Here’s a roundup of news from the cannabis business world.
Online smoke accessory shop gets new owner
Orange County-based cannabis holding company MJIC, Inc. now owns the Rolling Paper Depot.
Rolling Paper Depot is a Tempe, Ariz. company founded in 2010. It distributes cannabis and tobacco accessories – such as rolling papers, rolling trays and pipes – through its own website and through Amazon.
MJIC runs its own cannabis industry companies and helps other businesses get their marijuana products to market while staying complaint with local and state laws.
Sturges Karban, CEO of MJIC, said Rolling Paper Depot has built a loyal customer base over the past seven years. Now he hopes to leverage his company’s resources to help the online store grow even larger in 2017.
Rolling Paper Founders Jarrod Smith and Camille McCutcheon said in a statement that they’d be integrating their team with MJIC, calling it “an opportunity to build a powerful presence in one of the most exciting new markets in decades.”
The Game is developing a line of luxury cannabis products
Hip-hop artist The Game is collaborating with Shine 24K Gold Rolling Papers to develop a line of luxury cannabis products.
Shine Papers, which invented 24-karat gold rolling papers, announced the partnership as a way to fill what they see as a void in the area of high-end marijuana products.
“Not only are there very few options in the natural wrap category, but what’s available often leaves much to be desired in freshness, quality, taste and ease of use,” Shine Papers CEO Dave Brown said in a statement. “We’re setting the quality control bar higher than ever, hand-selecting each leaf to give users the best taste and freshness ever experienced every single time.”
The debut product will be a broadleaf wrap called Pure Leaf, which will be a handpicked, natural leaf pack. It will be released on April 20, selling online and in stores for $5.49 for a pack of three.
The Game said in a statement that he hopes to help shape the future of the cannabis industry through products like these.
“The absolute most important things to me in the cannabis industry are community and innovation,” The Game said. “Without them we have nothing.”
Company turns ‘pot pill’ into chewing gum
It’s been 32 years since the Food and Drug Administration approved Marinol, the so-called “pot pill” that delivers the active cannabis compound THC to help patients battling nausea and weight loss.
Now the New York company AXIM Biotechnologies has turned Marinol into a medicinal chewing gum that it says will carry fewer side effects for patients.
Just like Marinol, AXIM’s chewing gum will be used to help treat patients with chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS patients experiencing loss of weight and appetite.
Don’t expect to see the gum at the pharmacy anytime soon. AXIM still has to go through clinical trials and seek FDA approval. But since the gum is based on the same formula as Marinol, the company says it’s optimistic it will be able to get speedy approval.
