This Week in Cannabis News | February 28, 2025

Welcome to our new Friday program, This Week in Cannabis News, powered by Dutchie.

Each Friday at 10 a. m. Eastern, we'll deliver an overview of this week's cannabis news.

We will be quick, we'll be comprehensive, we'll send you into the weekend as a more informed cannabis professional, and it's all made possible by our friends at Dutchie. You can find and connect with the team there through our link in the show notes.

Let's get to it.

MSO CEO’s not aligned on Trump

Kim Rivers from Trulieve and Ben Kovler from Green Thumb Industries are two of the industries better-known and high-profile CEOs. Both were in the news this week as it is earnings season for publicly traded companies. And what was striking to us at Cultivated was just how different Trulieve’s CEO Kim River’s and GTI’s CEO Ben Kovler look at the chances of cannabis reform under the Trump Administration.

Rivers: “We remain optimistic that the Trump administration will work to address inequities for state legal operators, including access to banking, expanded research, and normalized tax rates.”

Note, she didn’t say she’s optimistic about legalization at the federal level.

And here’s Kovler’s comments from Wednesday: 

“We’ve seen things differently from our peers for a long time.... And we are not optimistic about changes in DC. Look at the appointees and look at Kennedy’s (RFK JR’s) total 180. So instead, we’re going to play offense… We think the people in DC are out to lunch.” 

More from Rivers and Kovler.

New York Times deep dive on New York’s social equity program for cannabis

When New York legalized cannabis in 2021, it charted, or at least attempted to, a different path from other states. Instead of immediately opening the industry up to large, publicly traded cannabis corporations, the state sought to use the economic opportunity provided by legalization to right many of the wrongs of the War on Drugs.

That meant giving “social equity” license holders the first crack at the burgeoning market. Those lofty goals bumped up against economic, political, and legal reality pretty quickly. This week, the New York Times unpacked it all in: How a Plan for Reparations Became a Debt Trap for Marijuana Retailers. A link to that story is on cultivated.news

Pennsylvania’s march toward cannabis legalization

Pennsylvania Sens. Dan Laughlin and Sharif Street said in a memo this week that they plan to introduce a bipartisan proposal to legalize adult-use cannabis to ensure consumer safety, boost the economy, and reduce crime. With neighboring states already benefiting from legalization, they say Pennsylvania must act to remain competitive and prevent the loss of tax revenue. Language of the bill is available to read. But also this week from PA, Governor Josh Shapiro tweeted about cannabis

Good news for Canadian cannabis

Fresh off a win in the 4 Nations Face Off, Canada received some other good news this week — cannabis sales figures for December 2024 were an all-time monthly high. Cannabis sales in Canada, which can now be considered a ‘mature market,’ have been slowing down or heading down for some time. But the recent numbers suggest a bit of resiliency in the Canadian market, with sales in December reaching nearly $500 million dollars, up almost $23 million from the previous year.

More on this story about Canadian cannabis.

And, this week’s One Fun Thing

This week the Governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy delivered his annual Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Address – sort of a state of the state for the Governor. And at that talk, he recognized the cannabis industry, and native Trenton son: Tahir Johnson from SimplyPure. Let’s have a listen:

That’s it for This Week in Cannabis News powered by Dutchie. 

Check back next Friday at 10 am Eastern right here on Cultivated’s LinkedIn page and YouTube channel.