No, General Cannabis isn't a Jamaican dance-hall singer. It's a Nevada-based technology company that owns Weedmaps.com, CannaCare.com and other medical-marijuana-related concerns. The company is currently headquartered in Costa Mesa, but according to a press release today, it just moved into new offices: 21,000 square feet of Newport Beach office space.
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Why the move? According to General Cannabis, it will allow the “continuing
growth of the company's technology and sales departments.” The company recently “updated and reconfigured” its software “and platform” to create a “scalable and multifaceted system,” whatever that means. Let's ask Dale Foster, a regional manager with General Cannabis.
“We had strong success with the previous system, but we realized that to be cost-effective and efficient, we needed to update,” Foster says. “Our IT department reconfigured the existing system and created proprietary software that we believe will be profitable in the retail market should we decide to license it, as well as satisfying our internal needs.”
When it comes to satisfying other people's needs, there's also the fact that General Cannabis owns a little outfit called General Health Solutions (GHS), which seems to be responsible for a large portion of the company's good fortunes. In Nov. 2010, GHS began handling credit card transactions on behalf of medical marijuana dispensaries, given the fact that nobody else was providing this service. In March 2011, GHS handled more than $2.2 million in transactions, up from $1.7 million in February; it now services more than 170 clients in California. GHS also manages 14 medical marijuana clinics in the state and plans to increase that number to 20 by the end of the year.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).