Innovating Cannabis Podcast

Today I'm joined by Micah Anderson, CEO of Leef Brands , one of California's major cannabis concentrate producers. Micah has spent more than 30 years in cannabis, starting as a cultivator in Mendocino County. Today, he runs a publicly traded company that invests heavily in outdoor cultivation to control its supply chain, cut production costs, and produce clean, high-quality concentrates. We talk a...

Like many Southern states, Alabama developed a strong hemp market while access to legal marijuana remained extremely limited. My guest, Jennifer Boozer Stewart, opened CannaBama, the state’s first CBD shop, in 2018. She hosts a radio show focused on the plant and the endocannabinoid system and has spent years advocating at the State House. But Alabama allowed the hemp market to grow largely unchec...

In this episode, Kat Savoy and Teri LeBlanc, co-founders of Drop, explain why legal cannabis delivery is so hard to pull off and how they’re building a tech platform to fix it. While consumer demand is there, operators get crushed by seed-to-sale tracking, strict state licensing, and scattered orders. Drop acts as the middle-layer software—connecting dispensaries, social-equity transporters, and c...

Most medical cannabis programs operate through dispensaries. Utah took a different route, requiring cannabis to be sold through medical cannabis pharmacies with licensed pharmacists on staff. My guest today is Narith Panh, Chief Growth Officer for Dragonfly Wellness , which operates in Utah’s medical-only cannabis market. Narith believes Utah’s pharmacy model could offer a glimpse of how medical c...

Meet Tiffany Chin; she has worked with Snoop Dogg since 2012 and now oversees Death Row Cannabis and Death Row Hemp. We talk about what she calls “un-boofing celebrity cannabis,” building quality products without the celebrity price tag, the economics of beverages, and how her background in retail influences everything from merchandising to Death Row’s growing store footprint. We also get into the...

Cannabis federal reform has finally reached a historic moment. Medical cannabis is moving through the rescheduling process after decades under federal prohibition, marking one of the biggest developments in the industry’s history. The final outcome could determine how companies expand, whether cannabis can move across state lines, and which markets become the next major opportunities. Hirsh Jain,...

Michael Sassano , a former Wall Street banker turned real estate developer, is known in the US for building 16 large-scale cultivation facilities in Nevada. He left for Europe in 2019 to get a head start in the European cannabis market and launched  Somai , a cannabinoid pharmaceutical company based in Lisbon, Portugal. Currently operating in 12 countries, Michael plans to be in 18 by year-end. We...

Few people have spent more time in Washington advocating for hemp than Geoff Whaling. Over the past decade, the former Canopy Growth hemp executive has helped shape hemp policy through the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills and is now involved in the debate over the 2026 Farm Bill. Rather than waiting for Congress to write the next hemp bill, Whaling and the National Hemp Association joined forces with indu...

Today's guest is Ryan Douglas , who brings more than 25 years of experience managing large-scale cultivation operations. Ryan is also the author of Presence is a Strategy , a new book that explores what happens when cultivation teams rely too heavily on technology and lose the human oversight that keeps operations running smoothly. Drawing from decades of experience, Ryan explains why leadership n...

Alleh Lindquist is the CEO and co-founder of FloraWorks, a cannabinoid innovation company focused on bringing science-backed minor cannabinoids into the mainstream.  As a leading supplier of hemp-derived cannabinoids to manufacturers, FloraWorks has been at the forefront of CBN research and commercialization, including helping popularize CBN as an ingredient for sleep products.  Today, the company...

Much of the complexity of the cannabis plant stems from its aromatic compounds beyond terpenes, such as sesquiterpenes, aldehydes, esters, and ketones, and sulfur compounds, which are difficult to preserve during cultivation and extraction. In this episode, I sit down with Daniel Cook, CEO of True Terpenes, to discuss the company's Headstash product line and its ability to preserve volatiles and r...

  Is Peru the Next Hot Market for US Cannabis Brands? If you work with hemp, the market is about to open for import/export operations. Peru's medical cannabis framework dates to 2017, when cannabis was legalized for medicinal use, scientific research, and pharmaceutical production. Patient associations gained cultivation rights in 2021, though the market remained limited — by mid-2025, official re...

New York retailers have been among the most vocal critics of METRC's required Retail ID tags — another layer in the state's track-and-trace system that adds real labor and cost burdens for operators. QRLogix , a labeling software company with roots in the medical industry, has adapted its technology to work within the METRC framework and eliminate that burden. Here to explain how it works is David...

District Cannabis was founded in 2015 as a cultivation company and has steadily expanded its footprint over the past decade, adding manufacturing capabilities and building one of the region's most sustainable cannabis brands. In 2024, the company completed a major expansion, launching a retail location in Washington, D.C., while also growing its cultivation, manufacturing, and retail operations in...

Episode 195_ Inside the Bellrock Turnaround with Joe Bayern Before entering cannabis in 2019, Joe Bayern spent more than 25 years in C-suite leadership across some of the biggest names in beverages, helping drive major turnarounds, global strategy, and brand-building at Snapple, Cadbury Schweppes, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, and Voss Water. He entered cannabis after recognizing the potential of early...

Understanding the true cost of cultivating and manufacturing a cannabis product is incredibly difficult without the right tracking tools. Labor, yield loss, compliance, packaging, and processing inefficiencies can all quietly erode profitability without operators ever fully realizing it. That lack of visibility creates major challenges not only for manufacturers trying to scale efficiently, but al...

Georgia legalized medical cannabis in late 2015, but the market itself didn't officially launch until around 2020. As a highly restricted, limited-license state, Georgia allows only six vertically integrated operators. What makes Georgia especially unique is its distribution model: patients can access products not only through dispensaries, but also through pharmacies—an approach similar to the Eu...

India has one of the longest and most deeply rooted relationships with cannabis of any culture, and is home to some of the most prized landrace cultivars in the world. Vikramm Mitra, the co-founder of Delta Botanicals, is working to preserve that legacy and bring India into the global cannabis market. In January, Delta Botanicals received the first agricultural grant ever awarded by the Indian gov...

Jessie Kater, SVP of Innovation, R&D, and Technical Manufacturing at Curaleaf, brings a deeply technical background to the cannabis industry. Trained in chemical engineering and toxicology, he began his career in pharmaceuticals, went on to work in R&D for a defense contractor, and spent time in biotech before ultimately making the move into cannabis. He also founded his own R&D testing lab prior...

As the cannabis industry faces tighter margins and harder-to-find profits, many businesses are struggling not just to grow, but to survive. This year, operators are shifting focus. Instead of chasing expansion, they are being forced to rethink how they grow and, more importantly, how they operate efficiently. Today, our guest is Matt Morea, co-founder of PrizmGPS , a company focused on what happen...

Today, we're joined by Duane Boise, CEO of MMJ Holdings, a biopharmaceutical company advancing cannabis-derived medicines through the FDA's botanical Drug Development Pathway. MMJ has received Orphan drug designation for Huntington's disease and multiple sclerosis, and its cannabis-derived soft-gel formulations are now preparing to enter phase 2 clinical trials, helping pave the way for a new era...

Curio Wellness was founded by father-and-daughter team Michael and Wendy Bronfein. Michael built his career in the supermarket industry before launching his own chain of pharmacies, eventually bringing that experience into Maryland's medical cannabis market in 2015. Since then, Curio has grown into a vertically integrated company with GMP-certified operations in Maryland and Missouri, franchise pa...

Today's guest is Dr. Hemant Kumar Bid , a scientist, educator, and consultant at the forefront of biotechnology, medical cannabis, and artificial intelligence. Dr. Bid serves as Program Director for the Master of Science in Biotechnology with a concentration in Medical Cannabis at Morehouse School of Medicine — one of the only programs of its kind offered entirely online.   His academic foundation...

Trade show season for 2026 is officially underway.  I’ll be heading to MJ Unpacked , taking place May 5–7 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  I recently sat down with co-founder George Jage—someone many of you already know from his long track record in the trade show world, including his role in helping scale MJBizCon in the early days.  In this conversation, we go beyond the typical event preview and...

Allison Kirchhofer is the Director of the Cannabis Division at Sax Accounting , where she leads a team of CPAs serving operators across multiple states. She has also worked closely with businesses in New York.s turbulent adult-use rollout, helping them manage compliance, tax strategy, and financial infrastructure in one of the country's most closely watched markets.   Prior to joining Sax, Allison...