Monarch, the smallest and most powerful top light on the market, has been improved.

The new Monarch with 1200 W internal driver is available in 2 variants:

1. The 'high efficiency' fixture has the highest light output: max. 4020 μmol/s at a 1120 W consumption and 3.6 μmol/J efficiency. This is recommended for high-tech greenhouse projects where sufficient height is available, so that a high uniformity is achieved with fewer fixtures. Due to its high efficiency, this fixture is also the best option for growers with a limited power capacity.

2. The Monarch 'economic' fixture with 1200 W driver has a lower initial investment. It has a maximum light output of 3810 μmol/s and, with a 1137 W consumption, the efficiency is 3.4 μmol/J.

Despite the year-over-year increase, the state’s $120 million in May sales is a flatline from past two months.

Massachusetts’ 2022 adult-use cannabis sales are up big compared to the first five months of 2021, but May figures represent a seasonal plateau in the state market.

Adult-use retailers reported just more than $120 million in May 2022 sales, bringing the state’s yearly total to $585.6 million, representing a 20.7% increase from the $485.2 million in sales during the same timeframe in 2021, according to the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission’s (CCC) open data platform.

But the current retail market has remained stagnant for three months now: May’s $120 million in adult-use sales is a slight dip from March, $120.3 million, and April, $122.2 million. Year-over-year, May 2022 sales represent a 9.3% increase from May 2021.

The three-month plateau comes after Massachusetts retailers experienced a $10-million sales spike from February to March.

The recent flatline somewhat mirrors last year’s seasonal trend. After a $21-million uptick from February to March 2021, sales rose slightly in April, May and June, before another uptick—a $17-million surge to $127.4 million in July 2021—the state’s highest grossing month last year.

Overall, Massachusetts adult-use retailers have recorded roughly $3.1 billion since the state first launched commercial sales in November 2018.

RELATED: Massachusetts Adult-Use Cannabis Retailers Eclipse $3 Billion in Sales

But that $3-billion benchmark—reached last month—comes at a time when the average retail price per ounce for dried flower continues to dip toward an all-time low.

The average adult-use flower price per ounce was $312.78 in May 2022, a 21.3% decrease from the $397.48 average cost per ounce in May 2021, according to CCC.

Only in April 2020, during the onset of COVID-19, was the average cost lower: $276.22 per ounce.

Rep. Mandie Landry’s House Bill 988 now goes to Gov. John Bel Edwards for his signature.

The Louisiana Legislature has passed a bill to protect workers who use medical cannabis, sending the legislation to Gov. John Bel Edwards for his signature.

House Bill 988, sponsored by Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans, shields state employees from being fired, as well as protects job candidates from being discriminated against, if they are a registered medical cannabis patient.

RELATED: Louisiana House Committee Advances Proposal to Protect Employees Who Use Medical Cannabis

The legislation would not apply to law enforcement, firefighters or other public safety officials.

H.B. 988 passed the House May 24 in a 60-32 vote and cleared the Senate June 1 in a 26-8 vote.

Louisiana’s first medical cannabis dispensaries opened in 2019, and the program expanded in January 2022 to allow patients to access smokable flower.

During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers voted to further expand medical cannabis access, sending a bill to Bel Edwards that would more than triple the number of dispensaries in the state.

Next year, starting in July 2023, the state will allow retailers licensed by the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission to sell synthetic cannabinoids—as long as they are approved by the FDA.

In an unprecedented move, Oregon will ban the sale of all synthetic cannabinoids next month in an effort to crack down on unregulated products that have popped up on the shelves of grocery stores and gas stations.

Oregon will prohibit the sale of synthetic cannabinoids, such as delta-8 THC, starting July 1, according to The Oregonian, and next year, starting in July 2023, the state will allow retailers licensed by the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC) to sell synthetic cannabinoids—as long as they are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Regulators claim the restrictions stem from concerns about the chemicals used to produce synthetic cannabinoids, The Oregonian reported.

“We have testing for pesticides,” Steven Crowley, the OLCC’s hemp and processing compliance specialist, told the news outlet. “We have testing for residual solvents from the extraction process. We don’t have any testing for any of the whole universe of chemical reagents that you could use to synthetically turn one cannabinoid into something else, or for any of the byproducts of that reaction.”

As The Oregonian pointed out, the FDA has so far approved only a handful of hemp-derived products, meaning the agency is unlikely to grant the approval necessary to bring synthetic cannabinoids to the shelves of OLCC-licensed retailers next year.

Wyld, an Oregon-based cannabis producer that sells gummies containing a synthetic version of cannabinol (CBN), sells its products at local grocers, which will be illegal after July 1.

“There are ways to regulate it and there are definitely ways that we can ensure that the end product that’s being sold is subject to enough safety testing and safety standards to ensure, to the degree possible, the safety of the product without any sort of larger federal research grants or anything like that,” Gabe Parton Lee, general counsel at Wyld and Wyld CBD, told The Oregonian.

The company is currently circulating a petition against the rule change, according to the news outlet.

The class-action lawsuit seeks to force health insurance companies to provide full coverage for medical cannabis used to treat behavioral health.

New Mexico’s largest cannabis company teamed up with five medical cannabis patients and the father of a minor participating in the state’s program in filing a class-action lawsuit June 10 against several of the state’s prominent health insurance companies.

The lawsuit, filed in the 2nd Judicial District Court in Bernalillo County, comes nearly four months after Ultra Health sent a letter to the health insurers, asking them to confirm their coverage for medical cannabis patients with certain conditions.

A vertically integrated operator with 38 dispensaries serving both patient and adult-use customers in the state, Ultra Health officials claim to have New Mexico law on their side through Senate Bill 317, legislation that expanded the definition of behavior health services to cover several treatment options.

RELATED: New Mexico Cannabis Provider Seeks Insurance Coverage for Patients

Becoming effective Jan. 1, 2022, the legislation intends to make mental and behavior health services more affordable for New Mexicans by eliminating all cost-sharing and any out-of-pocket costs for those services and accompanying medications.

Sent in February, Ultra Health’s letter asked health insurers to affirm they’ll be making payments for qualifying medical cannabis patients with behavior health conditions, such as the now 74,000-plus patients enrolled in the state program for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The letter also requested information from the insurers in regard to how they intend to pay for medical cannabis without any cost sharing for patients enrolled through their programs.

Ultra Health offered cooperation in building a system for efficient processing of insurers’ medical cannabis payments, but to no avail.

On June 10, Ultra Health and six individual plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico, True Health New Mexico Inc., Cigna Health and Life Insurance Co., Molina Healthcare of New Mexico Inc., Presbyterian Health Plan Inc., Presbyterian Insurance Company Inc., and Western Sky Community Care Inc.

According to the lawsuit, the “individual plaintiffs seek recovery for themselves, and for every other similarly situated behavioral or mental health patient unlawfully subjected to paying for the entire cost of medically necessary cannabis, in violation of state law.”

The plaintiffs claim that qualified patients should no longer have any out-of-pocket costs or cost sharing, including copays, deductibles or coinsurance.

Under S.B. 317, insurers that offer coverage of behavioral health services cannot impose cost sharing on “professional and ancillary services for the treatment, habilitation, prevention and identification of mental illnesses, substance abuse disorders and trauma spectrum disorders, including … all medications.”

In New Mexico, cannabis is an approved medicine for several qualifying conditions, such as PTSD, opioid use disorder, severe anorexia and Parkinson’s disease, which are considered behavioral health disorders under the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act.

As of May 31, 2022, there were 135,388 patients enrolled in New Mexico’s medical cannabis program, according to the state’s Department of Health. In addition to the 74,006 enrolled for PTSD, there were 928 patients enrolled for opioid use disorder, 333 for severe anorexia/Cachexia, and 452 for Parkinson’s disease.

New Mexico also has judicial decisions on the books recognizing that medical cannabis obtained from a licensed cannabis provider is the “functional equivalent of a prescription” and that medical cannabis is eligible for the same gross receipts tax deduction as prescription drugs, according to a June 13 press release from Ultra Health.

The class-action lawsuit, according to Ultra Health, seeks to have a court recognize what practitioners and patients have acknowledged for years: Medical cannabis is behavioral health care.

Ultra Health CEO and President Duke Rodriguez said he believes the lawsuit to be the first of its kind in the U.S., and that his company acknowledges that the idea of health insurers paying for medical cannabis may seem novel at first blush.

“The idea of health insurance plans paying for medical cannabis may seem like an impossible dream, but all the foundational elements have already fallen into place,” Rodriguez said in the release. “Revolutionizing behavioral health care in New Mexico will take only a few small steps, rather than a giant leap.”

The letter sent in February was also addressed to the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance, New Mexico Federation of Labor, and the New Mexico State Personnel Office.

However, the insurers and the Superintendent of Insurance have yet to act upon the demand that insurance companies pay for medical cannabis used to treat behavioral health conditions, thus necessitating litigation, according to Ultra Health.

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