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WA Body Care Company Brings Cannabis to Retail Marketplace

Ah Warner, owner of Cannabis Basics and maker of cannabis topicals. Photo courtesy Leafly.

Economics

WA Body Care Company Brings Cannabis to Retail Marketplace

Cannabis Basics, a body care company based out of Washington state, continues to bask in the glow of two major achievements poised to have positive ramifications for the cannabis industry as a whole. The first achievement involves legislation passed in Washington that allows cannabis products, which are applied topically and contain less than .3 percent THC, to to be sold in mainstream retail stores. The second involves trademark protection for the company’s logo, which features a large watermark of a marijuana leaf alongside the word “cannabis.” Both represent historic shifts in the retail sale of marijuana products within the consumer marketplace.

The first achievement, allowing products containing cannabis to be sold alongside health and beauty aids in stores such as Bartell Drugs and PCC Natural Markets, was signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee on June 30 as part of a larger adult-use marijuana tax bill, HB2136. The bill became effective July 1.

“We defined cannabis health and beauty aids for the very first time,” Cannabis Basics owner Ah Warner explains. “They are defined now separately from medical-grade topicals.”

This means products derived from cannabis that will not be ingested and are less than .3 percent THC have been removed from the state’s Controlled Substances Act (CSA). An accomplishment, Warner points out, that took place even before industrial hemp could be removed from the state’s CSA.

While Washington legalized cannabis for adult-use in 2012, the state has yet to pass a measure that would enable state-grown industrial hemp. The U.S. Farm Bill signed into law by President Obama in 2013, essentially defined hemp as cannabis with less than .3 percent THC and allows it to be grown in states that have authorized the activity – a step which Washington has yet to take. While one was traditionally bred for fiber and the other for its resinous glands, hemp and cannabis are the same plant.

“[The legislation] wasn’t just about defining what I needed, so that I could sell on the mainstream marketplace, it was chipping away at the Controlled Substances Act,” Warner says of the bill she co-authored.

The company’s second recent accomplishment, the trademark, was awarded in late August and grants Cannabis Basics federal protection for its intellectual property. While Warner received the trademark from Washington state about a year ago, the federal recognition is of great importance to her as a business owner.

“As a legitimate business person, I absolutely should have the rights of every other business person in the United States,” she said. “Federal trademark is huge for protecting my intellectual property.”

Warner explains that before her trademark was awarded, the Federal government had not given trademarks to any marijuana product. She acknowledges, however, that the achievement is due to the Cannabis Basics business model featuring two lines: one with products utilizing cannabis strains and one featuring products already legal all across the country as they are made with hempseed oil.

“They didn’t award [the trademark] to me based on my marijuana products, they awarded it to me based on my cannabis hemp products, but by default it will cover my marijuana products,” she says. “Because I got this, now it will probably be just a little bit easier for other cannabis entrepreneurs to protect their intellectual property, which is really what we want.”

Would you buy cannabis-infused topical products at a retail store? Tell us in the comments.

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