Page 46 - INC Magazine-November 2018

UP HOW HIGH WILL YOU GET?
Testing Labs
NEXT/ In states where cannabis is legal,
CANNABIS every bit has to be tested and
labeled for levels of THC (tetra­
hydrocannabinol, the substance
WEED that produces a high) and CBD
(cannabidiol, which does not
GROWS UP produce a high), along with, in
many cases, pesticide residues,
(AND GETS contaminants, and fungus. If
a farm’s crop doesn’t make the
grade, it’s not allowed to sell it.
BORING)
t A handful of regulatory-driven testing
labs have launched, including Cascadia
Labs in Oregon, Pure Analytics in Califor-
nia, and Evio Labs, the largest publicly
p traded testing company, with nine sites.

Marijuana has had a shady past,
but it’s on the cusp of having a
very conventional future. In 2017,
U.S. consumers spent $8.5 billion
on legal cannabis, a number
projected to grow to $23.4 billion
by 2022. With that growth has
emerged an entire ecosystem of
startups that support the less In 2017, U.S.
sexy side of cannabis. Not the consumers spent
luxury dispensaries or rose-hued
vape-pen companies, but the $8.5 BILLION Active licenses
infrastructure that keeps them on legal cannabis for cannabis
going—from software systems to (medical and cultivation in
package-design firms. As legal- recreational) the U.S.:
ization continues to spread—
it’s now permitted in 31 states, Source: 2018 report produced 7,182
by Arcview Market Research in
Washington, D.C., Guam, and partnership with BDS Analytics.
(And this was before California
Puerto Rico—so will the B2B legalized recreational cannabis.) Source: Cannabiz Media
industry solving cannabis’s thorny
challenges. —HANNAH WALLACE
THE FUTURE IS FEMALE
Biotech Firms
Since female plants
produce much higher
levels of THC and CBD
than males, growers
always cull the males.
Traditionally, cannabis
THE INSTAGRAM EFFECT
Marketing growers “grow out”
crops, which takes six
Advertising regulations to eight weeks, to deter­
vary from state to state, mine the sex.
but most national
publications won’t accept t Portland, Oregon–based
ads—and neither will Phylos Bioscience, which is
Facebook. Instagram, mapping the genome of
however, generally does cannabis online at the Galaxy,
not flag cannabis content, sells a DNA “sex test,” which
so it has become a allows growers to quickly
critical marketing tool. and accurately identify sex.
“It saves a lot of money spent
t Former cannabis journalist on feeding, watering, and
Ricardo Baca has Grasslands, lighting the males,” says
a well-respected cannabis Phylos co-founder Mowgli
PR firm in Denver. New York Holmes, who has collected
City–based North 6th Agency samples from 80 countries,
represents a handful of making Phylos’s database of
cannabis com panies including cannabis genetics the largest
BDS Ana lytics and venture in the world.
fund Canopy, both in Boulder,
while San Diego–based CMW
Media focuses on pharma-
ceutical cannabis.
GUTTER CREDIT