News and nuggets for cannabis industry practitioners in the Midwest and beyond.
Illinois gets platforms for remote medical cannabis patient evaluation
Taking advantage of new Illinois rules for medical cannabis telemedicine evaluation, NuggMD and other telemedicine platforms for obtaining doctor evaluation, are getting their Illinois roll outs this week. Illinois the eleventh state to approve remote cannabis telemedicine platforms. Missouri is among the states where medical patient telemedicine is legal, but not Michigan. The Mitten temporarily allowed for cannabis telemedicine during COVID but has since repealed the allowance.
“Telemedicine provides a safe way for patients with mobility issues or compromised immune systems to see their doctors. As more states adopt this reasonable alternative, patients who have struggled for years can finally access the medicine that they need. We applaud Illinois for its decision to put patient health and safety first by allowing doctors to evaluate their patients online,” said Alex Milligan, NuggMD co-founder and CMO.
Competing platforms in Illinois include PrestoDoctor, Text2MD, Marijuana Doctors, and Illinois Telehealth. The systems all promise video chat-based systems where a doctor can remotely evaluate patients for the doctor certification required for state medical cannabis registration.
MRA rolls out infused beverage testing guidelines
The Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency announced testing guidelines last week for marijuana-infused beverages, an important step towards allowing sale of the products in state, and possibly making Michigan the first state to develop specific testing guidelines for marijuana-infused beverages. Last February the Agency announced production guidelines for marijuana-infused beverages.
The guidelines require laboratories to conduct existing state compliance tests, but to also test for pH level and for thirteen different Terpenes.
Gage Cannabis goes public
Detroit-based Gage Growth Corp., also known as Gage Cannabis, announced plans to list on the Canadian Securities Exchange on April 6. Last January Gage announced the close of a $50 million funding round.
Gage currently operates exclusively in Michigan, where it is vertically-integrated with licenses for 13 provisioning centers, 20 Class C grow licenses and three processing facilities. The company’s website points to six currently open provisioning centers, including Cookie’s-branded locations in Detroit and Kalamazoo.Until recently, Gage was managed by Bruce Linton, who previously managed Canopy Growth, a Canadian Cannabis company that experienced explosive growth, leading to American alcoholic beverage giant Constellation Brands to take a controlling interest and invest US$4 billion in the company. Canopy quickly used that cash to purchase New York-based Acreage Holdings. Then, just months later, Constellation muscled Linton out of Canopy and installed its former CFO to head Canopy.
