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JB Pritzker: Illinois is attempting to produce a cannabis industry that actually looks like Illinois. Vipal Monga: Cannabis is the term that everyone uses because the connotations for pot and weed and marijuana are negative. But I'm okay with marijuana, too. I think we can say pot colloquially.Vipal Monga: Cannabis companies.
Vipal Monga: And those continue to be the largest players. They have been able to open and set up shop in multiple states. They are called multi-state operators, and again, they have an entrenched size advantage that they've been able to use to continue as legalization is spread from state to state across the country.
Akele Parnell: So I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, grew up in a community that had been devastated by the War on Drugs, and so that was a big part of shaping how I thought about equity work and social justice and stuff like that. Akele Parnell: Because I've always loved cannabis. I've always been into cannabis. I've always kind of been into the plant, the consumption, so I've always been a fan and it always been my favorite vice, even over alcohol or something like that. Where most people would prefer a beer, I would prefer a joint and a beer maybe.
Akele Parnell: First day I joined, I'm just like looking around in the industry, where are all the black and brown folks? Akele Parnell: For me, I felt like, one, it was stamp of legitimacy because now it's like I'm an owner. I felt like it was in a lot of ways life changing for a variety of reasons. But to be one of the first social equity, one of the first black licensees in the state of Illinois, in the city of Chicago was historic. And I was just jumping up and down, screaming, yelling, it was crazy, and then had the opportunity to finally, my dream at that point was to have our own cannabis brand.
Akele Parnell: And that's the one thing that I always try to impress on people when they're trying to get in the industry is literally getting the license. Although it seems so daunting and it is, and it seems like so much work, and it is. That's literally just the beginning. We got to raise all this money.
Lower your prices & the black market won’t have as much market share in California.
Happy to take some of their hands... 🧐
Weed smells terrible and is really unpleasant. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Michigan has the same problem so does colorado. Where do they plan to sell it?
Marijuana needs to legal across the US. Enough already. We accept alcohol (a poison) as normal with tons of drunk driving deaths every year but this natural plant is still illegal? Insanity remaining from a repression that is no longer needed
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