THE DIMECANNABIS
First Principles

The insight
behind
the episode.

Every episode produces a newsletter. Not a recap. The structural principle underneath the conversation, written for operators who need to understand what's actually happening before the market makes it obvious.

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    The Archive

    31 editions

    May 27, 2026 · Joel Stanley and Dr Marcel Bonn-Miller
    The Cannabis Medical Thesis Was Never Wrong. The World Just Forgot.
    Cannabis started as a medical story, then the green rush buried it. The FDA's botanical drug pathway is what brings the original thesis back.
    May 11, 2026 · Braunz Muller
    You Have Data. The Decisions Are Still Wrong
    Clean, organized data can still drive catastrophic decisions. The discount-spike loop that reads clearance as demand — and why it compounds.
    April 13, 2026 · Aubrey Amatelli
    The Payment Problem I Still Can't Explain
    Cannabis banking's hardest problem: compliance does not equal permission. Every payment solution runs on the card brands' tolerance.
    April 3, 2026 · Gretchen Gailey
    Let's End the Year of the Prohibitionist.
    Access is a transaction. Influence is leverage. Cannabis has confused the two, and the scoreboard in Washington keeps saying so.
    March 24, 2026 · Dan McDermitt
    Professional Trader Will Sell Early on Catalyst, And Why He's Right
    If you've been through multiple pump-and-dump cycles, you're not early. You're just still here. Why cannabis stocks trade on plumbing, not fundamentals.
    March 18, 2026 · Margaret Brodie
    The Internal Audit Most Companies Avoid
    The market does not care about sunk costs. Separating the vision from the vehicles used to pursue it is the audit most leadership teams never run.
    March 11, 2026 · Micah Anderson
    Your Neighbor Is Destroying Your Supply Chain
    Pesticide drift means a cannabis team can do everything right and still fail testing. Vertical integration as environmental defense.
    March 5, 2026 · Jonathan Black
    Optionality Beats Control in Chaos
    In stable industries control compounds; in unstable ones flexibility does. Cannabis infrastructure is either a moat or an anchor.
    February 24, 2026 · Kristin & Eric Rogers
    It's Time to Admit Alcohol Is Paying ALOT of Attention
    Beverage does not need to replace alcohol to matter. It only needs to capture one occasion per week. When ritual shifts, categories follow.
    February 5, 2026 · John Shute
    Your Marketing Isn't Broken. The System Is. Here's Why
    Cannabis marketing doesn't create value, it distributes it. If you doubled spend tomorrow, would returns scale or just expose what's broken?
    February 2, 2026 · Brian Adams
    The Balance Between Art and Process in Extraction
    Over-standardize and quality suffers. Over-index on intuition and repeatability disappears. How experienced extraction teams hold both at once.
    January 23, 2026 · Nohtal Partansky
    Why Most Cannabis Automation Fails
    Automation executes. Robotics adapts. Confusing the two is how cannabis companies make expensive mistakes and lock themselves into the wrong path.
    January 19, 2026 · Nicolas Guarino
    There Is No Playbook for New York Cannabis
    Jaunty's hockey stick in New York was never luck. New York punished assumptions fast, and what looks like momentum now is really accumulated lessons.
    January 13, 2026 · Bill Morachnick
    Before CBD Was a Category, It Was a Medical Necessity
    CBD didn't earn acceptance through branding. It earned it because results showed up where nothing else worked — and Schedule III raises the bar again.
    January 7, 2026 · Ryan Crandall
    Why Most Cannabis Brands Break at Scale
    Product inconsistency costs you a customer who switches and never returns. Consistency isn't a slogan — it's engineered process control.
    December 22, 2025 · Zach Edge
    CBD: The Gateway Cannabinoid
    Schedule III put CBD first for a reason: it's the lowest-friction entry point for FDA oversight. The agency will apply the playbook it knows.
    December 16, 2025 · Tyler Robson
    Cannabis Is a Commodity. Here's Where the Margin Lives
    Cannabis supply chains will commoditize. Margins won't disappear — they move into manufacturing efficiency and distribution discipline.
    December 10, 2025 · Adam Stettner
    You're Thinking About Debt Wrong
    Debt isn't the problem — the terms are. If your margins beat your cost of capital, you're not borrowing to survive, you're borrowing to win.
    November 25, 2025 · Chris Emerson
    Effects-Based Products Aren't Impossible — Here's Why Most Brands Can't Deliver
    The gap between expectation and experience is why consumers don't return. Process control is the only way effects-based cannabis works.
    November 20, 2025 · Nick Kenny
    The Quiet Entry: What Tobacco & Alcohol Already Know About Cannabis
    Tobacco and alcohol are quietly building cannabis IP, infrastructure and data. It's not if they enter — it's when the rest of us notice.
    November 12, 2025 · Thomas Winstanley
    Before Target and DoorDash, Edible Arrangements
    Edibles.com quietly built one of the most intriguing cannabinoid access platforms in the country. Consumers can now shop by experience, not just by brand.
    October 31, 2025 · Alex Kwon
    Meet Singular: The Tightrope of Product Innovation
    Product innovation in cannabis is a tightrope. The second-order effects — simplified SKUs, streamlined operations — are what quietly change everything.
    October 23, 2025 · Ashwin Raj
    The Lyft Playbook for Cannabis
    Taxis didn't want rideshare. The world did. Every emerging industry has to earn its right to exist, and cannabis is living a version of the same story.
    October 21, 2025 · Jared Maloof
    The Tortoise Always Wins
    The disciplined operators looked slow and boring. As the debt wall closes in, the market will reward exactly one thing: prudent capital allocators.
    October 9, 2025 · Chris Ball
    Would You Have the Courage?
    Putting your family's name on a brand means there's nowhere to hide when things go wrong, and no shortcuts when things get hard.
    October 3, 2025 · Jim Higdon
    The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend, Except When It Comes to Cannabinoids
    Logic doesn't work in the cannabinoid space. Power and influence do. Spirits, pharma, big ag and retail are all circling the same disruption.
    September 25, 2025 · Ryan Castle
    Why Some Cannabis Research Can't Be Trusted
    When billions are on the line, research gets messy. Read closely, stay skeptical — and know which meta-analysis actually put the numbers on the table.
    September 22, 2025 · Mitchell Osak
    Vertical Integration Isn't Strategy — It's a Trap
    Cannabis runs six or seven businesses at once, in multiple states, every supply chain locked to one state. Most of it is solved next door.
    September 15, 2025 · Zach Edge
    THC Is Just an Ingredient — How Schedule III Will Reshape Cannabis, Pharma & Hemp
    What if cannabis operators had to buy cannabinoids from GMP-licensed manufacturers instead of retrofitting facilities? The supply chain flips overnight.
    September 5, 2025 · Dan Cook
    Beyond THC%: Unlocking Cannabis' True Language with Sensory Science
    Nobody buys wine by ABV. THC% is pushing cannabis toward commodity, and sensory science backed by data is the missing lexicon.
    August 28, 2025 · Nadia Sabeh
    Dr. Greenhouse and the Power of a Personal Monopoly: Plants, HVAC, and Yield
    Dr. Greenhouse sits at the intersection of plant science, engineering, and HVAC — a rare overlap that makes her the irreplaceable expert on yield.