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Week in Weed – September 28, 2024

Week in Weed – September 28, 2024

This week at StratCann, four cannabis companies were included among the top growing companies in Canada, Simply Solventless announced its plan to acquire ANC for $10 million in cash and stock, and Manitobans may finally be able to grow cannabis at home in 2025 legally.

Looking at the most recent figures from Statistics Canada, cannabis sales continue to show signs of levelling off, and David Brown commented on three upcoming provincial elections and how cannabis isn’t really a factor in any of them.

Koppert provided their insight on how to identify and naturally eliminate cannabis pests, while Four20 Premium Markets’s NOI proceedings were continued.    

In law enforcement news, Calgary Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying a man behind several recent cannabis store robberies, four Canadians were caught trying to smuggle cannabis into the UK, and police in Ontario shut down two unlicensed cannabis shops in Niagara Falls.    

In other cannabis news…

New Brunswick is seeking applications for a new private cannabis store in Dalhousie. CannabisNB also announced a new cannabis farmgate location in Drummond

Grow Up founder Randy Rowe spoke with local media about the upcoming Grow Up Conference and Expo in Edmonton from September 29-October 1. (StratCann will be there!)

C3 President Paul McCarthy wrote about the challenges the industry faces with high excise rates in a guest piece in the Hill Times (paywall). And, C3 is hosting a half-day conference in Ottawa on October 1 to discuss these issues. 

The European Union Drugs Agency finished a four-day visit to Canada, hosted by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, discussing topics that included cannabis initiatives as well as a visit to the SQDC.

Village Farms International Inc., the parent company of Pure Sunfarms, announced that it acquired the remaining equity ownership interest in Leli Holland, B.V. The company also announced that it has completed construction of the Leli Holland cultivation facility in the town of Drachten.

Avant Brands announced that it has entered into an exclusive trademark licensing agreement with Nectar Portfolio Pty Ltd., an Australian medicinal cannabis importer and distributor, marking Avant’s entry into the Australian medical cannabis market with its BLK MKT brand.

Avicanna Inc. announced a medical cannabis study through the MyMedi.ca medical cannabis care platform. The company seeks around 1,000 volunteers for its prospective non-interventional observational study.

Owen Sound, Ontario, hopes to improve safety by installing surveillance cameras paid for with the city’s Community Policing Reserve and Cannabis Reserve Funds.

Local media spoke with residents in Oro-Medonte Ontario about their thoughts on the Medical Saints cannabis operation on the outskirts of Shanty Bay. “Nobody got exactly what they wanted, but we came to an amicable solution,” said the mayor in another article.

La Sûreté du Québec says it has seized thousands of illegally-grown outdoor cannabis plants so far this year.

Quebec is going to court to fight the dumping of contaminated soil along the shores of a lake in the Mohawk community of Kanesatake. Media report that an affidavit from a government investigator names two cannabis dispensaries that have been built along the filled-in shoreline. 

Investigators from the ACCES Cannabis Unit of the Quebec City Police Department (SPVQ) arrested a 47-year-old man during a search of a business on rue Saint-Joseph for the illegal sale of cannabis and its derivatives.

Five people now face charges following a series of police raids on two unlicensed Spirit River Cannabis stores in London, Ontario and the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation in August

A Canadian woman caught attempting to bring nearly 18 kg of cannabis into Bermuda, hidden in her suitcase, was jailed for two years.

In international cannabis news…

A new ordinance in Colorado Springs, Colorado, requires that recreational cannabis shops not to be allowed within a one-mile buffer zone from schools, childcare facilities, and alcohol and drug treatment facilities, effectively banning them from most of the city. The city has no such rule for businesses that sell alcohol across the city. 

A new report out of the US from a federal advisory panel says US health authorities need to play a more significant role in the nation’s cannabis policy. The report also includes a large section on Canada’s public-health-focused approach to cannabis legalization. 

California has banned hemp products that contain any amount of THC in response to concerns with intoxicating substances like delta-8 THC.

Lobbying groups opposing and supporting a congressional effort to reign in the free-for-all around “intoxicating” hemp-derived cannabinoids in the US under the Farm Bill have ramped up their efforts in 2024 (paywall). 

Kentucky awarded the first business license for its startup medical cannabis program, selecting a laboratory that will be assigned to test products before they are offered to patients. A lottery to award licenses to cultivators and processors will be held on October 28. The lottery for retail licenses will be announced later but will likely be in November.

And lastly, The US Security Exchange Commission issued fines of $175k each to two former Weedmaps executives for “negligent misrepresentations” of the company’s user numbers.

Walking Around the Hound of Hell

Walking Around the Hound of Hell

Walking Around the Hound of Hell

by Miles Mathis / September 19, 2024

Last week a very important class-action lawsuit was filed against the big-six scientific publishers [ELSEVIER, WOLTERS KLUWER, JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC.,TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP, SPRINGER NATURE] for collusion, racketeering, violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and general malevolence to scientific progress. This lawsuit is decades overdue, and the fact that it hasn’t been filed until now is just one more indication of the weakness of the field and of the scientists that inhabit it. Scientists should have revolted against this system from the start, refusing to be a part of it, as I did, but even now they aren’t. This one lady neuroscientist at UCLA is filing a lawsuit, which is a start, but hundreds of thousands of scientists worldwide should have gone on strike decades ago. They didn’t and aren’t, telling you a lot about the field of science and the modern human in general.

The reason I am publicizing this lawsuit should be obvious: it confirms everything I have been saying since 2000, while also making more conspicuous the players arrayed against me. Even I wasn’t aware of the full extent of it, or the entire array of facts. If you read the linked lawsuit – and I highly recommend you do – you will see that Google has probably NOT been censoring me mainly on their own behalf or at the behest of top physicists or physics departments, as I had somewhat naively assumed. That may also be the case, and almost assuredly is, but given the money involved, I now see it is far more likely I am being censored and attacked primarily at the behest of these major publishing houses, who see me as a threat to their racket. The last thing they want mainstream scientists to see is the level of my success in driving around these publishers and the other rules of “doing science”. The fact that I have been able to outrank not only these publishing houses but the university sites and even Wikipedia and Britannica must burn up their CEOs, boards, and investors. If scientists figure out they can reach a far bigger audience far faster by doing so directly, as I do, cutting out these publishers, the roof will cave in.

This also allows us to explain my incredible success online: being the first to exploit this loophole, I filled a void no one else had even known was there. While everyone else was bogged down in this manufactured swamp, I was jetting ahead at full speed on my hovercraft, unencumbered by fake peer review and all the other nets of this scheme. And this was no accident. I didn’t just get lucky. My freedom was a result of my choice. As soon as I came in contact with this beast, I knew it for what it was and wanted to have nothing to do with it. It made no sense from the beginning to me that I should sell my work to some publisher for free (or more likely paying them), even gifting them the copyright, while getting nothing in return. What kind of fool would sign up to be raped like that? My first encounters with peer review were equally negative, since I found these reviewers and editors weren’t just wildly hostile to any new ideas, but were incapable of following basic logic or highschool algebra. It was like trying to reason with apes. More than one of them actually argued that a previous textbook equation (x’ = x – vt) with zero provenance was a “self evident truth”. I have since been proved right on that question and most others, but don’t expect these bozos to ever admit it. They will go to their graves insisting science is “what we learned in our textbooks in college”. Whenever they encounter something they don’t understand – which is hourly – they default to that.

What is most incredible, and putrid, is that most scientists don’t just fall prostrate at this corrupt system, they actually support it and even sell it, insisting that peer review and academic publishing is a great boon to science, keeping it pure and healthy. The same sort of inverted sales pitch we get from mainstream medicine, by the way. The mainstream, which is preventing all progress in all fields, sells itself as the great defender of progress. The usual fascists hiding behind democracy.

Rapine of both the producers and the public by a cloaked middleman, sold to you as freedom, independence, and health. Same thing we see with agriculture and food production, healthcare, art, and governance in general. Everything is upside-down and inside-out.

The text of this lawsuit is very extensive, but there are many things this Dr. Lucina Uddin missed nonetheless, one of them being that progress isn’t just being stalled in science, the entire field has been pre-gutted by this very scheme. No one with any self-respect would sign these contracts, leaving only those with little or none, and those people aren’t the cream of the crop. They don’t have the mental make-up to come up with new ideas in any field. I first came across this phenomenon in art, since it is the same there. The galleries and auction houses run the show there, their strings being pulled by the usual dark government entities, and the critics and magazines do the bidding of the galleries. So the producer – the artist – is defined out of the game from the start. To get anywhere, a young artist has to do what he is told, which of course can’t lead to real art. Real artists won’t put up with that, so they bow out from the beginning, or are tossed out with violence, leaving only the toadies who will. Toadies don’t make art, they only make the simulacra of art that can be used as the tokens of a vast money laundering scam. Mutatis mutandis, it is the same in science, where all real scientists quit the field at a young age, refusing to make the required bows to Mammon and other false gods, and the field is left to pretenders.

Nor is this an accident or side-effect. It is the desired outcome. For the financiers to control a field, they first have to decimate it, bombing it down to bare Earth. Think of it like corporate raiders of the Richard Gere type in Pretty Woman, who buy a failing company at a bargain price, then fire everyone and sell the parts. Only after that will they rebuild it on their own terms, terms of corruption and predation. We just saw it in the news today, as NPR reported on the bankruptcy of Steward Healthcare and the refusal of its CEO Ralph de la Torre to testify before Congress. A Senate committee just voted to find him in criminal contempt. This all started in 2010 when private equity firm Cerberus Capital bought out Caritas Christi Healthcare. They even told you who they were with that name Cerberus, since Cerberus is the three-headed hound of Hell.

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Just so you know, Cerberus Global is run by former Vice President Dan Quayle. They forget to mention that in these Congressional proceedings and reports. The Chairman is former Treasury Secretary John Snow. The CEO of Cerberus Capital is Steve Feinberg. I guess none of those guys knew what was going on at Steward, since Congress is leaving them alone. I wonder why? And Steward isn’t only in trouble in the US, it is the center of a huge scandal in Phoenician center Malta, where de la Torre and others are being charged with bribery, theft and money laundering.

Anyway, Cerberus drove the company into the ground, cutting costs and services while making huge profits. The only difference between that scheme and the one of scientific publishing is that the publishers have found a way to make their rape of the producer and the field permanent, by crushing scientists to the extent they no longer remember they are being crushed. They have trained the slaves to defend their own servitude.

It is also worth pointing out that the current scheme is vanity publishing, or worse than vanity publishing. The mainstream scientists pay the publisher to publish them, sign away their copyright for nothing, and get nothing but (perhaps) a few bones thrown to them by their departments and the glossy magazines. A few of them have to be made famous, to manufacture the appearance of living field, so everyone clamors for those few spots. But even those at the top of the field are still toadies to the system, promulgating the long lie that science is healthy, productive, and moving forward. Which makes it all the more ironic when I am accused of vanity publishing for putting out my own website and books. The difference being, I own my own copyrights and take all my own profits, while having to bow to no one. The mainstream scientist has to bow to his department, his colleagues, his coauthors, his publishers, his reviewers, his editors, and all the other various academic police. His freedom to do anything new is zero, while mine is infinite. Which is precisely why I have done it and he hasn’t.

Which allows us to answer another question. Many of my readers haven’t understood why I have no support from mainstream physics. Even after they delve a bit deeper and come to see the incredible levels of control and coercion in the field, they still don’t understand it. Eric Weinstein – a hedge-fund guy promoted in 2013 as the next Einstein – admitted that coercion recently in one of his long interviews with Chris Williamson, even explicitly labeling it as fear. He was visiting some of his friends in the math department at Harvard (if I remember correctly), and one of them was complaining that no one felt free to speak (about the perceived death of physics). Why? Weinstein admits that, too: “there is an entire community of PhD trolls hunting people who dissent”. Weinstein say they are hunting people like Sabine Hossenfelder, but that is misdirection. She is a troll herself, so she has nothing to fear from those people. Everyone – including Eric Weinstein – knows I am target number one of this community of trolls. But Weinstein can’t mention my name because I have also outed him as a mole. It is turtles all the way down, you know.

One of my readers and supporters who has a background in the sciences but is retired and not a name in the field, said this to me two days ago, at my birthday party. He said he could understand why working physicists, chemists, or mathematicians would be afraid to mention me: their careers were in jeopardy and they had families to feed. But what about a retired professor emeritus? He has less to lose. Why hasn’t one of those people said a word in my defense? Well, we can now see it is because a professor emeritus in science was of this type to start with. It is why he progressed in the field. He did not ask questions and was not galled by being a slave to these publishers and other overseers. He and I are completely different types of people, and his retiring will not bring him closer to me. He has embraced his servitude, or buried it deep, and – short of some sort of major conversion – will not relish having to transcend that. To put it simply, their years in the field under this rubric have brainwashed most scientists to any alternative, so much so that most of them can’t read my papers without actual pain. A self-protective flight response is triggered, since reading any further would be to admit their entire academic lives have been wasted. More than one of them has admitted that to me in those words.

The strange thing about this new lawsuit is that Dr. Uddin has no co-authors. She calls this a class action, but no co-plaintiffs are listed. No one had the cojones to join her, which is typical. The field has been completely eviscerated, and not one person with any backbone remains. I even have my doubts about this Dr. Uddin, since it occurs to me this lawsuit – like many others we have researched – may be a planned fail. If she loses this, they can then use her loss to further discourage the field, and warn off any other scientists from trying this.

We have seen this many times: they fake a court case and a judgment, and all those who were thinking of suing along the same lines – in this case the Sherman Antitrust Law – will think again. They won’t be able to find attorneys, since attorneys will see this fake judgment and beg off.

But it doesn’t matter, because as I have proved, the way around these publishers wasn’t via a lawsuit, it was via the internet and direct publishing. You can lose decades fighting these huge companies in court, and that is how they want it. It is one more part of the beast. But you can walk around the beast with no effort, no matter how many scary heads he may appear to have.

Addendum: I got an interesting email today, Sept. 21, confirming my analysis above once again from someone in the jaws of the beast. Here it is:

Hi Miles, Today’s “Walking Around the Hounds of Hell” was terrific. It cuts close to home for us academics who haven’t had the balls or brilliance (yet!) to cut ourselves free from the abominable institutions we work for and that fund our research….

With postgraduate degrees in mathematics, I got in via your calculus papers – how I first found you, on an alternative health site where one of your fans posted a link to your article arguing that Leibniz/Newtonian limit calculations were wrong. Then I read your corrections to Newton, Einstein, the pi paper, etc, before discovering your “All updates” page. I’d already noticed I was more skeptical about current events like 9/11 than most of my colleagues – and that many questions were off-limits in the academy, even asking basic questions of logic, physics etc.

Your critiques of “us” sell-outs and mostly mid-wits, not smart or insightful enough to have ever had a real shot at making significant contributions to science/art/knowledge, are spot-on. The most mediocre, unimaginative and willing-to-lie amongst us are the ones promoted into leadership positions for the most part. Some smarter ones carve out niches where they can do some “interesting” work within prescribed boundaries or do insignificant stuff where the world leaves us alone while the salary continues. That failure in moral reasoning, turning away from the desire to know by accepting so many boundaries and power-plays (including from the journal publishing industry), deserves your criticisms. It’s cathartic to read about your freedom, having “walked around” the beast rather than tried to compromise or become part of it.

I forgot to mention (because I didn’t want to go on and on) that your unification of the Lagrangian and the charge field were supreme moments of inspiration for me. Although physics is not my field, I do work with mathematical “dynamical systems modeling” with “emergent phenomena” and think I’m in a good position to see the validity of your critiques about obfuscation with math modeling that doesn’t represent the real-world phenomena of interest and appreciate your singularly important contributions to physics. Makes me want to “walk around” too.

Miles Mathis is an American renaissance man, realist painter, physics innovator, and cultural revisionist. You can visit his events analysis site at https://mileswmathis.com/updates.html and his science site at https://milesmathis.com/updates.html .

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Four cannabis companies included among top growing companies in Canada

Four cannabis companies included among top growing companies in Canada

Four Canadian cannabis companies made the Globe & Mail’s annual Report on Business, ranking Canada’s top growing companies. 

In its fifth year, the annual report ranks 416 participating private and public Canadian businesses on three-year revenue growth.

The list includes three companies behind some of Canada’s largest retail chains: 1CM, which is the parent company of retail chains T Cannabis and Cost Cannabis; SNDL, which operates Superette, Spiritleaf, and Value Buds (as well as cannabis production); and High Tide, the parent company of the Canna Cabana chain of retailers. 

In addition to SNDL’s footprint on the cannabis production side of the industry, the list also includes cannabis producer Avant Brands (BLKMKT, Tenzo, Treehugger, GreenTec, and cognoscente).

Located in Markham, Ontario, 1CM ranked 6th out of 416 companies with 116 employees and between $25M-$50M in revenue in 2023. The company is listed as a “vice retailer” touching the liquor, cannabis, tobacco, and vapes sectors. As of late 2023, 1CM operated 29 retail locations in Alberta, BC, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. It also listed four locations in development in Ontario. 

The company also operates a technology platform that provides B2B and B2C solutions such as Last Mile Delivery, Digital Signage, Big Data Analytics & Wholesale Clearing Services.

Alberta’s SNDL is ranked as the 34th top company in the annual report, with 2,600 employees and 2023 revenue between $750 million and $1 billion. In addition to its retail assets Value Buds, Spiritleaf, Superette, and Firesale, SNDL also produces cannabis and manages several investments, including Canadian cannabis companies like Indiva and Delta 9. 

Also based in Alberta, High Tide ranked 87th on the Globe & Mail’s list, with 1,600 employees and 2023 revenue between $250M – $500M

While the majority of High Tide’s sales are in the Canadian market through its Canna Cabana retail chain, it also operates its e-commerce platforms in the US such as Smoke Cartel, Grasscity, Daily High Club, DankStop, NuLeaf Naturals and FABCBD, as well as USA sales on its international e-commerce platforms. In addition, High Tide operates a warehouse that primarily services its e-commerce operations.

Lastly, BC-based Avant Brands (formerly GTEC Holdings) reached the 182nd spot on the list, with 200 employees and 2023 revenue between $25M and $50M.

Avant and High Tide made the list of 425 in 2023, along with Toronto’s Cronos Group. This is the first time 1CM and SNDL have made the cut, Avant’s second and High Tide’s fourth.

The Globe & Mail’s Report on Business Ranking of Canada’s Top Growing Companies ranks qualifying independent Canadian companies by the percentage of their revenue growth over three years. The application deadline for the 2025 ranking is May 23, 2025.

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420 with CNW — FIVE Ways to Keep Finances Healthy in Marijuana Industry

420 with CNW — FIVE Ways to Keep Finances Healthy in Marijuana Industry

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Marijuana leaders need to use sound financial techniques when operating in the cannabis sector. Given the complexities of the space, companies must devise strategies such as establishing relationships with field experts and looking for fresh revenue streams to differentiate themselves and remain competitive.

Here are five crucial financial pointers for marijuana company owners:

Focus on increasing cash flow

Maintaining a healthy cash flow is essential for any marijuana company. This entails keeping a careful eye on earnings and outlays in addition to monitoring key performance indicators such as yield per square foot for growers or average sales per customer for retailers.

A lot of new operators tend to hire too many staff members too soon or invest in pointless facility improvements. Nonetheless, companies can attain profitability more quickly and guarantee long-term financial stability by carefully controlling these costs without compromising on quality or service.

Keep accurate financial records

Clear and accurate financial records are essential for the smooth running of a cannabis business. These records not only help in regulatory compliance but are also vital for attracting investors or obtaining loans.

Hiring accountants who understand the specifics of the industry is a smart move to ensure that financial records are both detailed and correct. Regularly tracking and reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs) also provides insights that can guide decision-making and help the business adjust to changes.

Refine tax strategy

The tax regulations in the marijuana industry are complex, making it essential to work with tax professionals who are well-versed in cannabis laws. Understanding Section 280E and how it impacts your business can help reduce unnecessary tax liabilities.

Tax responsibilities can be reduced by allocating expenses to the cost of goods sold, but it’s crucial to make sure that all tax procedures adhere to legal requirements. Staying informed about regulatory changes and preparing to adapt quickly can give your businesses an edge.

Be compliant

Compliance in the cannabis sector isn’t just a legal necessity — it’s a core part of business success. A cannabis license is often the most valuable asset a business holds, so protecting it should be a top priority.

Having a knowledgeable staff that is familiar with industry rules can help a company stay ahead of compliance problems. It’s also important to stay updated on the rules in every area you operate, as they can differ greatly from one state or municipality to another.

Build solid banking relationships

Given the challenges cannabis businesses face in accessing banking services, it’s vital to establish strong relationships with financial institutions that understand the industry’s unique needs.

Look for banks that not only offer the necessary services but also provide reasonable fees. Some institutions may charge higher rates due to the nature of the business, so it’s wise to compare options.

Finding a bank that offers interest-bearing accounts can also be beneficial by adding an extra revenue stream without additional costs. Always work with trustworthy institutions to ensure transparency and minimize risks.

Each marijuana company is different, and entities such as Curaleaf Holdings Inc. (CSE: CURA) (OTCQX: CURLF) are likely to come up with their own unique ways of making use of the strategies above as they aim to keep their finances in the best possible health.

About CNW420

CNW420 spotlights the latest developments in the rapidly evolving cannabis industry through the release of an article each business day at 4:20 p.m. Eastern – a tribute to the time synonymous with cannabis culture. The concise, informative content serves as a gateway for investors interested in the legalized cannabis sector and provides updates on how regulatory developments may impact financial markets. If marijuana and the burgeoning industry surrounding it are on your radar, CNW420 is for you! Check back daily to stay up-to-date on the latest milestones in the fast -changing world of cannabis.

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Oro-Medonte rolls with new direction given on cannabis production

Oro-Medonte rolls with new direction given on cannabis production

By Wayne Doyle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, BarrieToday.com

Locked in a multi-year battle that has cost the municipality more than $800,000 in legal fees, Oro-Medonte Township can now close the book on how to deal with Medical Saints’ cannabisoperation on the outskirts of Shanty Bay.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, township council passed a bylaw that spells out what’s allowed, based on the Ontario Land Tribunal decision, issued on July 17, and Ontario Land Tribunal order, issued on July 19.

“I want to thank staff, the public and my colleagues for undertaking these negotiations and coming to a negotiated settlement and avoiding another costly litigation in court before the Ontario Land Tribunal, where, we’ve noticed from time to time, that the results are not necessarily predictable,” Deputy Mayor Peter Lavoie told council.

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“In any case, I think we’ve come to a very good agreement that provides as much protection as possible for the residents and may not have otherwise resulted in as much protections as this current agreement reaches,” he added.

“Nobody got exactly what they wanted, but we came to an amicable solution, which is, I truly believe, sustainable as well,” said Mayor Randy Greenlaw.

Conditions defined in the new bylaw include:

  • one single detached dwelling is permitted;
  • the outdoor and indoor growing and production of cannabisare permitted, including processing activities related to harvesting, sorting, trimming, drying and storing;
  • a cannabis production and processing facility is permitted;
  • On-site retail packaging and retail sale of cannabis are prohibited;
  • A new building containing a maximum of 9,290 square metres (100,000 square feet) of floor area devoted to the indoor growing of cannabis plants restricted to a non-flowering state of vegetation only. (The landowner would have to apply for and obtain site-plan approval, enter into a development agreement, provide any securities required and address a variety of issues including stormwater management, and the mitigation of odour, light and noise impacts to the satisfaction of the township, in consultation with the landowner.)
  • West setback (Line 2) — a line parallel to Line 2 that is either 172 metres east of the Line 2 road allowance or 130 metres east from the existing easternmost main residential house, whichever is closer to Line 2.
  • South setback — a line parallel to the rail trail that is 150 metres north of the rail-trail property line.
  • East setback (Line 3) — 12 metres from the Line 3 road allowance, unless otherwise specified.

BarrieToday reached out to Medical Saints for comment, but the company did not respond.

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“This is the final step in the implementation of the settlement that was achieved for Medical Saints’ property related to the cannabis bylaw,” said Brent Spagnol, the township’s director of development services.

“This process is administrative and it does not have any bearing on the content or spirit of the settlement or the parameters of the zoning bylaw that was approved by the Ontario Land Tribunal,” he added.

420 with CNW — FIVE Ways to Keep Finances Healthy in Marijuana Industry

Missouri Plagued by Predatory Contracts in Marijuana Social Equity Program

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Last year, Destiny Brown was told that she had been recruited to operate and own a small marijuana dispensary in Missouri. Michael Halow, a marijuana investor, informed Brown that the cannabis crime on the criminal record of her father and her status as a disabled veteran made her qualified for a microbusiness license.

These qualifications had been designed for licenses like these to be awarded to disadvantaged owners of businesses, such as individuals with nonviolent cannabis offenses and lower incomes, as well as those who are disabled veterans.

Brown, a Black woman, was also under the impression that she would get paid $200,000 to run the business. To her disadvantage, she failed to read the contract she signed with Halow closely. What he hadn’t mentioned was the fact that he would have complete ownership/control of this business and she would simply be the legally known front. Halow, who has a felony conviction on his record, cannot legally hold a license.

A transcript obtained from her interview with investigators at the Division of Cannabis Regulation also reveals that Halow repeatedly told her he would give her $2 million to start and operate the business. Once Brown was awarded her license, she tried to extricate herself from the situation, but her hands seemed tied. According to the agreements she’d signed, she wouldn’t be permitted to sell even one cannabis product in the state until she repaid the $2 million in full (plus interest), or ownership changed to Halow.

A promissory note as well as memo of understanding also afforded Halow a right to convert the loan he’d give Brown to 100% of membership interest.

Brown is one of the 16 individuals who won the lottery for microbusiness licenses in October 2023. Six of these licenses were linked to Halow and have since been revoked. A deep dive found that Cannabis Business Advisors, Halow’s consulting company, was the liaison on more than 400 of the dispensary applicants.

Halow isn’t the only individual applying this strategy either.

Recently obtained contracts reveal that marijuana industry insiders or out-of-state companies have tried to leverage qualified individuals to acquire licenses while excluding them from the profits. This comes after another expose found that a firm based in Michigan was recruiting individuals on Craigslist to enter the license lottery, then using contracts to force the individuals to give up all control and profits.

The equity program, as pitched to voters in Missouri, was an avenue to help those disproportionately affected by the war on drugs to gain a foothold in this growing industry. While it was a good idea in theory, it seems nobody anticipated the emergence of exploitation and these predatory and unfair contracts.

These stories of predatory contracts in Missouri must be distressing to established cannabis companies in other U.S. markets, such as SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ: SNDL), given the effort, time and resources expended in fighting against prohibition. To see that unscrupulous individuals are trying to the abuse the social-equity programs is disturbing for everyone who wishes the industry well.

About CannabisNewsWire

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420 with CNW — FIVE Ways to Keep Finances Healthy in Marijuana Industry

NY Cannabis Insider Completes Successful NY Conference

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The NY Cannabis Insider conference was hosted at the Crowne Plaza, The Desmond Hotel, in Albany, New York, on September 25, 2024. The state’s premier cannabis event saw a great turnout of over 100 enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, marketers, traders, attorneys, and consultants, from throughout the cannabis industry.

The entry ticket covered all access to the all-day conference, happy hour and lunch, entry to the vendor fair, and offered wonderful opportunity to connect directly with leaders in the cannabis industry. Select vendors arranged for complimentary consultation sessions for attendees.

With evolutions imminent in the cannabis industry, the NY Cannabis Conference provided a powerful forum where thought leaders, giant investors, cannabis professionals, and traders could gather, interact, and discuss the new regulations, trends, upcoming technologies, and cover several points that will pave the way for the future of the cannabis trade. The conference also saw several new collaborations and alliances impacting different aspects of the cannabis industry.

Sponsors and vendors showcased their ideas and products and made important industry connections. Attendees got a chance to get their queries answered by the experts. 

Some industry topics that were discussed at length include:

  • The state of NY cannabis
  • How nationwide legalization could affect U.S. cannabis cultivation
  • Branding via community
  • Collaborating for success
  • Opportunities for innovation in the medical market
  • Playing devil’s advocate with medical market

The NY Cannabis Insider conference hosted panel discussions throughout the day listening, interacting, and sharing insights from all quarters ranging from current retailers including CAURD and SEE participants to AUCC/AUCP licensees, legacy operators, and more. Industry dignitaries graced the event presiding over the speaker sessions. They shared their wisdom and unique experiences on relevant topics that impact the cannabis industry.

To learn more about the conference, visit https://cnw.fm/rcwDz. For more information, follow NY Cannabis Insider on LinkedIn for important industry news and event announcements.

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Calgary Police want public’s help identifying cannabis store robber

Calgary Police want public’s help identifying cannabis store robber

September 26, 2024 | Staff

Calgary Police are asking for help from the public in identifying a man believed to be behind up to seven robberies targeting cannabis and liquor stores in the city.

In a notice shared on September 26, Calgary Police Services say six robberies of cannabis stores and one liquor store occurred from Tuesday, July 30, 2024, to Tuesday, September 24, 2024. They believe the man they are seeking is responsible for those robberies. 

Authorities shared several images of the man in different stores, hoping someone could help identify the man. 

Police say the suspect is believed to have entered several businesses, inquired about the products, and then fled with stolen items. In some instances, the suspect is said to have also threatened the store employees with a gun, demanded cash, and fled with an undisclosed amount of money and stolen merchandise.

The suspect is described as a man, approximately 25 years old, between 5’9” and 5’11” tall, with a medium build. The suspect is believed to have worn various distinctive outfits during the robberies that police believe may help identify them, such as:

  • A black cowboy hat with silver detail on the band, black mirrored sunglasses, a black windbreaker, black jeans, black Sketchers sneakers and was carrying a black backpack.
  • A black jacket with neon-yellow and white reflective material, black pants, a red and black toque, neon-yellow gloves, black mirrored sunglasses, black shoes and was carrying a black backpack.
  • A black hooded jacket, black pants, black mirrored sunglasses, black shoes and was carrying a black backpack.
  • A blue zip-up hoodie, a white shirt, a black and white Calgary Flames baseball cap, beige pants, blue and white runners, and was carrying a black backpack.

Anyone who has information about these incidents or knows the identity of the suspect is asked to call the police non-emergency line at 403-266-1234. More information can be found here.

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Wetiko: The Necessity of Facing Evil Within & The Trap of Externalizing All Evil

Wetiko: The Necessity of Facing Evil Within & The Trap of Externalizing All Evil

Wetiko: The Necessity of Facing Evil Within

& The Trap of Externalizing All Evil

By Bernhard Guenther, August 31, 2024

“The line separating good and evil passes, not through states, not between classes nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.”

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Topics:

    • Misconceptions And Distortions About Wetiko
    • Wetiko Makes Us Think The Problem Is Outside Of Us
    • Wetiko Hijacks Your Creative Potential And Turns It Against You
    • Evil Within You Is Not Always That Obvious
    • The Blindspot Of Many Anarchist and Alternative Communities Within The Truth Movement
    • The Charlatan, Evil Persona, And Shameless Impersonator Within You
    • The Necessity For Psycho-Spiritual Work For The Next Stage Of Humanity’s Evolution
    • Resources For Inner Work
    • The Four Ignoble Blindnesses Of Wetiko

Paul Levy, the author of three books on Wetiko, defines Wetiko as a contagious psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via an insidious collective psychosis of Titanic proportions.

This “mind virus” – which Native Americans have called “wetiko” – covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests.

I have referenced Wetiko extensively in my writings over the past ten years since Levy published his first book, Dispelling Wetiko, in 2013. Paul was also on the Cosmic Matrix podcast three times, where we explored this topic more deeply in the context of current and past events:

    1. Paul Levy – Wetiko and Quantum Revelations | TCM #14
    2. Wetiko: Healing The Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World – Paul Levy | TCM #62
    3. Undreaming Wetiko, The Nightmare Mind-Virus – Paul Levy | TCM #111

The topic of Wetiko has become more popular over the past few years thanks to Paul’s incredible research and revelations based on personal experiences. More people are also open to this information out of necessity, considering the state of the world as people look for deeper answers and insights.

Misconceptions And Distortions About Wetiko

However, with the popularity came many distortions and false ideas about Wetiko. I have noticed that many people have made up their own concepts and assumptions without ever having sincerely researched the subject.

Paul has also encountered a lot of distortions and premature assumptions about wetiko over the years to the point of making up a name for it: Premature Comprehension Delusion, or PCD:

“Wetiko has myriad ways of derailing any serious investigation into its nature. Oftentimes, for example, I’ll meet a person or a group of people who seem genuinely interested in wetiko and want to learn more.

They’ll ask me a couple of questions and then, after hardly any time at all, they think they’ve got it and feel they sufficiently understand what it’s all about—an attitude that short-circuits any deeper inquiry into realizing the endlessly mind-blowing revelation that is wetiko.

When this plays out, instead of them “getting” the radical nature of wetiko, wetiko has “gotten” them. I have come up with a name for this syndrome: premature comprehension delusion, or PCD.”

– Paul Levy, Undreaming Wetiko

One significant distortion is the tendency to see only Wetiko [and evil] in others, a particular group, or the “system.”

It’s the same trap and illusion to see the matrix only “out there” [in its various 3D manifestations] and not realize how the matrix and wetiko also work through us. It is based on the illusion that the outside world is separate from us.

Ironically, the insistence on only seeing evil out there and projecting the matrix externally keeps Wetiko and evil in power while people fight shadows on the wall. As a result, many people – even within the truth movement – have become “infected” by Wetiko, projecting it onto others and the world at large.

“We all potentially have wetiko, as it pervades and informs the underlying field of consciousness. Any one of us at any moment can fall into our unconscious and unwittingly become an instrument for the evil of wetiko to act itself out through us and incarnate in our world.

If we see someone who seems to be taken over by wetiko and we think that they have the disease and we don’t, in seeing them as separate we have fallen under the spell of the mind “virus””.

– Paul Levy, Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World

You can see it in people who are primarily negatively oriented and only see psy-ops out there with very over-simplified black-and-white views of “good” and “bad” based on psychological splitting and lacking nuance.

Lack of psychological self-awareness [inner work] and blind to a spiritual higher vision [in the context of the evolution of consciousness], many people hardly recognize any goodness [and the Divine Force] anymore but become harned, nihilistic, and disembodied (caught in the head.)

As a result, they are disconnected from Essence and their creative potential. Being disconnected from their true self, Wetiko installs a counterfeit false persona mistaken for the “true self.” This false persona becomes the vessel through which Wetiko and, as an extension, the occult hostile forces create their desired reality through negative projections.

Wetiko Makes Us Think The Problem Is Outside Of Us

One of Wetiko’s favorite strategies is to make us think the problem is outside of us while, in truth, the real problem is our misconception of who we are. As Levy writes, “Once we realize this, we can turn our attention inward, which is where the source—and the solution—of our problem is to be found.

“When we connect with our authentic self, with our true nature, we discover that our nature is naturally creative. To remember who we really are is to connect with our creativity; and in a positive feed- back loop that generates abundant life, to express oneself creatively deepens our knowledge of who we truly are and further reveals our essential nature.

Since the root essence of the wetiko mind-virus is not knowing one’s true nature, not recognizing who we truly are, this then insures that our true nature, instead of expressing itself creatively in service to ourself and others, will be channeled destructively in a limited and uncreative way that drains our life force.

If we don’t mobilize our creative resources, wetiko is more than happy to use our inner assets in a way that serves its agenda rather than our own true nature. Instead of endlessly tapping into our source and resourcing and refreshing ourselves, our own natural reserves get turned against us in a way that creates a nightmare, just like the one we are currently dreaming up in the world.”[…]

Wetiko subversively turns our “genius” for reality-creation against us in such a way that we become bewitched by the projective tendencies of our own mind.

Falling under wetiko’s spell, we become entranced by our own intrinsic gifts and talents for dreaming up our world in a way that not only doesn’t serve us, but rather, is put at the service of wetiko (whose agenda is contrary to our own). Our creativity then boomerangs against us such that we hypnotize ourselves with our creative genius, which cripples our evolutionary potential.

To the extent we are unconsciously possessed by the spirit of wetiko, it is as if a psychic tapeworm or parasite has taken over our brain and tricked us, its host, into thinking we are feeding and empowering ourselves while we are actually nourishing the parasite.

Wetiko is a virulent, psychic pathogen that insinuates thought-forms and beliefs into our mind which, due to their misleading and false nature, when unconsciously accepted and acted upon, feed it, and ultimately kill its host – us.”

– Paul Levy, ibid

As I wrote in “Facing The Deep State And Psy-Op Within Yourself—The Essence Of Shadow Work,” most people, normies, and “awake” truthers alike indulge in their projections (sometimes truthers even more than normies, ironically).

The mind and reality (by extension through the process of projective identification) will always give them a “reason” and “justification” to indulge in their projections—augmented with thought injections by occult forces [and wetiko] that trigger their unconscious shadow to feed off the emotionally charged projections of the suppressed shadow.

As Paul Levy explained in his work, this is also the modus operandi of wetiko tagging into the shadow – it feeds you what you want to see to feed off you even more. That’s why trying to expose all the lies, psy-ops, and conspiracies “out there” in the world is an endless feedback loop because “you” and the collective psyche will “dream up” more of the same, living under the illusion that the outside world is separate from “you.”

Until you stop externalizing, withdraw your projections, focus the vision within, and start living from within—grounded and embodied in Self – and reclaim your creative potential that has been hijacked against you. The wetiko-infused psyche and suppressed shadow will pull more of the same out of the “magician’s hat” to justify your projections, and you become like Don Quixote, fighting illusory windmills or shadows in Plato’s allegory of the cave.

Wetiko is powerless to control our true nature, but it can control and manipulate this false identity which it sets up within us. When we fall under the sway of wetiko’s illusion, we simultaneously identify with who we are not, while dissociating from and forgetting who we actually are – giving away our power, not to mention ourselves, in the process.”

– Paul Levy, ibid

Wetiko Hijacks Your Creative Potential And Turns It Against You

As you identify with the counterfeit version of yourself and externalize all evil, augmented by Wetiko, you will see and create more of what you claim to fight against externally. It’s an endless loop. Living in that externalized state – especially constantly glued to the internet in a disembodied state – you are more vulnerable to manipulation and control while you believe [lie to yourself] that you are “awake”, “free”, and “sovereign.”

As within so without. What we see playing out in the external world disguised as conspiracies, psy-ops, or the deep state is also related to our personal and collective shadow. That which we don’t face within ourselves is also manifested in the outside world as “fate” on an individual and collective level. Hence, all there is are lessons.

It’s very important to understand and see within ourselves how we can easily become unwitting agents of Wetiko, for we all have the potential for evil within. It’s part of our shadow.

No one is exempt, and if you think you are exempt and think you are only “good” and “virtuous” and see only evil “out there” in others, then you have already become a wetiko-infected agent of evil – and the matrix “has you.”

This is how Wetiko disguises itself. You are blind to it within yourself but only project it externally, creating more evil via projective identification. That’s how most humans are trapped in a frequency prison distracted by the shadows on the wall, creating and feeding more of the same, just in different disguises.

Wetiko-infused evil is not always apparent but works in more subtle ways. It tags into your unacknowledged shadows, traumas, ego blindspots, and weaknesses, giving you thought suggestions and desires that are not of your own but that you think are your own. It works with temptation while targeting your lower nature of vanity, lust, narcissism, envy, jealousy, greed, self-importance or self-pity, and poor-me consciousness, and so on.

Most of all, it feeds on fear and revels in blame and victim consciousness, caught in the endless drama triangle of victim-rescuer-perpetrator.

Evil Within You Is Not Always That Obvious

Evil, in this context, doesn’t have to be apparent wrongdoings and crimes like murder, violence, rape, etc. In Buddhism, there is the concept of far enemies and near enemies of the four Divine Virtues (Brahma-Vihara). These Divine Virtues are:

    1. Equanimity (Inner Balance/Peace)
    2. Loving Kindness
    3. Compassion
    4. Sympathetic Joy

Every virtue has a far enemy, its opposite, which is very obvious. The far enemies of equanimity are instability, agitation, craving, and paranoia –  for Loving Kindness; they are hate and ill-will – for Compassion; they are cruelty and sadism – for Sympathetic Joy; they are jealousy, resentment, and envy.

The near enemies of these virtues are more challenging to discern, especially in ourselves, and that’s how Wetiko easily gets in under the disguise of distorted virtues.

The near enemies of equanimity are indifference, cynicism, and apathy – for Loving Kindness; they are sentimentality, selfish affection, conditional love, and co-dependence – for Compassion; they are pity and feeling sorry for others [diminishing them] – for Sympathetic Joy; they are hypocrisy, phoniness, and exuberance.

All these near enemies are aspects of “evil” [i.e., they are not aspects of the true Self], and we all have them inside of us—unless we are enlightened and continuously live in Joy, the state of our eternal soul’s being of the true Self.

Many pathological traits have become normalized in today’s sick society. We live in a wetiko-infected world, and it’s within all of us, at the very least, in the potential. For example, when you look at another person’s behavior and say, “I could or would never do that,” or shame others with projected anger, envy, superiority/inferiority online or offline [even non-verbal via your thought projections], wetiko has you in its grips, and you don’t know it.

The Blindspot Of Many Anarchist and Alternative Communities Within The Truth Movement

Wetiko operates nonlinearly, nonlocally, and multi-dimensionally. You can’t hide from it or escape from it physically.

Over the years, I have witnessed many “anarchist” communities and movements striving for “sovereignty” and “independence,” trying to ”exit the system.”

However, their lack of spiritual (and psychological) development and insight (primarily via externalizing everything and not sincerely facing evil within but only projecting it externally) resulted in disintegration and many other issues – a classic example of what Gurdjieff called the “trap of the revolutionary mind.” It’s how easily Wetiko can take over these communities through its members unconsciously.

“One of the reasons wetiko is so hard to pin down is that it has multiple channels of operation: both covert and overt, inner and outer and everywhere in-between. Wetiko simultaneously operates intrapersonally (within our own mind), interpersonally (through our relationships), and transpersonally (through collective world events).

Each of these—our individual, relational and collective processes—are internested iterations of a deeper fractal – which is to say that these different dimensions of our experience are actually indivisibly interconnected and inter-reflective of each other. All of these multi-dimensional processes are informed by wetiko in different yet similar ways.”

– Paul Levy, Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World

It doesn’t imply not striving for communities and self-sustainability. However, if it is a mechanical reaction under the assumptions that matrix or “system” is something we need “exit” or “escape” from physically not realizing that the outside world is a reflection of our internal landscape and unconscious, and we are only fixated on seeing the problem “out there” [as Wetiko tricks us into thinking], then Wetiko has us already in its grips, and nothing will change fundamentally in the outside world.

The Charlatan, Evil Persona, And Shameless Impersonator Within You

“This hidden foe lodged in the human breast Man must overcome or miss his higher fate. This is the inner war without escape.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Wetiko feeds through you and makes you feel “better” about yourself in comparison to others [looking down on “normies,” “sheeple,” or “statists”]. It strengthens the false self you mistake for the true self. It’s an extremely hard addiction to break, for it indulges in your lower nature and is supported by society and your peers of consensus reality overtaken by a group hive mind entity. It feeds on identification with a side, belief, ideology, movement, group, etc.

Be honest with yourself. How quickly do you judge anyone you see on social media with your projected negativity as you scroll down the timeline? How much do you feed off of any attention you get? Wetiko is right there in you, and it’s very mechanical and without “free will.”

Your ego-personality and wounded self will rationalize, justify, and deny the potential for evil within you. Even as you read this article, wetiko is already trying to give you excuses for denying it all.

Wetiko will overinflate you with narcissistic self-importance or dimmish you with self-pity, false humility, and avoidance, trying to hide from everyone. It acts out in passive or overt aggressiveness. It will try putting others down [even just within your mind via thought injections] to make you feel better about yourself. It will get you stuck in pride, not being able to admit that you are wrong and lying to yourself.

Side note: Letting go of pride and blame is a crucial breakthrough in one’s spiritual evolution based on the map of consciousness (David Hawkins) to rise above 200. Eighty percent of humanity is below 200, which is also the frequency where Wetiko and the occult hostile forces have easier access. More here:

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I put this mirror right on me. I can see all the traits within me, all aspects and potential of evil, lurking and waiting to project and act out if there is anything unconscious within me it can grasp and tag into.

All these are seeds of evil—of “The Ignorance,” as Sri Aurobindo called it. In his work of the Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo also hinted at Wetiko, the false counterfeit version of us. He referred to it as:

“…An incorrigible charlatan and actor, full of hidden movements…a shameless impersonator,…covering himself with a sevenfold overcoat of tragedy and gloom, and he would not feel his existence justified if he couldn’t be colossally miserable.

At every moment he [the seeker] must proceed with a vigilant eye upon the deceits of the ego and the ambushes of the misleading Powers of Darkness. Wherever desire and ego harbor, passion, and disturbance harbor with them and share their life.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo also calls it the Evil Persona, mimicking the true self as Wetiko does. It attaches within us and is the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve on our path toward awakening:

A person greatly endowed for the [Great] work has always or almost always, a being attached to him, sometimes appearing like a part of him, which is just the contradiction of the thing he centrally represents in the work to be done.

Or if it is not there at first, not bound to his personality, a force of this kind enters into his environment as soon as he begins his movement to realize. Its business seems to be to oppose, to create stumblings and wrong conditions, in a word, to set before him the whole problem of the work he has started to do.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Similar to Wetiko, Sri Aurobindo also points out in his own words that the “pathogen” of the evil persona is also the “medicine” and, when utilized correctly, helps one to advance in the work and accomplish the goal:

“It would seem that the problem could not, in the occult economy of things, be solved otherwise than by the predestined instrument making the difficulty his own. That would explain many things that seem very disconcerting on the surface.”

As The Mother explained:

You have a special goal, a special mission, your own particular realization, and you carry within yourself all the obstacles needed to make this realization perfect. Always you will find that shadow and light go together in you: you have a capacity, you have also the negation of that capacity.

And if you discover a very dense and deep-rooted shadow in you, you can be certain there is also a great light somewhere. It is up to you to use the one in order to realize the other.”

– The Mother Mirra Alfassa

The Necessity For Psycho-Spiritual Work For The Next Stage Of Humanity’s Evolution

Witnessing its mechanicalness within is what Gurdjieff called coming face to face with the “terror of the situation” or the “trickster and charlatan within,” in Sri Aurobindo’s words. These are just different expressions for facing wetiko within oneself. That’s when the real work begins. Anything else is just shadowboxing or spiritual bypassing.

But I also know that wetiko ONLY has power if it is left unchecked—if I deny it within myself and shove it into the shadow of my unconscious or project it on others in an oversimplified black-and-white manner where we only see “good” or “bad” without nuance—the process of psychological splitting.

That’s where Wetiko thrives, and the occult hostile forces take over and tag into – in the parts of yourself, you are not aware of or any pathologies you have normalized and justified within yourself. As long as I pretend to be all “good,” I have given Wetiko more power as it drives my life unconsciously. It comes out in mechanical self-sabotaging ways, even potentially hurting others.

As an extension, by shoving it into the shadow, you feed and “create” the evil “out there” collectively. You then also feed the hostile forces that feed on all human unconscious mechanical behavior and projections. The only way to defeat wetiko and evil is to make it conscious and turn the pathogen into medicine, for it contains its remedy.

This is a highly vulnerable process because you need to allow yourself to feel feelings you have suppressed for years and even lifetimes. “Toughing it out” or escaping into the head creates more armor, avoidance, and entry points for Wetiko.

Paul Levy also points out Wetiko’s teaching function. By engaging in inner psycho-spiritual work, we turn the “pathogen” into “medicine.”

“Its own self-revelation, wetiko disease provides its own psychic medicine, but in order to receive its healing ‘benefits’ we have to recognize and more deeply understand this miracle in psycho-spiritual health care.

The very thing that is potentially destroying us is at the same time waking us up. A potential catalyst for our evolution as a species, we are all co-creating and dreaming wetiko up together.

Wetiko is a truly quantum phenomenon, in that it is the deadliest poison and the most healing medicine co-joined in one superposed state. Will wetiko kill us? Or will it awaken us? Everything depends upon if we recognize what it is potentially revealing to us.

The powers of darkness are coming up, and we need to come to terms with what they are revealing – or suffer the consequences. Contrary to solely being a sign of increasing moral degeneracy or decay, the revelation of darkness is a necessary and critically important part of the next stage of humanity’s collective psycho-spiritual evolution.”

– Paul Levy, ibid

Before we can awaken, we must admit to ourselves how asleep we really are. Before we can truly discern truth and lies in the world out there, we must face the lies we tell ourselves first and foremost, which is the hardest part for the avoidance, justifications, and rationalizations of the wetiko-infected mind will avoid the necessary “disillusionment” at any cost, getting stuck in blame and victim consciousness, self-pity, or self-importance.

That’s why working alone is hard and limited: Your wounded ego will trick you, as you cannot see yourself objectively. We need to engage with others in the same Work so we don’t get off the path. This has also traditionally been the role of a “guru” or “teacher”: a mirror to help you see yourself clearly, not someone who saves you or gives you knowledge and information.

I would not have been able to do the Work over the years without my teachers, mentors, friends, and partner. There is a limit to how much self-work you can do on your own, for wetiko will eventually trick you.

Before we can do ”good” in the world and “help” others, we must face the potential for evil within ourselves, our selfishness, and our narcissism and recognize how we already contribute to it. Again, I’m not taking myself out of the equation.

Great humility is needed, but not a distorted humility of self-diminishment. We need the humility to admit how insincere we actually are without blaming ourselves or falling into a spiral of internalized shame when we face the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see or acknowledge.

But the only way out is through. In my exploration of the shadow within and Wetiko entry points, I have also found the Divine, my essence and true Self that rises above all, for Wetiko can’t take over, possess, or affect our true nature.

But no steps can be skipped, and it’s easy to slip off at any point during the Ascent and Descent.

There is still much more work to do. The resistance of the lower nature and collective slumber of the masses are palpable, but we are far beyond the point of return.

Everything is interrelated. Nothing is isolated.

As within, so Without. As Without So Within.

Resources For Inner Work

Learn more about how to do this inner work and ignite your creative potential, bringing forth your true Self and closing off any entry points for Wetiko and occult hostile forces:

The Four Ignoble Blindnesses Of Wetiko

A play on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism by Paul Levy

    1. You are blind to your own blindness, i.e., you are doubly blind. You’re blind and you do not know you are blind and in fact imagine that you can see clearly and come to believe that you can see more clearly than those who are clear-sighted. You then become unaware of what it is to be sighted, as you have no reference point for comparison.
    2. You are blind to the very existence of wetiko and its malign effects within your mind. You do not see how you are unwittingly colluding with wetiko’s pernicious effects and thereby you are unaware of how you are having negative or ill effects upon others and the world.
    3. You are blind to your own light, which is to say that wetiko blocks you from seeing both your own darkness as well as your own light. You are blinded to and incapable of seeing your true nature and identify instead with a false imposter of who you truly are.
    4. You are blind to the fact that wetiko is a revelation. Being blind to your blindness, being blind to the existence of wetiko, and being blind to your own light necessarily results in being blind to wetiko’s revelatory function. Wetiko is potentially revealing your own creative genius, power and agency. Recognizing that wetiko is a revelation is to realize that wetiko contains encoded within it not just its own medicine and cure, but a blessing, for it is helping you to wake up to the dreamlike nature of the universe and to remember who you actually are.

Abridged Video Version:

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420 with CNW — FIVE Ways to Keep Finances Healthy in Marijuana Industry

420 with CNW — Washington State Marijuana Industry Readies for Change as Feds Mull Reclassification

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Cannabis industry leaders in Washington State are contemplating the implications of reclassification for researchers and local customers. President Joe Biden disclosed in May that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) was considering a substantial change to the classification of cannabis. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) currently classifies marijuana as a schedule I substance, classing it with methamphetamine and heroin. This classification suggests that there is little to no medicinal benefit to marijuana.

The Biden administration’s proposal suggests moving marijuana to a less severe schedule 3 status, indicating a lower potential for abuse or addiction.

Dr. Susan Ferguson, director of the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug and Alcohol Institute, noted that the change cannot come fast enough. Ferguson and her team have faced challenges due to what they view as outdated federal cannabis regulations. Currently, Ferguson’s lab is studying the effects of marijuana on mice to explore nonaddictive treatment options, which could potentially lead to breakthroughs in conditions such as epilepsy. Unfortunately, the quality and quantity of cannabis available for research is quite low due to the federal scheduling of marijuana.

On the other hand, critics highlight the risks of addiction and the increasing prevalence of Marijuana Use Disorder, particularly among teenagers. Ferguson acknowledges these concerns but argues that research is essential for achieving medical advancements.

While many in the industry support relaxed federal restrictions, some worry about the consequences. Marijuana store owners, for instance, could benefit from being able to make tax deductions under more lenient federal rules, but some fear that large corporations will eventually dominate the market, pushing out smaller retailers.

Ryan Kunkel, an early pioneer in Washington’s cannabis retail business, has already seen these challenges firsthand. At the height of his career, Kunkel’s company, Have a Heart, held 22 licenses across six states. Now, he’s exiting the business, having sold many of his stores. Today, he only operates a few locations in the Seattle area. “In due course, marijuana will be offered for sale in grocery stores and other establishments alongside tobacco and alcohol,” said Kunkel.

Despite these concerns, Kunkel believes that reclassifying marijuana at the federal level could lead to lower prices for users.

An unprecedented 43,000 remarks were made in the public comment period about the DEA’s rescheduling proposal. The comment window closed on July 22, 2024, but there is still no definitive timeline for the DEA’s final ruling. An administrative hearing is scheduled for Dec. 2, 2024, which may delay any conclusive action until 2025.

This ongoing rescheduling process isn’t only being awaited by companies in Washington State. Even entities in other jurisdictions, such as Cronos Group Inc. (NASDAQ: CRON) (TSX: CRON), are also waiting for the final rule so that they can ascertain how their operations and plans could be impacted.

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