Rolando García

Rolando is a development economist specializing in cannabis and agriculture. He is also a scientific researcher and professor.

In Texas, One Delta-8 THC Gummy Can Carry More Prison Time Than an Ounce of Weed

September 6, 2026 No Comments

A single four-gram delta-8 gummy can now expose its owner to a felony bracket that runs to twenty years, because Texas weighs the whole product and a gummy is mostly sugar. An ounce of marijuana is still a misdemeanor. The Legislature never voted for any of it, and the delta-9 gummies that survived the crackdown are legal on a technicality federal law erases in November.

Beware of the Chads

September 5, 2026 No Comments

Berner calls them the Chads: the ones who arrive with contracts and agendas and no feel for the plant. A new wave of institutional money is about to be free to deploy into cannabis, and the last one took MedMen, Flow Kana, Canopy and High Times itself from the people who built them. Rolando García on what the term sheets did, and what the founders who kept control did differently.

Hawaii Banned Smokable Hemp in 2020. Stores Sold It Openly for Five Years. Then the Crackdown Began.

September 4, 2026 No Comments

Hawaii’s Act 14 prohibited smokable hemp in 2020. For five years stores sold flower, pre-rolls and vapes openly, hired staff and built a customer base on top of it. Then the 2025 registration law gave the state inspection and seizure powers, enforcement began, and one Oahu retailer says he lost 90% of his revenue in weeks. Both things are true at once, and only one of them shows up in the statute.

Massachusetts Is Voting on Whether to Shut Down a $10B Legal Weed Market. Here’s What You Need to Know

September 3, 2026 No Comments

No American state has ever voted to repeal an existing adult-use marijuana legalization law. Massachusetts gets the chance in nine weeks. Question 8 would repeal two chapters of law, end licensed sales on January 1, 2028 and eliminate home growing. One donor paid for the entire campaign that put it on the ballot, and the side defending legalization spent most of the past year in court instead of on television.

Are You Overpaying for Weed? High Times Brought Back Its 1974 Price Tracker to Tell You.

September 1, 2026 No Comments

High Times started printing weed prices in 1974 so buyers would stop getting fleeced by people who knew the going rate. Trans-High Market Quotations is now a live index built on daily dispensary point-of-sale data, free, sortable by state. And for the markets receipts never reach, we want your numbers.

Weed Can’t Get Past 34%. The Labels Go to 42%. The System Rewards the Lie.

August 28, 2026 No Comments

Someone bought fifteen cannabis products off Denver shelves and sent them to a lab. Two came back legal. On average the labels claimed 34.2% more THC than the products held. A Spanish engineer who has spent sixteen years scanning flower explains why the incentive to inflate runs through every link in the chain, why California calculates that fixing it costs four times what consumers would gain, and what would actually break the loop.

Trump Signed an Order Paying Farmers to Heal Their Soil. Weed Growers Get Nothing.

August 26, 2026 No Comments

In June, Trump signed an executive order paying farmers to rebuild their soil. Hemp growers qualify. State-licensed cannabis growers do not. Inside the certifiers and the small farms doing the work anyway, from mycorrhizal inoculation to a Vermont field fed by dairy manure and spent brewery grain.

Lev Parnas Says He Almost Became a Weed Mogul. Then Came Trump, Ukraine and Prison. Now He’s Running for Congress on a Legalization Platform.

August 20, 2026 No Comments

He almost became a weed mogul. Instead, he became Trump’s man in Ukraine, a central figure in the first impeachment and a federal inmate. Lev Parnas on the Trulieve deal that got away, the memo he brought Trump on legalizing marijuana and why he’s running for Congress as an independent.

How Washington Killed the Colombian Cannabis Boom And Created the Cocaine Cartels by Accident

July 29, 2026 No Comments

The 1970s Colombian cannabis boom built Santa Marta Gold, lifted 150,000 families and was crushed by U.S. operations that paved the way for the Medellín and Cali cartels. The story of La Bonanza Marimbera.

Cannabis and Cancer: What We Know, What We Suspect, and What Nobody Can Prove Yet

July 29, 2026 No Comments

Cancer patients are using cannabis faster than physicians can tell them whether it works. A look at what the trials actually show on nausea, pain and tumors, where the cure story came from, and the study still running that could finally answer the question.

The Frank Gallagher Thesis Shaped Welfare For Decades. The Data Just Demolished It.

July 14, 2026 No Comments

For decades, policymakers have operated on a simple assumption: give poor people cash, and they’ll spend it on drugs. A growing body of evidence disagrees.