Cannabis Industry Journal

SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index analyzed more than 350,000 business locations across 2,751 brands and found a gap every dispensary operator should take seriously. ChatGPT recommends 1.2% of those locations. Perplexity recommends 7.4%. Gemini reaches 11%.

Pre-rolls generated $4 billion in sales in 2025 and are projected to grow faster than any other top cannabis category, at a 10% compound annual growth rate, according to BDSA retail tracking data. Infused formats now account for 43% of the segment, and the category has grown by 271% since 2020.

Every conversation about cannabis risk follows the same script: Regulatory uncertainty, 280E, capital access, and maybe interstate commerce, depending on the room. None of that is wrong, and operators dealing with those pressures daily don’t need me to tell them they’re real.

For years, cannabis operators have accepted labeling inefficiencies as an unavoidable cost of doing business. Yet, many facilities still rely on fragmented, manual workflows that require employees to export spreadsheets, copy cannabinoid results, and rekey intricate terpene data into static label templates. This traditional approach actively drains productivity, inflates labor costs, and introduces unnecessary opportunities for human error. Fortunately, a new generation of labeling technology is changing that reality.

Over the last several years, we have spent a lot of time studying how cannabis retailers make purchasing decisions.

On April 22, 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order placing state-licensed medical marijuana into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. The cannabis industry declared it a turning point. In certain respects, it is.

Everybody who came here today, and not giving up and saying that we’re going to continue to fight for this category, thank you, give yourself a round of applause, please, ” were the fighting words of Christopher Lackner, President of the Hemp Beverage Alliance (HBA), as he opened the panel discussions for the Hemp Beverage Expo that recently took place in Austin, Texas.

Do you have practical insights that can help advance cannabis quality, safety, compliance, or laboratory science? The Cannabis Quality Conference is accepting presentation proposals for its 2026 conference, co-located with the 15th Anniversary Food Safety Consortium Conference & Expo, taking place October 21 to 23 in Washington, DC. Abstract submission Deadline: July 31…Continue reading →

Compared to licensing, compliance, and supply chains, payroll rarely receives the same level of scrutiny from operators because it’s perceived as a back-office function rather than a risk surface. As long as people are getting paid, it’s assumed to be “working,” even when the underlying systems are brittle, inconsistent, or misaligned with how the business actually operates.

Cannabis brands often approve a cartridge sample and then place a production order based solely on the product description. That shortcut leaves the filling partner, packaging team, and vape supplier to resolve important details after the purchase order has been submitted. A “controlled specification packet” must include formulation, critical dimensions, closure process, materials, lot records, and change rules, all decided on before the production clock starts.