Business
Opinion: 5 steps to close the marijuana industry’s C-suite gender gap
In an industry that once had an unusually high percentage of female CEOs, the marijuana sector now has fewer women in leadership positions than the U.S. average.
According to MJBizDaily’s 2022 report, “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Cannabis Industry,” the percentage of women executives in cannabis fell from 36.8% in 2019 to 23.1% last year.
Meanwhile, the Russell 3000 index of publicly traded companies reports that women now hold 28% of board seats of the 3,000 largest U.S. stocks it tracks.
How did we get here?
In general, power is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Statistically, white men have disproportionate access to capital and connections. And capital opens doors.
More opportunity equals more power. Having more women in leadership positions will, too.
Why is women’s leadership stagnating in the cannabis industry while it’s on the rise for U.S. companies overall?
Emerging industries are considered more speculative and riskier.
This perception tends to favor those who have deeper financial reserves to draw from, meaning they can survive short- to medium-term losses and play an extended long game while facing steep regulatory burdens and taxation.
Industry consolidation, too, is directly correlated to fewer women in leadership.
Corporate consolidation inevitably leads to fewer women in leadership positions because of the gender makeup of most corporate boards.
Closing the gender gap takes intention and commitment.
Here are some suggestions for increasing women’s leadership roles in the cannabis industry:
1. Choose women
This action is so obvious that it’s sometimes missed.
If you can’t find qualified female candidates for a position, your search is probably not wide enough.
Continue recruiting until you find qualified women. Pay close attention to candidates who might not have held C-suite titles but consistently perform beyond their pay grade.
2. Incentivize women’s leadership
Programs that recognize and reward women’s leadership can help close the gap.
In New Jersey, certified female-owned businesses are eligible for priority processing for cannabis licenses.
This can give a boost to female operators, especially when a limited number of licenses are available.
The certification process for such incentive programs can be lengthy.
Prioritizing funding and staffing for programs that incentivize women’s ownership is necessary to ensure competitive timelines.
3. Check the double standards
Addressing workplace bias in women’s leadership has as much to do about how we talk about women in leadership roles as it does actively placing them in leadership positions.
It’s lonely at the top, and female leaders tend to have the harshest critics.
Whereas men are often rewarded for their titles or results, a woman’s job performance is more likely to be discussed in terms of their likability or aspects of their personal lives than their performance, skills or achievements.
Women can be the harshest of all toward each other. Accountability for how we regard powerful women creates a more welcoming work culture for women.
4. Invest in women
The most direct way to support women’s leadership is to invest capital into female-run businesses.
Additionally, there are various methods to attract women to C-suite positions, including:
- Professional development plans.
- Mentorship plans.
- Recruiting from within your organization.
- Advertising employment opportunities strategically.
Effective professional development programs include leadership training, mentoring and coaching, and sponsorship to build skills and knowledge that help women advance their careers and break through barriers that prevent them from reaching leadership positions.
Recruiting from within the organization is an underutilized strategy. Current employees can transition to leadership easily and require less training.
Strategic advertising includes posting jobs in women-centered organizations and female-led nonprofit groups.
Mentorship programs can be leveraged by companies to draw women into C-suite roles by offering them guidance, support and networking opportunities that can assist them in developing the required leadership skills and experience.
5. Access to banking
One of the greatest hurdles that the cannabis industry faces is the inability to access traditional funding sources because of federal marijuana prohibition.
This encourages entrepreneurs and companies to seek out riskier financing.
Limited access to capital disproportionately affects women.
Most hard money lenders and venture capitalists are men, who are statistically more likely to loan money to other men.
Opening banking options for the industry will create a safer industry overall and support more gender equity in financing.
Fundamentally, gender parity in leadership is not charity. It’s good business.
Underrepresented groups are more likely to bring diverse ideas, perspectives, market insights and tools to the table, which drive innovation and profit.
A 2015 McKinsey report revealed that companies with more gender diversity among leadership experienced greater financial gains, meaning closing the gender gap is good for the bottom line.
Sarah Bodnar is the founder of Golden State Public Affairs, a boutique political consulting agency based in California. She can be reached at sarah.bodnar@gmail.com.
Summer Westerbur is the founder of Colorado-based Kairos Insurance Group, a boutique insurance agency providing employee benefits. She can be reached at summer@kairosinsurancegroup.com.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/5-steps-to-close-the-cannabis-industrys-c-suite-gender-gap/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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