the wild west, and we’re trying to glean best practices,” Blandford told Fast Company. “We’re stumbling into it, keeping an open mind, and hoping it’ll grow.”

In the meantime, entrepreneurs are doing what they do best and finding hustles that fly under the nose of the law. For Seattle’s marijuana industry, that means bus tours and visits to dispensaries.

A number of companies offering bus tours of marijuana farms, shops, and interest sites have popped up in the past year with names like Cannabus, the Weed Bus Club, and Kush Tourism. All of these businesses take advantage of two facts: Washington state regulations allow smoking on buses that have glass partitions for passengers (the same law that lets you smoke in the back of a limo), and that private buses fall outside the purview of the “public space” regulation in the state law. Passengers pay dearly for the privilege; most of the tours I looked at charge customers an average of $25 an hour.

For businesspeople, bus tours also have one distinct advantage: much like winery or brewery tours, they allow operators to steer customers towards specific venues and build business relationships with these places. Guests, meanwhile, get to regale friends and family back home in Canada or Chicago about their legal weed vacation. Read More…Fast Company

Thru Startups and PubCos a Viable Vertical Market in Marijuana is Emerging

Venture firms and entrepreneurs are betting this will be one of the next multi-billion dollar markets. The numbers tell a compelling story and the details are available on financial websites everyday.

For years venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area and elsewhere have helped to define new high growth markets and build a viable company and in some cases, like Facebook, define a new category. The “bud business” is no different, although the lines between legality and illegality are a shifting constantly and being redefined in real time.

You know there is a real market when. Privateer, a Peter Thiel (Founder Fund) funded start-up in Seattle has raised $75 million in a Series B investment round “position” in the pot biz. And, that valuation has no where to go but up.

Privateer’s business model is well articulated “shaping the future of the cannabis industry” and it helps to underscore the size of the market, estimated to be somewhere between $10-150 Billion per year. That’s a big market and there is no need to do any build out of consumer demand, the market is well established.

Legality for usage is not clearly defined in bullet proof sense. The Federal Government’s position, in part driven by an out of touch lobbyist driven congress and a patchwork of laws that vary state by state. But, recent activity in the Federal Courts have upheld the illegality of usage.

Currently Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington have approved recreational usage and medicinal usage. But the laws in many other states are not clear; usage restrictions and legality are not well defined and open to interpretation

Marijuana is not going away, whether it’s legal or not, it is the third most popular recreational drug in the U,S., with alcohol and tobacco products holding down the number one and two positions. Over 25 million Americans have toked up in the last year and somewhere in excess of 15 million do so on a regular basis.

That’s a lot of consumption and a huge market too big to ignore. And, the perception among adolescents and young adults about the dangers of weed has been dropping for the last ten years, driven in part by the perception of the public discourse about its risks.

Clearly the public perception has shifted from the dated “Reefer Madness” references to a much more enlightened perspective.

The recent projections by the Marijuana Policy Project probably reflect the shift in social mores, they anticipate the majority of most states will have legalized marijuana by 2020.

The “war on drugs” that was publicly hyped by every administration since the Nixon era has primarily been focused on marijuana users – an American is arrested for usage approximately every 47 seconds, surpassing the number of arrests for violent crimes. It is estimated over 20 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana usage and trafficking since 1965.

For years, NORMAL, an advocacy rights group founded in 1970, has taken a position that decriminalizing marijuana usage will free our legislative systems to pursue much more serious issues

So, where is this market going? No one really knows; but, it may put the .com era to shame and terms of valuations, upside and opportunity. Read More…HuffPo

Marijuana is good medicine for kids?

Parents are advocating for more medical marijuana access as they say cannabis is safer than pharmaceuticals to treat their sick children.

There is movement in the United States Senate on making medical marijuana available. Three senators introduced a bill in March that would allow use in states where it is legal without fear of federal prosecution.

The proposed bill is gaining support from parents who use medical marijuana to treat their sick children. Parents say marijuana is a safer option than mainstream pharmaceuticals. Some of those parents attended a forum at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to advocate for more medical marijuana access.

“I’m a conservative Christian Republican from Texas so this is far off my radar,” parent Thalia Michelle said. Doctors have diagnosed her son, Lance, with autism. “He was non verbal, lots of aggression, lots of self-injuring behavior,” Michelle said.

Michelle formed the group Mothers Advocating Medical Marijuana for Autism, or MAMMA, to help raise awareness about the need for families to have access to marijuana.

Advocates said the medical industry is beginning to see cannabis as a treatment option.

“Now what you’re seeing are specialists, cancer specialists, epilepsy specialists, autism specialists who are learning about how cannabis can be used for these conditions,” said Amanda Reiman with the Drug Policy Alliance.

Michelle said it is an option the federal government should legalize.

“Medical marijuana is not nearly as dangerous as a heavy-duty narcotic,” she said.

Venture Capital & Private Equity ready to invest big money in Marijuana

Investors know there’s money to be made in marijuana, but there’s still plenty of hesitation when it comes to putting money in pot—especially when the business deals directly with the plant itself. Alice Truong from Quartz reports that  while marijuana commerce has been flourishing—raking in $2.7 billion in sales last year from the US’s legal market—most investments to date have been in ancillary businesses, such as marijuana reviews sites for consumers or security systems for dispensaries. It’s a different story when it comes to companies that actually “touch the plant.”

That’s a common phrase heard at ArcView Group’s investor forum, held this week at San Francisco’s iconic Fairmont Hotel. The two-day, invite-only conference gives a stage to budding startups and connects them with investors—like speed dating, but focused exclusively on marijuana.

For many investors, auxiliary businesses represent a safer bet. But the Department of Justice is easing up on marijuana enforcement, prioritizing drug crime involving gangs, trafficking, and minors—and some investors are taking that as a green light to touch the plant.

“We do a tremendous amount of due diligence, but when it comes to companies that touch the plant, it’s almost eight times that,” says Emily Paxhia, founding partner at Poseidon Asset Management. The marijuana-focused firm invests on both sides of the “green line”, but she ultimately thinks more money will be made in ancillary companies because of technology’s ability to innovate and scale.

For the first year of its existence, the Marijuana Investment Company focused solely on ancillary businesses because of its plans to go public. “We were afraid the [Securities and Exchange Commission] wouldn’t allow us to go public if we crossed the green line,” says CEO Frank Marino. However, when he reviewed the S-1 filings from other public companies involved in cannabis, he found at least three businesses that expressly stated they manufacture and/or sell marijuana. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re legal,” he says. As a result, three weeks ago, the firm invested in Auntie Dolores, an Oakland-based company that makes edible weed goods.

Likewise, Troy Dayton, CEO of marijuana investment network ArcView, began noticing a shift in investor attitudes in the last six months. “I think it’s because states are regulating,” he says. “If states are able to make money, investors see the opportunity—it’s too big an opportunity to let slip by.” Most of the 40 companies that raised money from ArcView’s network are ancillary businesses. But if you look at the actual dollar amount, it’s the few companies that touch the plant that command the most money, says Dayton. (That’s because of higher setup costs associated with growing marijuana, he notes.)

While not all investors agree with him, he sees these companies as “generally a more sure bet on returns,” largely due to the limited number of licenses to grow and sell marijuana in states where it’s legal. His bullishness echoes what he told me when we first met two years ago: “If you’re one of those people who get a license, that could be a license to print money.”

source: Alice Truong @alicetruong