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Bill Maher And Woody Harrelson’s Marijuana Dispensary Was Burglarized

Published
1 day agoon

A Los Angeles-area marijuana shop owned by comedian Bill Maher and actor Woody Harrelson was burglarized over the weekend in what appears to be part of a string of crimes targeting cannabis businesses in the region.
The burglary at The Woods, a retailer that the celebrities launched in partnership with tennis star John McEnroe in West Hollywood in 2022, took place on Saturday—with security cameras capturing the smash-and-grab that showed multiple people breaking windows to enter the facility and taking marijuana products before making their exit.
It’s unclear whether police have identified the alleged perpetrators at this point. But advocates and pro-reform lawmakers have repeatedly argued that, absent federal legalization and industry access to traditional banking services, state-legal cannabis businesses will continue to be at outsized risk of such incidences.
In this case, the burglary took place early Saturday morning before employees or customers were present, TMZ reported. Over recent years, however, there have been numerous examples of dispensary employees being injured or killed in robberies at marijuana retailers—underscoring the unique threat the industry faces under the current system.
Elliot Lewis, CEO of the cannabis dispensary chain Catalyst, shared the video of the burglary—as well as another in Santa Monica that he attributed to the same group that hit The Woods—in an Instagram post on Monday.
“Back-to-back robberies, shots fired, just another weekend in LA,” he said. “Does nobody care about the people trying to build something up and they seem to only care about those trying to destroy? Make it make sense. Please bring back some common sense.”
Harrelson, The Woods’s co-owner, was also recently involved in marijuana reform advocacy in California, calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to sign a bill legalizing marijuana cafes that passed last year. The governor did give the measure final approval last September.
With the enactment of that legislation, the dispensary became one of the first to launch a consumption lounge, called “Ganja Giggle Garden,” and Harrelson said in February that, if he could choose anyone to patronize the cafe, he’d pick a classic marijuana icon: Bob Marley. But the actor also conceded that he doesn’t think he could go “toke-for-toke” with the late reggae star.
Harrelson separately disclosed in 2017 that used cannabis to help get through a dinner with President Donald Trump.
Co-owner Maher, for his part, made headlines last month after describing Trump as “gracious and measured” during a recent private dinner they had at the White House, along with musician Kid Rock. And the well-known cannabis enthusiast insisted he “wasn’t high” for the meetup.

Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.
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Marijuana Banking Amendment Could Be Added To Cryptocurrency Bill In Senate This Week, Opposition Group Warns

Published
59 minutes agoon
May 21, 2025
A leading anti-marijuana group is sounding the alarm about a possible attempt to put cannabis banking reform in a cryptocurrency bill that’s advancing on the Senate floor this week, asking for “help” from their supporters to encourage members to oppose a potential amendment that could be offered up.
In an email blast on Wednesday, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) Action said “the pot industry and its lobbyists are always working to attach pro-marijuana bills to any piece of legislation that advances through Congress,” and it’s concerned they’ll try to insert cannabis banking language into the largely unrelated Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
“The Senate will soon take up the GENIUS Act, a cryptocurrency bill, and the industry is working hard to include SAFE Banking language,” SAM said, referring to bipartisan legislation that would prevent financial regulators from penalizing banks simply for working with state-legal marijuana businesses.
“This bill will keep marijuana federally illegal while encouraging banks to accept federally illegal proceeds,” it said. “This would mean exponential growth for the marijuana industry, making it harder to defeat.”
“There are number of risks involved with giving banking access to businesses involved in the trade of a federally illegal substance including giving money laundering access to international drug cartels who are already using the cover of legalization, radically increasing Wall Street investment for the marijuana industry, and providing a precedent for giving banking access to other criminal activity.”
Despite SAM’s apparent concerns, an industry lobbyist told Marijuana Moment on Wednesday that they were unaware of any plan to use the GENIUS Act as a vehicle for SAFE Banking. At the time of publication, no amendment related to SAFE have been formally filed for Senate consideration.
But in any case, SAM is urging its supporters to contact their representatives and tell them to “oppose SAFE Banking being added to the GENIUS Act.”
Here’s the pre-written letter that the anti-cannabis group drafted for people to submit to their senators:
“I am writing you today to inform you that an amendment could be offered in the Senate to the GENIUS Act that would allow the marijuana industry access to the United States financial system.
This amendment, a version of the SAFE Banking Act (H.R. 2891 & S. 1323 in the 118th Congress) would keep marijuana federally illegal while encouraging banks to accept federally illegal proceeds.
There are myriad of risks involved with giving banking access to businesses involved in the trade of a federally illegal substance such as:
-Giving money laundering access to international drug cartels who are already using the cover of legalization; – Radically increasing Wall Street investment for the marijuana industry, accelerating its transformation into the next Big Tobacco; and
-Providing a precedent for giving banking access to other criminal activity.
Public health and public opinion data strongly indicates that we should be pumping the brakes on more marijuana: we have seen increased incidents of serious mental illness, increased drugged-driving fatalities, increased emergency room visits and poison control calls, and increased worker accidents and absenteeism. Granting access to banking would put the pedal to the metal on the creation of industry dedicated to denying the science of marijuana and promoting heavy use of its products.
I urge you to oppose this amendment and take all possible actions to remove it from any final passage of the GENIUS Act.”
During the last Congress, lawmakers did talk about potentially merging cannabis banking and cryptocurrency legislation, but that did not materialize. The standalone Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act did clear one Senate committee with the chamber under Democratic control, but it was never brought up for a floor vote—much to the disappointment of advocates and stakeholders.
Now with Republicans in control of both chambers and key leadership positions filled by opponents of marijuana legalization, it’s been an open question about whether any cannabis reform legislation stands a chance of passage in the short-term. That’s despite the fact that President Donald Trump endorsed marijuana industry banking access, federal rescheduling and a Florida legalization initiative on the campaign trail. However, he’s been silent on the issue since taking office.
The White House said last month that it has “no action” planned on marijuana reform proposals that Trump backed while campaigning. But several sources told CNN the president did attempt to get cannabis banking legislation included in a government funding bill late last year before he took office.
On the House side, a Republican lawmaker said in March he’s hopeful that Congress will be able to get a marijuana banking bill across “the finish line” this session, arguing that the current barriers to financial services for the industry represent a “second tier” of prohibition.
Cannabis industry banking challenges came up in several congressional hearings in March, including a Senate Banking Committee meeting on debanking where senators on both sides of the aisle addressed the lack of financial services access for marijuana businesses.
Meanwhile, in January congressional researchers released a report detailing the subject of debanking—while making a point to address how the marijuana industry’s financial services access problem “sits at the nexus” of a state-federal policy conflict that complicates the debate.
Separately, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced in December that it’s convening focus groups comprised of marijuana businesses to better understand their experiences with access to banking services under federal prohibition.
—
Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.
Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access.
—
The industry remains frustrated with the lack of progress on the cannabis banking issue under the last administration.
A Senate source told Marijuana Moment in December that Republican House and Senate leadership “openly and solely blocked” then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) attempt to include the bill in a government funding bill as the session came to a close.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) had challenged the idea that there was enough GOP support for the SAFER Banking Act to pass on the Senate floor during the lame duck session.
Warren accused certain Republican members of overstating support for the legislation within their caucus, while also taking a hit at Trump for doing “nothing” on cannabis reform during his time in office as he makes a policy pivot ahead of the election by coming out in support of the marijuana banking bill and federal rescheduling.
Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) also recently argued in an interview with Marijuana Moment that the main barrier to getting the marijuana banking bill across the finish line is a lack of sufficient Republican support in the chamber. And he said if Trump is serious about seeing the reform he recently endorsed enacted, he needs to “bring us some Republican senators.”
Prior to becoming House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) consistently opposed cannabis reform, including on incremental issues like cannabis banking and making it easier to conduct scientific research on the plant.
Meanwhile, on the one-year anniversary of a Senate committee’s passage of the SAFER Banking Act in September, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis on the economic impact of the reform, including the likely increase in federally insured deposits from cannabis businesses by billions of dollars once banks receive protections for servicing the industry.
Separately, the CEO of the financial giant JPMorgan Chase said recently that the company “probably would” start providing banking services to marijuana businesses if federal law changed to permit it.
Marijuana Rescheduling Blocked By Opposition ‘From Within’ DEA, Biden’s Drug Czar Says

Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.
featured
Jeff Adams & Joseph Bancheri: Decontaminating Cannabis with X-Ray Technology

Published
2 hours agoon
May 21, 2025
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When cannabis fails a microbial test, the consequences can be costly—lost product, damaged reputations, and in some cases, a total recall. But what if the entire process could be de-risked? In this episode, Jeff Adams, founder and managing director of XR Pure, and national sales manager Joseph Bancheri join TG Branfalt for a conversation about how their x-ray-based decontamination tech is offering a clean, consistent solution for cultivators. With deep roots in x-ray engineering and cannabis sales respectively, they make a compelling case for proactive remediation as a standard step in cannabis operations. Listen to the episode below or wherever you get your podcasts, or scroll down for the transcript!
Listen to the episode:
Read the transcript:
Editor’s note: this transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
TG Branfalt:
Hey there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and this is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Jeff Adams, founder and managing director, and Joseph Bancheri, national sales manager for Las Vegas, Nevada based XR Pure, which recently launched the XR 16, capable of eliminating mold, mildew, bacteria, and other harmful pathogens on cannabis flower. How you doing this morning guys?
Jeff Adams:
Doing great, TG. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
Joseph Bancheri:
Doing well, thank you.
TG Branfalt:
It’s really going to be an interesting episode. This is a technology that I am not that familiar with, which doesn’t happen that frequently anymore. But before we get into the tech, tell me about yourselves, your background, and how you ended up working in the cannabis space.
Jeff Adams:
If it’s okay, I’ll go first. This is Jeff. I came into this from the technology side. I’ve been working at an x-ray component manufacturing company for the last 20 years, so I spent a lot of my career in X-ray and over time we do many different applications and we found out that there is an application for sterilization of cannabis. And as I dug into that, I found that basically we believe that we could build a better mousetrap than what was already out there. Our technology was very applicable to what was needed in that space. And so I got busy figuring out what is it going to take, would the machine look like? And that culminated in XR Pure.
TG Branfalt:
How about you, Joe?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah, myself, I’ve been a cannabis advocate for over 20 years. I started in the legal industry with technology background as well with environmental controls. Then I moved over to the THC side. I was a natural brand manager for a cannabis brand and also sold and then moved to other brands here in Nevada. I was a wholesale director at a facility here in Vegas, and we had a big problem with our remediation unit, and I met Jeff at MJ biz when they, they’re checking everything out and I said, Hey dude, come check this thing out and make something better, and when you do let me know and I’ll be on board and here.
TG Branfalt:
So tell me about the science behind this tech. What were the previous applications and what are the applications in the cannabis industry?
Jeff Adams:
Sure, I’ll take that one. X-ray has been used for sterilization for a long time. This is not a new idea. It is a little bit of a new application in cannabis, but since the forties and fifties, x-ray has been used for sterilization, food sterilization, medical device sterilization, many other kinds of things. And so that part of it is not new. The cool part with cannabis is that x-rays kind of uniquely qualified or applicable to decontaminating cannabis. And when I say that by killing microbes on cannabis without affecting the integrity of the flower without affecting the potency, terpene profiles, all of those things, which makes it a great way to do this versus maybe some other kinds of techniques that could be used to do it, it is the one that really preserves the integrity of the plant, let’s say it that way. Okay.
TG Branfalt:
Joe, you had mentioned that you were facing a remediation issue. How did you sort of decide that x-ray might be the best way for you to handle that issue?
Joseph Bancheri:
Well, at my facility, we were using the X-ray unit. It just happened to be down a lot. When it was down, I couldn’t sell weed and I was not a happy guy. And obviously the owners aren’t happy either because they’re losing money, but there are other technologies as well that I feel actually harm the plant, like ozone, rf, those will change the actual, the terpene profile, the look of the plant. I want the end user to get the best possible plant in the cleanest possible form. So that’s why x-ray, how it kind of looks to me is the plant’s been harvested, the plant’s no longer alive, the microbials are alive, their DNA’s alive living on this plant, and these little x-rays are so tiny, they break up that DNA kill the microbials. So this way, when you put in a jar, nothing’s growing. We’ve got a 10,000 CFU limit here in Nevada for microbials. If you pass with 8,000, 9,000, you throw that in a jar, put it on a shelf, on a dispensary, it’s growing. So by the time the end user gets it, who knows what the accountants. So that’s why I think this should be pretty much standard for everyone going forward.
TG Branfalt:
And what is the success rate for remediation?
Jeff Adams:
The success rate is really good. X-ray is very effective. It’s a process that does take some time. It’s not like it just zaps it and instantly everything’s gone. The way it works is the x-ray energy has to be absorbed into, not necessarily into the plant, but be absorbed by the microbes. And as those are absorbing energy, their DNA breaks apart and they become AUR and they can’t grow anymore after that. But that process takes some time. And so for example, with our machine, you can load between 15 and 20 pounds of dried cannabis into our machine at one time, and then that load is going to take somewhere between two and a half and three and a half hours to get fully decontaminated. So it’d be nice if it was just an instant, turn it on and man, it’s gone, but it does take some time.
And so when you talk about effectivity, then the variables there are obviously how contaminated is the product coming in and very contaminated. Then you want to give it a longer treatment. You might choose to treat four or five hours, or if you just know that it’s lightly contaminated and you’re kind of doing an insurance run, you might only treat for an hour or an hour and a half, something like that, and you’ll be fine. In X-ray speak, the x-ray dose is measured by what’s called graze. And so a typical dose for cannabis would be 2000 gras. And like I said, between two and a half and three and a half hours, our machine can deliver 2000 gras. Something like trim is a much more dense product. That more dense product is going to take longer to absorb the x-ray. So you’re probably looking at three and a half, four hours for a load of trim, but then you can do 40 plus pounds at a time of trim in that same volume. So it is just an equation of how dirty is the incoming stuff, how dense is the material that you’re trying to treat, and then what is the assurance level that you want to give yourself in the end.
TG Branfalt:
You said you got into this, you designed a better mouse trap as it were. Can you tell me about that process? What was that like for
Jeff Adams:
You? Yeah, I’d be happy to. I spent a little over a, not only studying the cannabis market, but studying the different technologies that were out there. And what I found was that the machines that were currently available were most of them actually using x-ray tubes that are used in X-ray imaging. And those tubes have limitations because they have a very small focal spot. I don’t want to get too technical here, but just saying that they’re limited on the power that they can create because they’re intended or designed for an imaging application. Other kinds of x-ray tubes are made specifically for irradiation, and so they can handle higher power, but there aren’t very many of them out there. And what we had at XR Pure was a purpose built irradiation tube that could generate more power than really anybody out there. So state-of-the-art for irradiation tubes was about four kilowatts per tube. And for imaging tubes was about six kilowatts per tube. And our first version of our tube created 12 kilowatts. So we’re already two to three times more powerful than anyone else out of the gate. And right now, as you mentioned, we just released our XR 16, which is a 16 kilowatt tube. So now we’re about four times as powerful, and that’s what gives us the ability to make a simple machine.
X-ray power decreases with distance. And so in order to do a good job decontaminating with a low power tube, you have to try to get the cannabis very close to the tube to have a decent decontamination rate. And that is the case with some of the lower power x-ray tubes. And so in order to do that, they’ve come up with all kinds of mechanical movement systems where they have to spin and rotate the cannabis in order to get it close to their tube to get a good rate. Well, with our extra power, we don’t need all of that motion. We’ve eliminated all of that complexity and complication. You literally just load the cannabis flour inside a Turkey bag or whatever you’re using in your own facility. You load that into our tray, you close the door and you do the irradiation. There’s no movement, there’s no tumbling, there’s no physical harm done to the plant because it’s just a very simple, straightforward way of doing it.
TG Branfalt:
I mean, it sounds like it’s a very much simpler process and the old adage where if you have less stuff to break, you have less stuff to break.
Jeff Adams:
We believe that’s true. One other thing there is we use a factory sealed x-ray tube that x-ray tubes need to have a vacuum inside of them in order to generate how they work. So some people use tubes, that’s called an open architecture tube where you can’t actually open the tube up, but it requires a secondary vacuum pump running all the time to create that vacuum for the x-ray to operate. Our tubes are not like that. Our tubes are made from the factory with the vacuum sealed in. So no additional equipment is needed to keep the vacuum. All you need is the power supply for the x-ray tube and it will create x-ray. So again, there’s simpler in the fact that we don’t need all that additional equipment. We don’t need the vacuum pump and other things to make our x-ray tubes work.
TG Branfalt:
So Joe, you had said that you had started your career in this industry as sort of an advocate. How have you taken that sort of advocacy role and applied it to your job as national sales manager?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah. Well, basically I’m a plant guy and I believe in the plant as medicine and it obviously has many different uses, but I want the full integrity of the plant to be delivered to the customer. We have pre and post data showing that the terpene profile THC water content before and after it’s been run through our equipment. And that’s why I’m in this because I stand by that as far as back in the day, I would go out, get petitions signed and do all the things and get the medicine to the people any way I could. But as now I back up this technology and I believe in it. So that’s why I think when I talk to people, they understand that.
TG Branfalt:
And when you talk to people, does anyone bring up any safety concerns and are there any safety concerns with using X-ray tech devices to
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah, so on that concern, there’s a stigma about using x-ray, right? And the x-ray just passes right through the plant and it gets absorbed into the lead walls of the cabinet. Nothing is actual, there’s no residual in the plant. So that’s the thing. People think they’re smoking radioactive weed. No, it’s like a light. You turn it on, you turn it off, it’s gone. So that’s the education that we need to get out there, and I’m working on different ways to show that I’m going to run a measurement on the flower before we run it, after we run it and show it’s not radioactive, it’s safe, it’s just clean, and that’s the whole idea.
TG Branfalt:
So we talked a bit about the development process, and I know that the XR 16 is a scaled up version of previous tech. Is that correct?
Jeff Adams:
Correct.
TG Branfalt:
How quickly did you see the need to scale up from first launch to now the XR 16?
Jeff Adams:
Yeah, the need for that really comes with the MSOs and the large growers, right? Because they have a lot of volume that they’re trying to get through, sometimes hundreds of pounds a week. And back to, I mentioned, it’s two and a half to three and a half hours to do a batch through our XR 12 product. You add that up, and if you’re really trying to push it and you’re running the machine 24 hours a day, you can do 130 or 140 pounds a day with the XR 16, we can increase that by a third basically. And so now you’re getting close to 200 pounds a day and somebody where they’re really trying to get every bit through that they can, that makes a big difference and time is money for them. So one batch drops down to between an hour and a half and two hours for one batch rather than two and a half to three and a half.
Joseph Bancheri:
The big MSOs need to be able to push that amount of weight through the machine for sure.
TG Branfalt:
And so we know that that product recalls have a price fixed to them, whether it be remediation or getting rid of destroying the problematic product. Can you tell me the cost of an x-ray decontamination device versus the cost of an average product recall?
Jeff Adams:
Yeah, so with our equipment, the most popular way to get our equipment has been through a lease program and depending on the length of the lease and the terms of that, it ends up between somewhere between 10 and 12 KA month. And so if you just think about if you’ve got contaminated product, even on the wholesale level, if you can save 10 pounds in a month, basically you’ve paid for your month’s worth of the machine and not to discount what harm it might do to your reputation in the marketplace. The dispensaries may not want to carry your product anymore after a recall or whatever. I think those costs multiply even tenfold or something of what the cost of the product itself is and the harm to your reputation, et cetera. So the payback on the machine is extremely fast, very easy to justify. It’s kind of an insurance policy in a way. Having that and making sure that every time you send something for test it’s going to pass, you’re not going to have an R on your COA, which means it’s been remediated, right? All of those things are things that people that are savvy about this, they’re looking for that kind of stuff. They don’t want to buy flour that has those issues. And so this is going to help your sales to dispensaries and others.
TG Branfalt:
Are there other ways that operators can access this device that’s not a sort of lease program
Jeff Adams:
There? We have customers that basically use the machine and do tolling, it’s called. And so it depends on the laws of the particular state that you’re in, but for the state will allow it, then these toll operators then will bring somebody’s flower in, run it through for a certain price per pound, and then they take it back and they package it and sell it after that. And so if you’re a small operator or something like that, this is a great solution, a way for you to get access and get things decontaminated without making the big investment. The other thing that we’re working on, and maybe a little early information here is we are building a version of our product where we’ve taken one of our machines and mounted it in a mobile trailer and we’ve got a partner that we’re working with there. So the idea then is they will take that trailer around and they’ll come right to your farm, they’ll bring it to you, set up there for a day or two days or however long it takes for whatever amount of product you’ve got, run it through the machine. Now you’ve got door to door service and you’ve got access to this technology that maybe feels out of reach for a lot of small growers.
TG Branfalt:
And is that something Joe that you’re doing is trying to raise awareness of that potential sort of mobile unit as it’s rolling out?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah. Well, we’re looking to start in the Albany area, so yeah, so when I was up in Syracuse, I was talking to a lot of the cultivators I ran into up there, but it’ll probably have to stay in that zone. So as much as I can, I do let them know about that. And it’s just a great way to see the technology. I know if your machine is down as well and you have some kind of emergency, you need backup. I think it could be an awesome solution for that as well. So agreed.
TG Branfalt:
And have you guys run up against, you had mentioned regulations in each state. Have you run up against cannabis control boards or offices of cannabis management, whatever, it’s state by state against this technology or any sort of issues there?
Jeff Adams:
That definitely has happened. I would say that we were a little bit late to the market. There were a couple of other x-ray machine producers out there in the market before us, and that’s been a little bit of a blessing for us because they have actually fought those fights with the cannabis control boards in other places. Nevada is a great example. I mean, it even came down to a lawsuit, right in Nevada to get approval to have this kind of technology. Now that there’s several years of runway there and the technology has been proven, we have not seen very much resistance from cannabis control boards or other people. Been pretty well accepted, easily registered and stuff. And we give kudos to our predecessors for that help.
Joseph Bancheri:
There’s a whole process of getting it registered and with the control boards and stuff like that, which we help all of our clients on our end with all the proper paperwork and stuff like that.
Jeff Adams:
Maybe just to elaborate on that a little bit, every state is going to have an office of x-ray control. Every x-ray machine in every state has to be registered, every doctor’s office, dentist’s office, et cetera. So we fall into that same thing. And then some states, the cannabis board will want to be involved in that and also want registration with them and other states they don’t really care.
TG Branfalt:
And is there a learning curve when you’re talking to people in the cannabis control board or OCM about helping them to understand and what is that process like?
Jeff Adams:
One of the things that’s been very helpful there is that x-ray is not a new technology, and so it’s something that’s well understood and well regulated. And for example, we follow an FDA regulation that governs basically how much x-ray could be leaking out of the machine. And we follow the very most stringent regulations that way, which say that if we can pass those regulations, a person could stand next to that machine all day long and receive no harm from the machine. You don’t even have to have a monitoring device. But again, every different kind of x-ray machine sort of is on that spectrum to where you might need leaded walls around it all the way to needing nothing, and we fall on the nothing end. We take great care to shield that machine appropriately as well as having control systems, safety systems interlocks, and things that make sure that if there was any problem with the machine, if there’s any risk that somebody could be exposed to x-ray, then the machine shuts itself off in those cases and protects the user.
TG Branfalt:
And Joe, what was the learning curve like for you getting into this very dense tech?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I was actually selling weed for a brand out here, and they were the first ones with a remediation unit in Nevada and I was selling it. I didn’t even know they were using that unit. So I went through my whole, I’m smoking radioactive weed thing and I’m selling radioactive weed. So that kind of fucked me up a little bit. But then once I got with these guys and the guy who designed it, and Jeff, these guys are, and it’s something we haven’t talked about, the parent company that builds our tubes where these guys actually started with, they’ve been around for 75 years, so solid company. I’ll let Jeff talk more about that maybe, but they explained to me how everything works. That’s why I’m able to talk about the DNA on the microbials and the plant and kind of explain that to people now that I understand it with confidence, and I feel I’m totally okay with it now, but I went through my faith as well.
TG Branfalt:
Jeff, how important is it to have somebody with this sort of breadth of cannabis experience as a member of your team? Being predominantly a tech company,
Jeff Adams:
It is invaluable. The cannabis space, I will admit, as new to me, I’ve been in it for about three and a half years now, so I’ve learned a lot. But to say it this way in cannabis, you need some street cred. You know what I mean? It was for many years in illegal industry and it’s like if you’re in, you’re in and if you’re out, you’re out. And you need somebody that understands the ins and outs of cannabis and what that’s all about and can sort of talk the talk and walk the walk. And that’s been important for me. I joke with Joe, I’m a little bit of a Chad. I get it. I own that because I haven’t historically been part of it. What I will say though is as I have gotten into the cannabis industry, I have met people, many people whose lives have really been helped by cannabis, and I absolutely understand the medical benefit and the medicinal benefit of cannabis and have really changed my own attitudes about the value of cannabis in society and what it can really do. And I fully support legalization and especially in a medical use case, fully support that.
TG Branfalt:
Was there any, Joe had mentioned that the parent company or the company that designs the tubes is 75 years old. Was there any trepidation about them by them being associated with the cannabis industry?
Jeff Adams:
There was, and that’s part of how XR Pure came apart about is that we formed a separate company in order to do this cannabis division because of some of the nervousness of the bankers and the lawyers and the accountants, and maybe they have good reason for that because I don’t think the banking system and all of that in the US has fully embraced cannabis yet. It’s still a problem for everybody. And so we made some legal separations and some protections there for the parent company as well.
TG Branfalt:
So in some states, they do not allow for remediation of cannabis products. They demand that they be destroyed once they come off the shelves, but most states do allow it. Now, oftentimes you will see a mass recall of products that have already hit store shelves, and they’ll recall the entire brand, not just sort of an afflicted product in some cases. How can the x-ray tech be used, or is it possible that it can be used to prevent these sort of mass recalls in states that do allow remediation?
Jeff Adams:
Oh, I definitely believe that it can prevent them, yes. The way that we advocate our customers using the machine is as a standard part of their SOP as a preventative measure, not as a reactive measure. Right?
TG Branfalt:
Interesting.
Jeff Adams:
And so we say every ounce that you grow should go through that machine and decontaminated, and not only that, it should be decontaminated early in the process, meaning that right after dry and cure and trim, that would be the time to run it through and decontaminate it that way. Any of those microbials that were existing through the growing process and all of that, you cut those down to nearly zero, and then you can store the product cleanly or package it at that point and have confidence that it’s not growing inside the package. If you take the mindset that, Hey, I’m just going to test it first and only the stuff that fails, I’m going to remediate after the fact, you’re exposing yourself to a lot of risk of recalls and things down the line because that, as Joe mentioned earlier, if you’ve got a lot that just barely passes the regulation for microbials, it’s going to be growing inside that package and it multiplies fast. It’s only a few months worth of time to where you can go from something that’s clean and smells right and all of that to literally visible mold, a terrible smell, and all of that doesn’t take that long for that to happen.
TG Branfalt:
Joe, do you get any pushback from operators or how do they react when you suggest that this is part of the SOPs?
Joseph Bancheri:
Yeah, well, I mean a lot of ’em, I think they understand because if you’re thinking of all the tests and retesting, every test costs you money. So that’s a bottom line thing. They just, it’s considered basically a kill step along the way. And if you know your product well enough, we’ve got some people that are using a thousand gray, 1500 gray, they don’t need to use the whole 2000 gray just as an insurance policy. And I think people understand it. They know it’s not going to affect their plant. They know they’re going to pass their COAs first time, it’s their cheat code, whatever, but it’s also creating clean product for the end users, so everybody wins. That’s how I look at it.
TG Branfalt:
Can either one of you give me any sort of ballpark indication of how many businesses are using this technology currently?
Joseph Bancheri:
Well, what I like to say is there’s, in Colorado you got businesses, that’s all they do. They have five machines, they just take on people’s product, and that’s all they do. They’re running remediation all day. They don’t even grow. That’s their business. Colorado’s very saturated with remediation units. Michigan, it’s very saturated Illinois. I think you have to have one that’s a thousand CFU there. So I think New York’s still at a hundred thousand or they’re not in that realm yet, but once those start getting tightened up, it’s going to, you’re see it a lot more, a lot of different machines out there.
TG Branfalt:
How much competition is in the x-ray decontamination space for cannabis?
Jeff Adams:
There’s about five companies right now that are doing the X-ray machines specifically for cannabis. So decent amount of competition, I guess s, but not a ton of providers. Your other question I would answer also a little bit differently. We believe there’s maybe 250 to 300 machines at the most out in the country. And so the states where Kansas has been legal for a long time, like Joe mentioned, Colorado, pretty saturated with machines and we believe a good portion, I won’t venture an actual number, but a good portion of the operators are using X-ray remediation and new states. The nice thing is they have the benefit of learning from those older states, and we’re seeing them asking for x-ray right off the bat right from the beginning because they know it’s the best way to do it.
TG Branfalt:
It’s very fascinating sort of sector of the industry that I don’t think many people think about. And I think that through this conversation, almost calling it remediation as a misnomer, if you’re, again putting it as part of your SOP process, it becomes sort of preventative.
Jeff Adams:
So we prefer the term decontamination, which really does indicate a proactive approach to it. And part of the SOP where remediation in our language would mean something that’s already been proven to have failed, and then now you’re going to run it through to remediate it. The other comment I would have is that the stigma for X-rayed product is real. There’s no doubt about it. And so many of our companies don’t want us talking about the fact that we’re selling the machine or leasing them a machine. And I get that from their standpoint. I completely get that. Our standpoint, we have just the opposite viewpoint. We believe that using x-ray to decontaminate a product gives you a better product in the end. And I think you should be advertising that to your customers. Like, Hey, it’s been through this product. It is guaranteed to be clean, especially if you’re immunocompromised medical patients, you know that you’re getting clean stuff. It has been treated, and yet the potency is still going to be medicine for you. It’s still going to give you all the benefits that you’re looking for, but it’s not going to make you sick. And I would be advertising that, but I know it’s hard to get over that public perception and that stigma.
TG Branfalt:
Well, and there is a study from California Department of Cannabis Control that lays out exactly what you just said in black and white. That was an independent study using x-ray that found that there was no sort of harm associated with the technology.
Joseph Bancheri:
That’s right. We’re going to work on a six month, 12 month stabilization test showing flour that has not been remediated and our flower that has been remediated and show what it looks like after six months, after 12 months compared to the one that was not remediated. And I think once that data, once we get more and more data out there, it’s going to be more helpful for people to
TG Branfalt:
Understand. So I do want to ask just sort of about remediation. I know that we’ve sort of moved away from calling the X RRP that we want to call the decontamination, which I can’t say, but could this technology be used in remediating illegal cannabis cultivation sites at all?
Jeff Adams:
That’s an interesting question. I mean, certainly it could, right? All you need is a space and some power, and you can hook that thing up and do what you want with it. I haven’t ever thought about would we be willing to sell a machine or lease a machine to somebody like that?
TG Branfalt:
Well, no, not leasing a machine to somebody like that, but say in California where there is just acres of land that’s being used to cultivate cannabis illegally, it’s polluting the soil and leaving a lot of contamination behind. Is there any utility do you think, for x-ray tech in cleaning up these sites?
Joseph Bancheri:
I would say if we had a partner and they did a trailer with us, one of these mobile trailers where they go, we don’t care. We just have a profit share on the pound rate that they charge. So if they want to go whatever farm they go to, that’s fine. I just don’t think we would place a unit there. So that would be the workaround for that.
TG Branfalt:
Yeah, and I guess you couldn’t really use a device like this for remitting soil or anything like that. Now that I sort of No. Understand the
Joseph Bancheri:
Technology, yeah, it would have to be after the plant’s been harvested and cured. If you did put a live plan in there, it would kill it basically.
TG Branfalt:
What advice would you have for operators who are facing a recall, who are trying to remediate get this product to market without losing thousands of dollars?
Joseph Bancheri:
Well, what I would say, oh, go ahead Jim.
Jeff Adams:
I’d just say that there’s plenty of access to these machines. As we mentioned, there’s several hundred of them in the country. And so even going, finding somebody who could help you remediate that product and make it viable again, is one way. Again, we really would push the proactive approach to making it part of your own process and guaranteeing yourself good results by using that technology.
TG Branfalt:
And finally, where can people find out more about XR Pure and the XR 16?
Jeff Adams:
The best way is through our website, XR pure.com. All the information about the equipment and everything is there. One of the little features on the website that I’d like to plug is that there’s a calculator there, so anybody can go on and they can put in their own numbers. This is what I’m selling the wholesale flower for. If I can’t sell it as wholesale, I’ve got to sell it as trim. And what price is that? How much are you growing and what’s your failure rate? So very quickly, within just a matter of seconds, you can go on, plug in those numbers and we’ll spit you back at basically an ROI that says, this is what kind of money we can save you by using this kind of technology. Aside from information on just the equipment itself, we tried to do our part to help with education.
We have a blog there on the website that has many different articles about tips and tricks on how to run a clean facility. Aside from using decontamination or remediation technology, what things can you do proactively in your growing process, in your drying process and how you clean the facility? All of that. We’ve done our best to gather that kind of information and make that available for people to understand X-ray as a a comprehensive program of making sure that you’re clean and doing things that would maintain the integrity of your product. All of that’s available on our website.
TG Branfalt:
Well, I do appreciate you guys coming on the show. This is, again, not something that we’ve ever talked about on the Entrepreneur Podcast, and you do a great job at clarifying and helping people understand, and hopefully this episode helps reduce the stigma that’s associated with alleged radioactive cannabis because it does not seem like that is the case. I certainly wouldn’t shy away from smoking some grass that had gone through this process for sure. So I appreciate you guys taking the time and really explaining it in a way that me and the listeners can’t understand.
Jeff Adams:
Well, you’re very welcome, Tim, and thank you again for taking the time with us and to understand what we do and giving us some exposure on your podcast.
TG Branfalt:
That is Jeff Adams, founder and managing director, and Joseph Cheri, national Sales Manager from Las Vegas, Nevada based XR Pure, which recently launched the XR 16 capable of eliminating mold of mildew, bacteria, and other harmful pathogens on cannabis flower. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast and the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com and wherever you get your podcast. In the Ganjapreneur website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Wayward Sound Studio. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.
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Minnesota Signs First-Of-Its-Kind Agreement Allowing Indian Tribe To Sell Legal Marijuana Outside Reservation

Published
3 hours agoon
May 21, 2025
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) has signed a landmark agreement with the White Earth Nation that will allow the tribe to operate up to eight retail marijuana stores across the state. Already the tribe is preparing to open storefronts in Moorhead and St. Cloud.
Walz signed the new compact on Tuesday, making White Earth Nation—also known as the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe—the first tribal entity in the state to reach an agreement with the state on selling legal cannabis outside of tribal land.
Notably, Minnesota’s 2023 cannabis legalization law allows tribes within the state to open marijuana businesses before state licensing of businesses begins. Following the law’s enactment, a number of tribal governments, including White Earth Nation, the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, made early moves to enter the market.
Minnesota officials said the next compact with another tribe could be signed within a few weeks.
The new agreement with White Earth will allow the storefronts to be located off tribal land but still be regulated by tribal authorities. It also requires at least some distance between the storefronts, with the tribe limited to no more than one retail location per city and three per county.
Under the compact, White Earth will also be able to open marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facilities off of tribal land and engage in wholesale transactions, transportation and delivery of cannabis.
The interim director of the Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), Eric Taubel, described the state’s new deal with White Earth Nation to local reporters as a “nation-leading approach to cannabis compacting.”
“We’ll be the first state where not only are tribes operating cannabis businesses off tribal land, but they’re also doing so under tribal regulatory authority,” he told The Minnesota Star-Tribune, adding that Minnesota cannabis regulators will still be permitted to conduct an annual facility inspection and can take further steps if they believe stores are selling risky products.
Taubel also said that while the White Earth compact allows up to eight dispensary locations, he doubts that any of the 11 recognized tribal nations in Minnesota will actually open that many.
“Candidly, I don’t suspect any tribe will get past about three to four stores for the next two years just because of the actual cost in setting up these stores,” Taubel said.
Zach Wilson, CEO of Waabigwan Mashkiki—White Earth Nation’s cannabis business—told the Star-Tribune that the first off-reservation store could open as soon as this weekend.
“I can’t even begin to share how excited we are and how proud to be a part of something so historical, monumental and something that’s absolutely going to help set precedence in the tribal space throughout the country,” he said.
White Earth does intend to eventually open the maximum number of stores allowed under the new compact, Wilson said. The tribe is aiming to open its St. Cloud store in mid-June, he explained, and eventually expand into areas like Mankato and Rochester.
Nationwide, more than a quarter (26 percent) of the 358 federally recognized Indigenous communities in the continental U.S. are involved in some sort of cannabis program, according to a recently published infographic from the Indigenous Cannabis Industry Association (ICIA) and the law firm Vicente.
That figure, the groups said, “shows that the Indigenous cannabis industry is trending upward in terms of jobs, community development, and overall industry growth, with many Tribes currently scaling to meet demands for global cannabis distribution.”
“Since the first regulated Indigenous cannabis storefront opened almost 10 years ago in Washington State,” they added, “dozens of sovereign Indigenous communities have created their own unique regulatory systems to govern cannabis cultivation, production and sales.”
In North Carolina, for example, a single, isolated dot on the map represents the legal marijuana market recently launched by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which now serves both tribal members and adult visitors alike. That’s despite marijuana still being prohibited in North Carolina itself, whether for medical or adult use.
It’s believed that in 2020, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, located in South Dakota, became the first tribe to vote to legalize marijuana within a U.S. state where the plant remained illegal.
In other states, meanwhile, including Minnesota, Oklahoma and much of the American West, the map is peppered with multiple tribal programs. Many of those states, especially Minnesota, have worked with Indigenous communities to incorporate tribal-run businesses into state-legal marijuana markets.
Separately in Minnesota, a state appeals court is set to decide whether state officials have the authority to prosecute tribal members for cannabis crimes committed on tribal land. The case centers on a White Earth citizen who allegedly sold cannabis from his tobacco store on reservation land in Mahnomen.
Last month, meanwhile, state officials moved to delay a separate drug reform—the opening of safe drug consumption sites, meant to allow people to use drugs in a safer, supervised setting.
“More work needs to be done on a state and federal level before these services can be implemented in a way that is safe for participants and Harm Reduction programs,” a representative for the Department of Human Services (DHS) Behavioral Health Administration said at the time.
In March, lawmakers also filed legislation that would create a system to allow legal access to psilocybin for medical purposes. That came just days after the introduction of a separate bill that would legalize personal psilocybin use and possession among adults.
Read the full compact between Minnesota and the White Earth Nation below:
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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

Author: mscannabiz.com
MScannaBIZ for all you Mississippi Cannabis News and Information.

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