The California legislature has come up with $100 million to help the state’s struggling cannabis industry, which is still competing with the large illicit pot market nearly five years after voters approved legalization. Despite predictions that the pot market would flourish, marijuana businesses complain that bureaucracy is stifling growth and high taxes are keeping consumers away from legal dispensaries. Another reason: about three-quarters of all California cities have opted out of allowing cannabis shops, putting a big dent in legal sales. Now the state has to bail out the industry rather than, say, putting the money into combating the opioid epidemic.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has declined to hear a case challenging the authority of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the e-cigarette industry. This ensures that the agency will be able to continue monitoring and issuing guidelines concerning e-cigarettes and therefore addressing the youth vaping epidemic.
And finally, an opinion piece in STAT calls on the government to step up its oversight of increasingly popular marijuana edibles, arguing that officials are once again oblivious to a growing public health threat—as they were e-cigarettes—and are more concerned with promoting the marijuana industry than protecting families and young people from a potentially harmful product. The risks of edibles should not be dismissed, the authors point out, noting that national data show that teens are turning to these modes of marijuana consumption and are more likely to use the drug on a daily basis than those who smoke it. In addition, marijuana companies are using the same marketing playbook for edibles—including cartoon characters and fruity flavors— as e-cigarette makers did with great success.