Bill Weinberg's blog

Defund the police —starting with cannabis enforcement

BlackLivesMatterA month into the national uprising sparked by the killing of George Floyd, cities and states are responding to activist demands to defund police forces. Some are deciding that cannabis enforcement is the place to start in contracting the police apparatus.

Hemp Farming While Black

Farmer CeeCan Rural America's Expropriated Use a New Crop to Forge a New Agrarianism?

Green Heffa Farms, in North Carolina’s Piedmont, has emerged as a national symbol of vision and success in America’s new hemp economy. As a producer of boutique full-spectrum hemp-flower products, it has won a cachet in the industry—which is augmented, at least in more enlightened sectors, by the fact that it is Black-owned, and has an overt political consciousness.

Green Heffa’s CEO is Clarenda Stanley—popularly known as Farmer Cee. She was featured in the April issue of Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, and was last year the 2019 “Featured Farmer” for National Hemp History Week.

The cannabis industry and the Black Lives Matter uprising

leafProtests have spread across the country in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police—a haunting crystallization of institutionalized racism in law enforcement. The protests have been punctuated by looting in many cities, and cannabis businesses have not been spared. How the industry reacts at this moment will reveal much about the soul of America's cannabis community.

Oceania: cannabis comes to a restive region

Posted on April 21st, 2020 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

OceaniaThe global cannabis economy is now reaching Oceania, with commercial cultivation underway in Australia, a legalization referendum coming up in New Zealand, and legal barriers starting to come down in the Pacific Islands. 

What will cannabis economy mean for Africa?

Posted on April 2nd, 2020 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

AfricaA growing number of countries on the African continent are looking to cannabis as the ticket out of poverty, and foreign investment for this sector is flooding in. Activists who pushed for legal commercial cultivation will now face the challenge of crafting a cannabis economy that empowers small farmers and rural communities, rather than replicating the elitist forms of past agro-export industries.

Cannabis and artificial intelligence: the arrival of robopot?

Posted on March 13th, 2020 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Shadow WatchDigital technology is rapidly colonizing every sphere of human existence, and the cannabis industry is certainly no exception. Entrepreneurs are aggressively plugging the application of artificial intelligence in everything from automating grow operations to matching strains with symptoms they are effective against. But is there a downside?

Brooklyn brutality re-ignites outrage over pot policing in NYC

Posted on March 11th, 2020 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , .

New York CityAn egregious incident of police abuse in Brooklyn has gone viral on the internet—and re-ignited public anger over racist marijuana enforcement in New York City.

Bernie or Biden: who's better on pot?

Posted on March 6th, 2020 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , .

BernieWith the Democratic horserace having narrowed into a two-man contest, cannabis voters appear to face a clear-cut choice: Bernie Sanders supports legalization, while Joe Biden has only in recent years come to support decrim. A look at the details, however, reveals that Bernie too has compromised with the Drug War establishment in the past.

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