In a groundbreaking step for California\u2019s cannabis industry, the iconic Harborside dispensary chain has just announced that it is going public and will be listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange.<\/p>\n
The move comes following a \u201creverse takeover<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a strategy that has often been used by U.S. cannabis companies to be listed on Canadian exchanges. Merging with a Canada-registered company is mandated by the continuing (although now\u00a0bending<\/a>) prohibition on the listing of such companies on U.S. exchanges. According to the May 31\u00a0press release<\/a>\u00a0announcing the move, Harborside will also have a new board of directors.<\/p>\n The California company involved in the merger is actually\u00a0FLRish Inc<\/a>, which folded in Harborside\u2019s nonprofit entities in preparation for last year\u2019s transition to a legal adult-use market in the Golden State. (Under the old medical-marijuana system, for-profit entities were not allowed in the cannabis sector;\u00a0this changed<\/a>\u00a0when the adult-use regulations took effect in January 2018.) The Canadian company is\u00a0Lineage Grow<\/a>, which is based in Toronto but has a cultivation facility in California\u2019s Yolo County and a dispensary in San Jose. The new company is to be renamed simply\u00a0Harborside<\/a>, and will be listed on the\u00a0CSE<\/a>\u00a0as HBOR.<\/p>\n Harborside, with dispensaries in Oakland and San Jose, will now have two dispensaries in the latter city following the merger, as well as the Yolo County grow site and the\u00a0Terpene Station<\/a>\u00a0chain of dispensaries in Oregon. Harborside also has its own cultivation campus in Salinas.<\/p>\n Since its founding 13 years ago as the Harborside Health Center, with its flagship location on the Oakland waterfront, the company now known as simply Harborside has taken in over $400 million in sales, and currently serves some 300,000 customers annually. It has been something of an economic salvation for cash-strapped Oakland: The city government backed the company up in its legal showdown with the Internal Revenue Service.<\/p>\n In what the company boasted as an \u201chistoric agreement<\/a>,\u201d the Justice Department dropped its forfeiture case against Harborside in 2016.<\/p>\n At its 10th anniversary that year, Oakland\u2019s\u00a0KTVU<\/a>\u00a0hailed Harborside as \u201ca solid, respected business with 200 employees and contractors.\u201d The company has also been accused by some Oakland residents of fueling \u201ccannabis gentrification<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n After the merger and listing were announced, Cannabis Now spoke with the founder and (as he describes himself) \u201cchairman emeritus\u201d of Harborside, Steve DeAngelo, who guided the company from its founding in Oakland in 2006.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to survive in a competitive market, we need to grow the capital and continue to expand our footprint in California,\u201d DeAngelo says. \u201cWe also have national aspirations. We want to expand our portfolio, looking ahead to the day we have interstate sales.\u201d<\/p>\n With over 100 U.S. cannabis companies now publicly listed in Canada, DeAngelo sees a sense of inevitability to Harborside\u2019s move. \u201cMedMen just opened right down the street from me in San Jose,\u201d he notes.\u00a0MedMen<\/a>, an emerging giant of the industry,\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0a year ago that it is to be listed on the CSE.<\/p>\n As for the complicated maneuver of the reverse takeover, DeAngelo says, \u201cAll these somersaults are due to the refusal of the U.S. federal government to open the U.S. exchanges to public companies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a huge giveaway of value,\u201d he complains. \u201cCanadians are taking over the industry, after all the effort we put into it here in California.\u201d<\/p>\n Seeking to expand beyond running dispensaries, DeAngelo notes that Harborside is now marketing two brands of \u201cpremium quality flowers, pre-rolls, vape pens, edibles and live resin.\u201d This last item is resin collected from living plants, \u201cso an optimum terpene profile is preserved.\u201d The eponymous Harborside brand is mostly intended for sale within the company\u2019s own dispensaries. A\u00a0new brand, dubbed\u00a0Key Cannabis<\/a>, is more geared for other dispensaries, which may not want to run the brand name of a competitor. DeAngelo says it is especially designed for \u201cpeople who are just beginning to explore cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUnlock your mind,\u201d he says, explaining the name. \u201cIt\u2019s the key to understanding and discovery, the key to wellness.\u201d<\/p>\n With a new board taking over at Harborside, DeAngelo is increasingly devoting himself to advocacy work. He recently launched the Last Prisoner Project<\/a>, which he describes as \u201can Innocence Project for cannabis prisoners,\u201d referring to the famous advocacy group that\u00a0challenges wrongful convictions<\/a>.<\/p>\n He says the Last Prisoner Project will attempt to free as many cannabis convicts as possible, through expediting\u00a0expungement<\/a>, and clemency petitions. He hopes to work with law schools and the\u00a0National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers<\/a>\u00a0\u201cto push for retrials, resentencing and public opinion campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n DeAngelo also recently returned from a visit to the Colombian village of\u00a0Toribio<\/a>, an indigenous community in the heart of the cannabis-growing Cauca region. DeAngelo sees this as an example of the \u201cold legacy industry from the unregulated market still around and the new industry coming in, and the often-fractious relations between them.\u201d In the Toribio area, there are\u00a0\u201c5,000 indigenous growers on indigenous land, and by terms of the peace accord they\u2019re allowed to grow cannabis and coca. The real promise of the Colombian peace accords is bringing these people above ground.\u201d<\/p>\n DeAngelo hopes to help such evolutions along, as a successful entrepreneur with a social conscience. He sums up: \u201cI\u2019m\u00a0going \u2018round the world spreading my message that cannabis is a positive social good and should be embraced as such by every government on the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think the American stock market should list cannabis companies?<\/p>\n The post Steve DeAngelo on Harborside\u2019s Public Opening: \u201cIn Order to Survive, We Need to Grow\u201d<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In a groundbreaking step for California\u2019s cannabis industry, the iconic Harborside dispensary chain has just announced that it is going public and will be listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange. The move comes following a \u201creverse takeover\u201d \u2014 a strategy that has often been used by U.S. cannabis companies toContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[255,50,2082,1843,69,10223,10224,1845,2168],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35909,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35908\/revisions\/35909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Harborside\u2019s Legacy<\/h4>\n
Surviving in the Globalized Cannabis Market<\/h4>\n
Globe-Trotting Activism<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Steve DeAngelo on Harborside\u2019s Public Opening: \u201cIn Order to Survive, We Need to Grow\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"