Marijuana is having a moment. Experts recently dubbed cannabis the fastest-growing industry in the U.S. Legal weed generated $10.4 billion in the United States in 2018, and the number of "plant-touching" jobs is expected to pass 500,000 by 2022 , according to New Frontier Data, a cannabis market research and data analysis firm.
Investors have taken note, pumping $10 billion into North American cannabis businesses last year — a good sign for budding entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the green rush.
But be warned, the cannabis industry is not for the faint of heart. Everything is harder — from opening a bank account to finding office space to hiring qualified employees — says Shane Schmitt, general manager of Wy'East Oregon Gardens, a cannabis cultivation and processing facility in Portland, Oregon.
FILE - This May 20, 2019 photo shows a mature marijuana plant flowering prior to harvest under artificial lights at Loving Kindness Farms in Gardena, Calif. Experts recently dubbed cannabis the fastest-growing industry in the U.S. Legal weed generated $10.4 billion in the United States in 2018, and the number of "plant-touching" jobs is expected to pass 500,000 by 2022, according to New Frontier Data, a cannabis market research and data analysis firm. (AP PhotoRichard Vogel, File)
"It's more difficult than starting a business in any other area," says Schmitt, 43, a seasoned entrepreneur who previously worked in finance and construction. "There's not a playbook for an industry that people still think should be illegal."
To succeed, you need more than a solid business plan and ace team (though those are crucial, too). You need to be truly passionate about cannabis, and not in the "I like to smoke weed" kind of way.
"I have a different definition of passionate now. Passionate to me is 'What are you willing to take pain for?'" Schmitt says. "There's been a lot of pain."
Doing your research from the get-go can help you stave off some of that pain. Groups like the National Cannabis Industry Association can help you connect with people working in the space, including in crucial areas like legal support, consulting and insurance. And cannabis conferences — yes, those are a thing — can help you network with other "ganjapreneurs."
These lessons from industry vets can also help you anticipate potential challenges.
DO WHAT YOU KNOW
You don't want to jump into a new venture with no relevant experience. The cannabis industry is no exception.
"People often want to run a dispensary or set up a cultivation center and I ask, "Well, have you ever done retail? Are you a farmer? Are you a botanist?" says Morgan Fox, a spokesperson for the NCIA.
Instead, do what you know — whether that's accounting, public relations or plumbing — and put a cannabis spin on it.
"The thing about cannabis is you can apply it to pretty much anything," says Zac Smith, 38, founder of Traveling Hands Massage, a San Diego-based mobile massage company that uses oils infused with THC and CBD.
While Smith had nearly two decades of experience as a massage therapist, he had very little experience with making cannabis oils.
"I was making the oil myself at home. It was messy and I realized there was no way I could keep it uniform," Smith says. So he found a guy with years of experience extracting THC and making oils to handle that aspect.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
The legal cannabis industry is heavily regulated, but those regulations often don't cover every possible business application. That means business owners like Ivan and Anne Wood have to take extra precautions to make sure they're in compliance.
The Woods run Mangia Ghanja , a cannabis-infused catering company in San Diego. Under recreational use rules, they can cater private events but they can't charge customers for cannabis-infused food unless the client provides them with the cannabis, the Woods say.
"If we decided to have an event and infuse the food and charge an entry fee of $1, then we are breaking the law," Ivan says.
There aren't specific cannabis rules for the culinary industry in California, Anne says, which makes it difficult to find legal help to decipher regulations. "It's so new that we're still blazing that trail to figure out how to make it work."
BEWARE THE GREEN TAX
"If you're touching the plant, everything costs twice as much," says Schmitt of Wy'East Oregon Gardens. In reality, though, the markup can be more than double.
A regulatory license with the city of Portland, for example, is $3,500 per year for a cannabis business. That's in addition to state licensing fees, which can be as high $5,750 per year. A traditional business might pay a few hundred dollars a year.
The so-called green tax applies to actual taxes, too. Plant-touching cannabis businesses can't deduct any business expenses on their taxes, so they pay the full effective tax rate.
EMBRACE THE COMMUNITY
Cannabis entrepreneurs have to jump through a lot of hoops and they face a lot of uncertainty. But that has created a strong community that fledgling businesses owners can tap for advice.
"Talk to other successful cannabis business to find out what they've done to get where they are," says Anne Wood. "There are plenty of people who will put their arms around you and share their experience."
This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Kelsey Sheehy is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: ksheehy@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @kelseylsheehy.
RELATED LINKS:
NerdWallet: How to buy marijuana stocks http://bit.ly/how-to-invest-marijuana-stocks
National Cannabis Industry Association https://thecannabisindustry.org
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.
The strong support the Palestinians received reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their statehood but almost certainly the global support for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.
The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, likely by a much higher number of countries.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties."
The United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
His voice breaking at times, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council after the vote: “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination.”
“We will not stop in our effort,” he said. “The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near.”
This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.
They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.
Algerian U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice" and said that “peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”
In explaining the U.S. veto, Wood said there are “unresolved questions” on whether Palestine meets the criteria to be considered a state. He pointed to Hamas still exerting power and influence in the Gaza Strip, which is a key part of the state envisioned by the Palestinians.
Wood stressed that the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace, is the only path for security for both sides and for Israel to establish relations with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.
“The United States is committed to intensifying its engagement with the Palestinians and the rest of the region, not only to address the current crisis in Gaza, but to advance a political settlement that will create a path to Palestinian statehood and membership in the United Nations,” he said.
Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, reiterated the commitment to a two-state solution but asserted that Israel believes Palestine "is a permanent strategic threat."
"Israel will do its best to block the sovereignty of a Palestinian state and to make sure that the Palestinian people are exiled away from their homeland or remain under its occupation forever,” he said.
He demanded of the council and diplomats crowded in the chamber: “What will the international community do? What will you do?”
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled for years, and Israel’s right-wing government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.
Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the resolution “disconnected to the reality on the ground” and warned that it “will cause only destruction for years to come and harm any chance for future dialogue.”
Six months after the Oct. 7 attack by the Hamas militant group, which controlled Gaza, and the killing of 1,200 people in “the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he accused the Security Council of seeking “to reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with statehood.”
Israel’s military offensive in response has killed over 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and destroyed much of the territory, which speaker after speaker denounced Thursday.
After the vote, Erdan thanked the United States and particularly President Joe Biden “for standing up for truth and morality in the face of hypocrisy and politics.”
He called the Palestinian Authority — which controls the West Bank and the U.S. wants to see take over Gaza where Hamas still has sway — “a terror supporting entity.”
The Israeli U.N. ambassador referred to the requirements for U.N. membership – accepting the obligations in the U.N. Charter and being a “peace-loving” state.
“How can you say seriously that the Palestinians are peace loving? How?” Erdan asked. “The Palestinians are paying terrorists, paying them to slaughter us. None of their leaders condemns terrorism, nor the Oct. 7 massacre. They call Hamas their brothers.”
Despite the Palestinian failure to meet the criteria for U.N. membership, Erdan said most council members supported it.
“It’s very sad because your vote will only embolden Palestinian rejectionism every more and make peace almost impossible,” he said.
Algeria's Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Amar Bendjama speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour holds tears while speaking during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour, left, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speak before a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood votes against resolution during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
