SPOTLIGHT on Irish Stout (Red Rocket x Guinness)

As we've been discussing in the newsletter recently, a California bill proposes a suite of new warning labels for all cannabis products. It also proposes a new way of thinking about how to design cannabis packaging—both for consumer safety and also pure marketing panache.

Here are some examples of the warning label language:

The content of each warning is its own matter of debate, but the broader concern for operators is in the actual label itself: Where is it supposed to go? According to the bill, “The warning shall cover at least one-third of the front or principal face of a product.”

One-third of the front of a cannabis package is a lot of prime real estate. The bill is receiving plenty of backlash from industry stakeholders, but there’s still the off-chance that it could turn into law. What then? 

Increasingly, a cannabis product’s packaging is its first impression for consumers. We talk a lot about branding in the industry now (and at Cannabis Conference), but these proposed warning labels would alter, to a point, every existing piece of packaging on the market in California. The question for operators becomes: Is this restriction a helpful guardrail for marketing efforts or an overbearing hindrance?

- Eric Sandy, Digital Editor

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