As a digital marketing agency steeped in cannabis culture, SM Services is happy to provide breaking news and updates from around the world of hemp. This is a living page of all the breaking news and developments in and around the industry. All claims and summarized posts include clickable links to the source material in the headlines!
Our CEO, Steve Knapp, recently got interviewed and we thought the information could be useful to the ganjapreneurs in our audience! Read and enjoy!
Heres a blog for the ganjapreneurs: follow along and set your Google My Business up to increase your websites visibility!
Near the start of 2023, Twitter announced that dispensaries and agencies could advertise on twitter but couldn’t mention or link directly to products. In a more recent announcement, Twitter is easing the restrictions on products and allowing advertisements of closed products. This is a huge step forward for social media advertising as no other major social media platform allows the advertisement of cannabis in this fashion.
Our Team Lead, Andrew Szafran, recently appeared on an episode of the Karma Koala podcast! He talked about what its like working for SM, his favorite music, and the state of cannabis legislation. This podcast is a must-listen for dispensary owners and e-commerce brands!
Minnesota’s house and senate recently voted to pass recreational cannabis laws making it legal to purchase and consume recreational cannabis in the state of Minnesota. There are some slight differences between the house and senate bills that need to be resolved before the bill goes to Governor Tim Walz’s desk. Both bills include timelines for opening dispensaries and also for pardoning people currently incarcerated for selling and smoking cannabis, and expunging their records.
Our CEO Steve Knapp was recently featured on Marijuana Venture! The feature goes over his history in the cannabis industry and how SM got its start as a marketing agency.
A few years back, lawmakers introduced the SAFE banking act and failed to come to an agreement on what cannabis legislation would look like. This year, they’re trying again, and are already seeing more promise of the bill being passed. The bill has passed the house and is to be discussed in the Senate. The SAFE banking act creates a pathway to federal legalization of cannabis and would allow dispensaries to own bank accounts, meaning they are less prone to robberies, payment processing is simplified, and they have access to business loans and other programs. The possibility of legalization also opens up the possibility of interstate commerce which would greatly accelerate the development of newer cannabis markets and give some of the older markets a place to sell some of their extra green.
A bill proposing funding for the study of cannabis’s medicinal properties within veterans was recently voted against by republican members of the senate. Bummer.
Our Team Lead, Andrew Szafran got interviewed by Authority Magazine! They asked a ton of great questions that every entrepreneur looking to market their business will want to know the answers to.
This one is an oldie, an ongoing problem within some government agencies is the hiring of hackers and coders. If you didn’t know, most of them smoke, and federal employees need to pass drug tests that include testing for cannabis. In recent years, agencies have been laxing this requirement as their demand for hackers and security experts increases.
Its likely that we’ll be seeing recreational legalization on the ballot in Florida in 2024. This is a major step for Florida as one of the largest dispensaries, Trulieve, started operations as a medical-only facility in Florida.
Here’s a fun article about mentions of popular weed strains from Genius! Genius is an authority on all things hip hop, and there is a lot of crossover between hip hop and cannabis!
Near the start of 2023, Twitter announced that dispensaries and agencies could advertise on twitter but couldn’t mention or link directly to products. In a more recent announcement, Twitter is easing the restrictions on products and allowing advertisements of closed products. This is a huge step forward for social media advertising as no other major social media platform allows the advertisement of cannabis in this fashion.
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