Cannabis Lawyer | HLG

If your plan is to sell Illinois cannabis license rights while the license is still conditional, stop reading contracts and read this first. You cannot sell Illinois cannabis license interests at the conditional stage — not the license, not an ownership interest in the entity holding it, and not a slice of control dressed up as a management agreement. IDFPR’s...

An Illinois dispensary change of ownership is not a private transaction between a buyer and a seller. You can sign the cleanest purchase agreement in the state, fund escrow, and shake hands — and still own nothing. In Illinois, the regulator approves the deal, not the parties. Every Illinois dispensary change of ownership runs through the Illinois Department ...

Every cannabis operator eventually asks the same question in the same tone of voice: “I own a licensed dispensary worth several million dollars — why can nobody lend against it?” The short answer is that a cannabis license as collateral is not the clean asset it looks like on a balance sheet. It is a revocable government privilege that usually cannot be pledg...

Here is the sentence that ruins families: your cannabis license does not pass to your heirs. Your equity does. The license does not. Cannabis business succession planning is the only thing standing between your family and a regulator who has never met them and owes them exactly nothing. Most operators in Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio and New York have a ...

A cannabis product recall starts the way most disasters do: quietly. A lab retest comes back hot. A customer posts a photo. A regulator emails on a Friday at 4:50 p.m. What you do in the next six hours decides whether this is an expensive week or an existential one.