Classic Ride PAGE 8 Baked and Served COLORADO’S MATURE POT INDUSTRY FACES OUTSIDE TAKEOVERS. BY THOMAS MITCHELL When Colorado law was changed to allow out-of-state investors and publicly held companies to acquire or hold signifi cant interests in cannabis businesses in the state, the game changed. But then COVID put a hold on the play...for a while. Several previously announced dispen- sary takeovers were either tabled or can- celed altogether when the pandemic started sweeping the country in spring 2020; for example, Columbia Care’s acquisition of the Green Solution, one of Colorado’s largest dispensary chains, was put on pause. But then dispensaries started bringing in more money than ever, and all of a sudden, the fu- ture of cannabis went from a cloudy question to a clear answer: Legal weed wasn’t going anywhere. The Green Solution acquisition eventu- ally went through, and so did several smaller deals in 2020, including mergers within the state. LivWell, another dispensary gi- ant, bought Sweet Grass edibles and all fi ve Mindful dispensaries, while Green Dragon snatched up an old store in south Denver after opening several new shops in the metro area. Schwazze, a Colorado-based cannabis fi rm that saw a handful of deals terminated during the pandemic, replaced those dead partnerships with new acquisitions of Star Buds dispensaries. TABLE OF CONTENTS THC Lite CAN SOUR DIESEL KEEP UP WITH COMMERCIALIZATION? BY THOMAS MITCHELL EDIBLES BRANDS HOPE THCV BURNS CALORIES, NOT LUNGS. BY HILAL BAHCETEPE PAGE 14 In June, Medicine Man, a net- work of four dispensaries and a 32,000-square-foot growing op- eration in the Denver area, agreed to be purchased by Columbia Care (the same New York-based corpo- ration that now owns the Green Solution) in a deal estimated to be worth $42 million. If the Medicine Man acquisition goes through in the fourth quarter of this year as planned, Columbia Care will own 25 marijuana stores in Colorado alone and around seventy dispen- saries across thirteen states. Later this summer, Green PAGE 20 Skinful Remedies A RUNDOWN OF THC-INFUSED TOPICAL PRODUCTS BY AMBER TAUFEN A former LivWell dispensary. Dragon, an operator of fi fteen dispensaries in Colorado and two in Florida, announced it was going to merge with Eaze, a privately held cannabis delivery service in Califor- nia, with Eaze taking control once the deal went through. Fast-forward another eight weeks, and the largest vertically integrated marijuana business in the state, LivWell, announced it had agreed to an acquisition offer from Chicago-based PharmaCann Inc. Self-described as the “nation’s largest pri- vately held and vertically integrated cannabis company,” PharmaCann currently owns dispensaries, production facilities and retail brands in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Figures for the Green Dragon and LivWell deals weren’t disclosed. The merger push continued just a week later, when Boulder’s Wana Brands, one of North America’s largest edibles brands, agreed to be bought by Canopy Growth, a Canadian cannabis corporation, for $300 million. Canopy’s option to buy Wana won’t be fi nalized unless and until Congress legal- izes marijuana at the federal level, however. If all of these deals go through, that would mean three of Colorado’s four largest dispen- sary chains — LivWell, the Green Solution, Native Roots and Green Dragon — would be owned by companies in other states. Native Roots hasn’t announced any plans to sell yet, but who would be surprised at this point if it happened? Colorado cannabis has never looked more attractive to outside money. And it’s not just dispensaries getting gob- bled up. Wana was a big domino to fall on the production side, but so was Los Sueños, Colorado’s largest outdoor pot farm. The Pue- blo cultivation was purchased by Curaleaf, a publicly shared marijuana corporation based in Massachusetts, earlier this month for a package worth a reported $67 million. Fortunately, all the talk of out-of-state deals hasn’t put a damper on actual revenue: There was some slowing at the end of the summer, but Colorado is still on track to bring in around $2 billion in cannabis sales. Although commercial cannabis sales have been legal in Colorado since 2014, it looks like the industry is now truly open for business. The Chronicle is published by Westword, 1278 Lincoln Street, Denver, CO 80203; the contents are copyright 2021 by Voice Media Group. 6 T HE C HRONICLE F ALL 2021 WESTWORD.COM SCOTT LENTZ
