In the third and final part of our conversation on covering the legal marijuana industry, Ricardo Baca, editor of The Denver Post’s website The Cannabist; and Kevin Dale, executive editor of Arizona PBS’s Cronkite News, share their insights from covering the industry in Colorado. Megan Calcote hosts this episode highlighting the journalists’ experience testing the potency of edibles and calling out the brands that failed to meet their own advertised standards. They also discuss the shift in public opinion and how local control in Colorado has played out since legalization.
For more information about investigations into product potency or to learn about chemical and pesticide testing in marijuana, visit the stories below.
- Video: Contaminated marijuana sold at Oregon dispensaries
- Edibles’ THC claims versus lab tests reveal big discrepancies
- THC levels in edibles: See the lab tests
- On testing THC in edibles: The story behind our pot report
If you missed part 1 and part 2 of this series, be sure to listen to them next!
Transcript
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Megan Calcote: How to Cover Money: The business of the marijuana industry.
Ricardo Baca: Ultimately, when you look at all of the evidence and all of the shifting public opinion and how doctors and governments are starting to recognize that this is a more at least for what we know right now is a safer substance than alcohol.
Calcote: Hello and welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We are coming to you from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I’m Megan Calcote, host of the How to Cover Money podcast. Today, we conclude our discussion on the business of the pot industry with Ricardo Baca, editor of The Denver Post website: The Cannabist, and Kevin Dale, executive editor of Arizona PBS’s Cronkite News. Dale directed marijuana coverage while he was top editor at the Denver Post. With cannabis legal for recreational use in Colorado, new products began to hit the market. Those new products included edibles, or food products infused with marijuana.
Kevin Dale: One of main stories right after the launch was the potency of the edible products in the state. And again, this is where, as a business journalist, or just as a journalist, you do your audience a favor by looking into an industry that has regulations but it’s brand new. Are the regulations being enforced? And are people getting what they pay for?
Calcote: Ricardo knew this story would be important after testing an edible that didn’t have the effect it advertised, he soon discovered that he wasn’t the only one disappointed in some of these edible products.
Baca: Late February, I got a call from a shop owner in suburban Denver saying that she’d had more than 400 customers return one brand of edibles, and we were off and running. And I told Kevin about this immediately, and we were both “Okay, let’s jump on it.” And we ended up testing 10 different edible brands. Found that nobody was dosing correctly. Maybe one of those 10 companies was and this one was ripping off consumers so bad that one of the products only had 1/500 of the THC that they were advertising. Supposed to be 100 milligrams, they had 0.2 milligrams in the entire bar. We’ve all been a part of those stories. But I mean, this was a brand new industry that people trusted, that people trusted these numbers because it’s professional packaging, and they had no right to trust those numbers. They were so incredibly, incredibly off. And you know, this is ultimately a new industry, and it requires this kind of journalism. Five, six other newspapers throughout California, Oregon, and other states ended up replicating this test themselves, recognizing that, “Hey, if they don’t have their together in Colorado, I wonder what’s happening in the Bay Area. I wonder what’s happening in Portland?” And they found very similar things. And I think that’s one of the great things about having that shared beat you write about energy, and you know, the energy writer at other papers, it was great to be able to inspire them to move on stories like this.
Calcote: Besides potency, news organizations are examining the amount of chemicals and pesticides present in pot products. We’ll provide links to the cannabis investigation into edible potency and a video from the Oregonian on pesticide levels on the blog post for this podcast. Visit businessjournalism.org to find those links. Colorado has a unique provision in their legal marijuana law. Individual counties have control over what kind of businesses can operate within their borders.
Baca: The majority of counties throughout Colorado have said, “No, we don’t want any of these businesses.” For example, a conservative County in southern metro area is now considering allowing cannabis labs, the testing facilities, but they still don’t want the cultivation, the edibles makers, the shops, and really, that’s what people say is one of the greatest successes of amendment 64 in Colorado is that it gives local control. If you don’t want it in your community, it’s not in your community.
Calcote: Having the power to decide what kind of marijuana businesses exist within individual counties has had an interesting impact on local budgets.
Dale: There’s a lot riding on this. This is how they sold it to voters. Was the revenue and the tax revenues that would be going to schools and other areas. There have been a few stories in The Post about the counties and the cities that have approved having shops and how their coffers are growing, and those right next door who maybe banned shops and they’re still having the same budget problems they’ve been having for the past few years.
Calcote: As we’ve discussed before, the Drug Enforcement Agency classifies cannabis as a Schedule One Drug. Because of this classification, running scientific studies can be difficult. Understanding marijuana and its potential effects will be vital as more states move to legalize.
Baca: in an absence of legit scientific information, in part because this drug is almost impossible to study. Marijuana is still more difficult to study than heroin or cocaine, so there’s certainly a disconnect. Ultimately, when you look at all of the evidence and all of the shifting public opinion and how doctors and governments are starting to recognize that this is a more, at least for what we know right now, is a safer substance than alcohol.
Calcote: Public opinion continues to shift on the legalization of marijuana. It’s likely that more states will legalize medical and even recreational weed. Reporters and business journalists will be on the forefront of this developing story,
Dale: I think, unless the electorate takes a 180 that it’s just a matter of time before state after state after state gets here, and my question for him would be, when is the federal government going to take its head out of the sand and start to address some of these issues? Because you’re going to have more states, what is it? 22 states, or at least, have medical marijuana already and and I think that’s just the precursor. It just seems to me that it’s a wave that I don’t know how long it’s going to take, probably several election cycles. But it just seems to me that this is where we’re headed,
Baca: Projecting out even with social sciences, the there’s a belief that in 2017 the majority of Americans will live in a state that has some kind of legal marijuana.
Calcote: That concludes our look into the business of the marijuana industry. Thank you, Ricardo and Kevin, for sharing your expertise with us during Reynolds Week 2016 and thank you listeners for joining us for another episode of the How to Cover Money podcast. For anyone interested in learning how to use social media more effectively and efficiently, join me for an upcoming webinar on automating social media. And if you’re attending IRE 2016 come to our workshop featuring Steve Doig on databases you can mine for business stories. Visit businessjournalism.org to find more information on these sessions. If you’re in need of more business journalism training, the Reynolds Center can help. Visit businessjournalism.org to find articles and self-guided training, download our free eBook: Guide to Business Beat Basics, sign up for our brand new email course on Covering Financials, or register for our weekly newsletter. The newsletter will keep you up to date on training opportunities from the Reynolds Center year round. If you enjoy the How to Cover Money podcast, make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud, and we hope you’ll leave us a rating or a review to let us know what you thought about this episode. Support for the How to Cover Money podcast comes from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Join us next time for tips on building winning business investigations from Glenn Hall, U.S. news editor at the Washington Post.
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