Popular app, Weedmaps is facing heat in the city of Sacremento for their advertising practice.
Per Mj Biz Daily
The California Bureau of Cannabis Control sent a cease-and-desist letter last month to Irvine-based Ghost Management Group, the owner of popular marijuana dispensary finder Weedmaps.com, ordering the company to stop advertising unlicensed operators or face unspecified “criminal and administrative penalties.”
Sacramento authorities recently sent their own cease-and-desist letter to the company over the same issue.
Weedmaps is one of the industry’s most successful online advertising platforms for cannabis retailers and delivery services, and it hosts ads for thousands of such businesses across the globe, including at least several hundred in California.
The letters – and Weedmaps’ upcoming response – could have significant ramifications for the California market, where competition is becoming heated between licensed operators that are paying local and state cannabis taxes and unlicensed dispensaries, medical collectives and delivery businesses that can undercut them on price by not paying taxes.
The bureau’s letter, addressed to Ghost Management Group CEO Doug Francis and dated Feb. 16, accused Weedmaps of breaking California law by continuing to advertise unlicensed businesses “offering cannabis and cannabis products for sale.”
Regulators also accused the company of “aiding and abetting in violations of state law.”
“Weedmaps.com must immediately cease all activity that violates state cannabis laws,” the letter reads.
Weedmaps did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the company previously declined to specify to Marijuana Business Daily how many cannabis retail ad listings it has in California.