Blandine Jean-Paul, vice president of marketing at Ethos Cannabis, worked hard to launch Headliners -- the number one pre-roll brand at the dispensary – and now lookalikes are popping up across Massachusetts.
“If somebody sees something is working, they just copy it,” Jean-Paul said. “It's a speed to market game in cannabis. The first person on the shelf wins the copyright game.” “No other business is just treated like there's no other legitimate business,” said Sean Hope, of Hope Legal Law Offices. “If you create a brand or cannabis product, you can easily be ripped off essentially,” Hope said. “Cannabis is a live plant. And so the way the formulation -- how it's procured, how it’s manufactured -- impacts the end product. And if you're a consumer, and you're not aware that this is not the product you think you're getting, then it impacts you.”