Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cannabis, with Chris Walsh

The Sydcast

Episode Summary

Cannabis is booming. Whether for medicinal or recreational purposes, more and more US states have legalized the business. How did we get here and where are we going next? A conversation with cannabis insider Chris Walsh on regulation, public policy, market growth, and which established industries will be the first to enter the game.

Sydney Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Chris Walsh

Chris served as the founding editor of Marijuana Business Daily during the company’s launch in 2011, becoming the first journalist in the United States to focus exclusively on covering the business of cannabis. As CEO, he now guides the company's strategic vision and its sister publication – Hemp Industry Daily – while educating mainstream industries about the marijuana and hemp sectors. Chris has been quoted as one of America’s foremost cannabis industry analysts by dozens of media outlets, including Harvard Business Review, NPR, CNBC, and the New York Times. He earned an MBA in international business from Regis University.

Insights from this episode:

• How Chris got involved in the cannabis industry
• Insights into the cannabis industry
• The evolution of the cannabis industry
• Differences between the U.S and Canadian markets
• The biggest companies in the US market
• Differences in the growing and development of cannabis

Quotes from the show:

• “When it comes to cannabis, every state in the US has done it (regulations) completely differently” —Chris Walsh [8:18]
• “For many years, when the industry first started to flourish 10/11 years ago, you couldn’t really expand out of state, and you couldn’t really expand outside your city. A lot of the companies were very locally based” —Chris Walsh [9:57]
• “That variety of mechanisms to grow and create a national footprint completely depends on ways to deal with the various state regulations” —Syd Finkelstein [12:22]
• “The U.S market is still growing and is growing rapidly. It actually hit records during COVID” —Chris Walsh [15:12]
• “This industry has professionalized because it’s regulated. It’s still very controversial the types of regulation, but it’s professionalized now, and the latest wave is mainstream professionals coming into the industry” —Chris Walsh [20:49]
• “As an industry gets bigger, and certainly as it becomes more national and there are more choices for consumers, it’s hard to figure out what the right one is. If a doctor is prescribing it, it’s one thing, but if it is recreational, it’s a whole another story” —Syd Finkelstein [25:38]
• “There is plenty of research that shows that in states that have legalized cannabis, opioid abuse has gone down” —Chris Walsh [38:18]
• “It has created hundreds of thousands of jobs. It creates business opportunities, it creates tax money, that if used effectively, can go to schools and roads, and we’ve seen that in many states, and can revive communities” —Chris Walsh [54:09]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Chris Walsh

LinkedIn: Chris Walsh

MJ Biz Twitter: MJBiz (@MJBizDaily)

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.