Cheddar's "CannaBiz" program is dedicated to the business of marijuana. In each episode we explore the growing market, landscape for regulation, and ways people and businesses are capitalizing on the space. During this episode Cheddar Anchors Hope King and Brad Smith explore pending legislation in Vermont, and a company expanding deeper into the medical marijuana market.
According to a new report by New Frontier Data, Cannabis could create more than $130 billion dollars in federal tax revenue by 2025. That's if the federal government legalizes the drug. It could also ad 1.1 million jobs by 2025.
Vermont could be the next state to change it's current marijuana laws. Vermont Governor Phil Scott planning to sign a bill to legalize marijuana for those 21 years or older. This will make Vermont the first state to do so through legislation. Montpelier, Vermont Mayor John Hollar explains how this could impact the growing market.
"People generally think its an inevitability in our state that we will have a legalization," says Hollar. "I think people understand and recognize that its going to happen."
Now that cannabis is legal in California, many people are wondering how to add it to their recipes in the kitchen. Cheddar's Alyssa Julya Smith joined Jeff the 420 Chef in the kitchen to talk about his specific technique to clean cannabis and make sure you are taking out all the smells and flavors to seamlessly add to your food.
Namaste Technologies is rolling out a telemedicine portal to connect doctors to medical marijuana patients virtually. The company's co-founder and CEO Sean Dollinger explains how they are bringing this technology to the Canadian market.
"NamasteMD is the first application allowed by the app store for telemedicine in Canada ever for cannabis," said Dollinger. He explains his hope for Namaste Technologies to become a global leader in cannabis by leveraging its technology for partners in the market.
Velo3d, a company that provides metal 3D printed parts for companies such as SpaceX, reported a boost in Q4 revenue quarter over quarter. Founder and CEO Benny Buller, joined Cheddar News to discuss the earnings and the foundation of the company's current success. "The whole space sector is about 25 percent of our business. We have a lot of business in aviation, in power generation, in energy, and in semiconductors. I would say that the big jump in our revenue is related to the release of our Sapphire XC, which is a scale-up product reducing costs by about three times compared to the first Sapphire machines," he said. "This allows customers to dramatically reduce costs as well as make much bigger parts."
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), corn-based ethanol has been mixed into gasoline sold at pumps in the U.S. since 2005, when a policy was enacted aimed at reducing emissions. Corn-based ethanol had been thought to be a relatively greener energy source compared to other biofuels, but now, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports it may be actually worse for the climate than straight gasoline. Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Sustainability, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell and discussed the pushback against the study. "Essentially when you need to produce more corn to meet the demand for use as ethanol as fuel, farmers respond and they switch more crops like soybeans and wheat into corn," Lark said. "They also bring more land into production, so things that used to be pasture grassland, and both those activities are associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions."
Video conferencing service Zoom rolled out a flurry of announcements that included a new Zoom Phone, Zoom Events, and Zoom Contact Center in an effort to transition the company from a pandemic darling to a post-pandemic business — while keeping the product accessible. Kelly Steckelberg, CFO of Zoom, joined Cheddar News to talk about the transition while still remaining affordable. "We currently have no plans to raise our prices," she said. "We focus on bringing as much value as possible to our customers. We often add new features and functionality without any incremental prices across the board."
Alexandre Mongeon, the CEO and co-founder of Vision Marine Technologies, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss the latest innovations in the e-boating industry, and how fully electric motors and boats will play a role in the fight against the climate crisis.
Even as pandemic restrictions slowly began winding down through 2021, cable and internet provider Comcast's 2021 Network Report showed that average internet consumption increased. Activities like content streaming and online gaming grew between 10 and 20 percent, according to the study. Elad Nafshi, chief network officer for Comcast, joined Cheddar News to share what he thinks will happen with our new online habits in a post-pandemic world. "Beyond, the traditional game downloads, streaming gaming, which falling into the purposes is just like streaming 4K video for us, is starting to pick up and, and certainly we'll watch that consumer behavior continue," he said. Nafshi also discussed the company's investments in 10G technology, its future generation of network speed.
AMC has announced that it will be accepting Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, two meme cryptocurrencies, as online payment options, The theater chain will begin taking the memecoins in "a couple of weeks."
