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ARMADAIn the days of the Armada, a fleet of warships, the scuttlebutt was the rumor or gossip that would spread throughout the ship. Today, Armada Law Corp presents The Scuttlebutt, a daily summery of news articles that people within the cannabis, hemp and plant medicine industries are chatting about along with links to the full articles.
In today’s news:
#californiacannabis – “Cannabis sales could be coming soon to Huntington Beach, which would make Surf City one of just three cities in Orange County to allow weed dispensaries.
The Huntington Beach City Council voted 4-2 on Nov. 15 to instruct staff to draft a zoning text amendment, which would delete the existing cannabis business prohibition in the city and allow cannabis activities.
The land-use amendment will go before the Planning Commission at its next meeting, set for Dec. 13. If it passes then, it would return to the City Council for final approval on Jan. 17.”
#cannabisindustry – “The cannabis industry has placed a strong emphasis on security for grow facilities and dispensaries.
These enhanced security measures are a must to protect employees handling largely cash transactions and customers purchasing a heavily regulated product.
But, in taking these reasonable security measures, the cannabis industry has opened itself up to litigation surrounding BIPA’s stringent requirements.
BIPA regulates how private entities may collect and handle biometric data and provides a private cause of action for any person aggrieved by a violation of the statute.[3]”
#cannabisindustry – “Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE or PACE) —a financing medium widely used for traditional manufacturers, energy-efficient facilities, and renewable energy build-outs— is now available to authorized properties in the cannabis industry.
Quite underutilized in this industry, C-PACE financing recently became available for properties is in a state that has passed the legislation that empowers local municipalities to provide C-PACE as a funding tool.
PACE financing is repaid as an assessment on the property’s regular tax bill and is processed the same way as other local public benefit assessments (sidewalks, sewers, etc.) have been for decades.”
#cannabisindustry – “According to the settled orders, in 2019, Cronos embarked on a significant business expansion, seeking to enter the cannabis vaporizer market; however, Cronos lacked the requisite familiarity with applicable accounting requirements as well as the appropriate internal accounting controls to prepare financial statements that complied with U.S. reporting requirements. As a result, in three separate quarters between 2019 and 2021, Cronos submitted financial statements with the SEC that contained material errors related to, among other things, revenue recognition and goodwill impairment. The orders also alleged that in one of the quarters, the former Chief Commercial Officer entered into an oral agreement that was neither known nor accounted for by Cronos and which involved selling raw material in one quarter and purchasing product in the following quarter. This agreement and the corresponding $2.3 million accounting error were discovered by Cronos during an internal investigation.”
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/cannabis-company-cops-to-sec-accounting-1099660/
#cannabisbanking – “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has been tracking cannabis banking trends for the better part of the past decade. And this week, the agency released a new comprehensive spreadsheet that provides updated details about how many financial institutions are working with marijuana businesses, including a state-level breakdown for the first time.
At a top level, the takeaway is that the number of banks and credit unions that reported actively working with marijuana companies in the third quarter of the 2022 Fiscal Year remained relatively stable, with 784 financial institutions across the U.S. filing requisite “Suspicious Activity Reports,” or SARs, for marijuana-related business (MRB) clients.
That’s slightly down from the first quarter of the fiscal year, much higher than when FinCEN started collecting the data in 2014, but generally consistent with the agency’s trend line since 2019. Even with more state cannabis markets coming online, the industry’s relationship with the traditional financial sector seems to have largely stabilized.”
