AP Photo/Jeff Chiu In this Friday, Aug. 16, 2019, photo, chemist David Dawson holds up a vial of extracted cannabis with an organic solvent as he demonstrates testing for THC and other chemicals at CW Analytical Laboratories in Oakland, Calif.
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Happy Friday everyone,
September is officially upon us, which thankfully means cooler weather and the oft-cited "Fall Sprint" in media circles.
A bit of bad news, however: I was really excited for some big, quality hurricane-fueled surf out at Rockaway Beach this weekend - forecasts like this are once in a blue moon for the East Coast. Unfortunately, Mayor De Blasio's office has other ideas and has closed all New York City beaches to surfing this weekend over concerns about rip currents.
Your friendly cannabis industry reporter is pretty bummed about that.
Anyway, let's get to it:
On Thursday, we held our inaugural cannabis industry webinar with Headset CEO Cy Scott, joined by Poseidon Asset Management Partners Emily and Morgan Paxhia.
In the webinar, Scott walked us through his tips for crafting the perfect pitch deck to hook potential investors. Headset raised a $12 million Series A earlier this year, led by Poseidon.
You can watch the webinar in its entirety here.
In other news, vaping related illnesses and deaths continued to climb over the week. Regulators and doctors are still unsure of the root cause of these, but it appears that the illnesses stem from both nicotine-containing vapes, as well as THC-containing vapes.
And it's not yet clear whether illicit vapes are solely to blame, as state health officials in Oregon confirmed that a middle-aged man had died after purchasing cannabis oil from a regulated dispensary. Former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb has an editorial in The Washington Post going over the dangers of vaping both nicotine and THC.
On the Canadian cannabis front, CannTrust's woes continue. A recent report from BNN Bloomberg found that senior staff at CannTrust brought illicit cannabis seeds into their licensed production facilities, resulting in illegally-grown pot entering the regulated market.
The company has since laid off 20% of its staff - or 180 people - as it restructures in light of all the recent turmoil
In (slightly) more upbeat news, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brendan Kennedy, Tilray's CEO, in BI's Manhattan offices on Wednesday where he laid out his view of the cannabis landscape. Cowen analyst Vivien Azer slashed her price target on Tilray by 60% but still maintained her outperform rating on the stock.
More stories from around the BI newsroom:
Cannabis companies are growing rapidly. They're a great place to look for jobs, from entry-level retail positions all the way up to senior management.
To get a sense of how to best land a job in the booming industry, Business Insider spoke with some of the top recruiters in the cannabis world.
They told us their best tips - and explained why being passionate about cannabis isn't enough to land a new role.
The CEO of Headset, a data-analytics provider for the cannabis industry, revealed his key advice for making a successful pitch to potential investors.
Scott emphasized the importance of having a clear and concise mission statement that "aligns everyone to the organization" and hooks investors.
The company recently brought in $12 million from its series A funding round.
This one is from my colleague Hilary Brueck on Insider's science and health team, who has been doggedly covering the vape illness story all week.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said more than 450 "possible cases" of vaping-related lung illnesses have been tallied so far. At least four people have died after vaping.
Many of the cases involve vaping THC and other cannabinoids, but some happened after vapers inhaled only nicotine.
The safest thing to do, the CDC says, is "consider not using e-cigarettes."
It's worth revisiting this chart in light of the vape-related illnesses, from a story we published back in April. In the story, we obtained exclusive results from one of California's top cannabis testing labs, CannaSafe.
The lab found in a blind analysis that less than 15% of CBD products actually contained what the labels said. On top of that, some of the tested products had high levels of solvents and dangerous gases like ethylene oxide and ethanol that are particularly dangerous when vaporized and inhaled.
Check out the results of the study:
Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Psychedelic drugs draw some investor attention - and much skepticism (Wall Street Journal)
Black market pot entered CannTrust facility, flowed into legal market last year: Sources (BNN)
CEO of cannabis giant Canopy is on a media blitz to ease concerns (CNN Business)
Cases of vaping-related lung illness surge, health officials say (New York Times)
The baffling legal gray zone of marijuana at the airport (Wall Street Journal)
Vape pen lung disease has insiders eyeing misuse of new additives (Leafly)
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CULTIVATED: Recruiters share their 3 best tips for landing a job in cannabis, Headset CEO walks us through his pitch deck, and vape-related illnessesThe founder of buzzy cannabis-tech startup Headset walked us through the pitch deck that helped him raise $12 million and ink deals with Nielsen and DeloitteTHE FUTURE OF FINTECH 2019: The five megatrends reshaping the financial services value chainJPMorgan Chase has begun using a digital watermark to protect customers from phishing attacksCopyright © 2024. Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.For reprint rights. Times Syndication Service.
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