Jamaica’s THC Exports to United States Leads CBT’s Most Popular Articles in February

Rescheduling, state legalization prospects, and Lume’s rapid rise in Michigan also ranked in Cannabis Business Times’ top 10 stories this month.

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When Pure Jamaican announced Feb. 22 that it was shipping its first legal exports of THC to the U.S. for analytical testing, Cannabis Business Times’ readers quickly took notice with surging web traffic.

This news, delivered as a press release to our CBT audience, marks the first time that republished content topped our monthly list of top 10 articles since launching this feature in September.

What made this news so popular? Perhaps the thought of international cannabis trade coming to the U.S. despite ongoing federal prohibition that outlaws even interstate commerce among state-legal programs sparked readers’ interest.

Pure Jamaica and its GMP-certified licensed pharma manufacturer, Seven-10 Pharmaceuticals, intend to request U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) permits to ship THC products from Jamaica to the U.S. once the DEA reschedules cannabis. First, as noted in the press release, the company shipped its products to a DEA-licensed facility in the U.S. for analytical testing.

On that rescheduling note, five of this month’s most-read articles dealt with the DEA’s pending decision to potentially reclassify cannabis as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). In the No. 2 spot was an article about the DEA and Attorney General missing a deadline to respond to a letter from 12 U.S. senators, which CBT confirmed with multiple congressional staffers. Also on the list was a feature on the history behind NORML’s first rescheduling petition, one that lasted 22 years, which shed light on the DEA’s 1975 admission that rescheduling cannabis does not violate an international drug treaty.

Among other articles readers engaged with most this month were CBT’s January/February cover story, “Lume’s Rapid Rise”—on how Michigan’s largest operator scaled from $2 million to nearly $200 million in revenue in just four years—as well as the prospects for medical cannabis legalization in nine of our nation’s last holdouts.

Catch up on all the top 10 most-read articles below: