Green Flash Delivery is redefining convenience, quality & community in the Boston weed scene. Learn more about this Roxbury-born brand.

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Dris offers a huge selection of products from their extensive network of top brands at affordable prices, all quickly delivered to your door the same day you order. 

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The dehydrated and mummified remains of four monkeys were confiscated by airport security in Boston last month.

According to a press release from United States Customs and Border Protection, a traveler arrived at Boston Logan Airport from The Democratic Republic of the Congo on January 8 of this year. An Airport security dog that goes by the name of K9 Buddey (pictured below) smelled something unusual in the traveler’s bag during routine inspections of Delta flight 225 incoming from Paris and alerted customs officials to the suspicious nature of the luggage, presumably by barking.

The traveler claimed he was only carrying dried fish in his suitcase when asked by customs, but further inspection revealed he was in possession of four dehydrated monkey carcusses. The monkeys are considered to be “bushmeat,” which is a term denoting raw or minimally processed meat from wild animals in Africa often dried, salted or smoked. This includes bats, monkeys, cane rats, antelope and other African animals, none of which are allowed entry into the United States on account of the risk of communicable disease transference.

“The potential dangers posed by bringing bushmeat into the United States are real. Bushmeat can carry germs that can cause illness, including the Ebola virus,” said Julio Caravia, local port director for Customs and Border Protection.

According to Customs and Border Protection, airport authorities immediately contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because apparently that’s the government agency tasked with regulation of mummified primate materials. The CDC reportedly told Delta Airlines to either seize and destroy the four kilograms of monkey meat or return it to France and thus, the primate mummies were marked for destruction.

Apparently a fair amount of illegal monkey meat, among other unsavory and illicit meat from Africa is routinely smuggled into the United States. One estimate from the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance proposed that roughly 15,000 pounds of illegal wildlife meat are smuggled into the U.S. every month, though this figure is very difficult to verify. 

Another report from United States Customs and Border Protection concerning illegal bushmeat smuggling into the state of Minnesota from 2022, customs officials seized over 104 pounds of bushmeat in the last week of 2021 alone.

“Just last week our agriculture specialists stopped a passenger returning from Liberia,” said Augustine Moore, Area Port Director-Minnesota. When officers asked if he had any bushmeat, he said he had “parts of a monkey; turned out it was two primate arms and primate rib material.”

In the 2022 release Customs and Border Protections attested that much like the recent mummified monkey smuggler accosted in Boston, many travelers attempting to smuggle bushmeat into the United States do so by hiding it amongst dried fish, often wrapped in multiple layers of newspaper, plastic, foil and tape. Travelers would often mark fish on customs forms even when specifically asked about bushmeat.

“The intermingling of fish and bushmeat in the same package is common,” Chief Agriculture Specialist Lauren Lewis said in 2022. 

Customs said in the same release that they had a big problem at the time with travelers coming in with bushmeat from Liberia specifically. A private investigator took reporters from ABC news to an open air market in New York in 2009 where cane rat meat was being sold for $20/pound, but with time passed and post-COVID inflation it presumably costs much more in 2024 though I could was not able to verify current bushmeat prices with any reputable source.

“Minnesota’s CBP agriculture specialists are focused on their mission to prevent entry of prohibited items from entering into the United States,” said LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, Director, Field Operations-Chicago in 2022. “The sheer volume of bushmeat our specialist[s] intercept clearly shows how they play a critical role in preventing diseases from entering the United States.”

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In last week’s seventh annual Cannabis Start-Up Competition at Boston University (BU) in Massachusetts, on the same night Ohio became the 24th state to legalize adult-use cannabis, a stoner-friendly app JoinME took home the grand prize. It enables users to locate and meet up and join with stoners who share the same goals and interests.

Now in its sixth year, the BU alumni-founders behind Green Lion Partners sponsored an annual start-up competition for current BU Terriers and alums who are developing innovative cannabis-adjacent companies. BU Today reports that student- and alumni-led teams pitch their business concepts Shark Tank–style to a panel of judges for a chance to win $10,000 and free consulting services.

After listening to a series of speakers, each team had six minutes to pitch their start-up concept, and judges had six minutes to ask questions. Former judges include Shaleen Title, Kris Kane, and Jaime Lewis.

This year’s winner was JoinME, an app designed to meet and toke up with other stoners, “the brainchild of Marco Rotella and Claudio Bettini,” BU Today reports, who became friends a few years ago attending BU Italian Students Association meetings. 

“We are very proud of what we are doing, and hopefully with everybody’s help we are able to develop our idea even more,” Bettini said after accepting the award and the oversized check.

“We’ve put a lot of work into the app so far, and we’re happy it showed tonight,” Rotella added.

“We have identified two main problems: cannabis consumers want and need partners,” Rotella said. “Social consumers have a much lower correlation with psychological side effects, such as social anxiety and agitation.” 

Cannabis advocate, author, and local Peter Grinspoon, M.D., tweeted in support of the competition winner on X.

The application period for the competition closed Oct. 8, and the finals took place last week at the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering at the BU campus.

The event is co-organized and sponsored by Green Lion Partners, a cannabis-industry business strategy firm founded by former BU classmates Jeff Zucker and Mike Bologna. Green Lion Partners is a Denver, Colorado-based business strategy firm focused on early stage development in the regulated cannabis industry. 

BU student- or alumni-led ancillary cannabis start-ups are eligible to enter the competition, so long as they don’t touch the cannabis plant. 

Zucker said the cannabis industry is built on the “backs of advocates, people fighting against the War on Drugs. So many people have gone to jail over this plant, yet there are these thriving businesses that are being built around it,” he noted. “I always want to [remind] everyone involved how important it is to be involved in advocacy, continue to work to end the War on Drugs, continue to end racially disproportionate enforcement around cannabis. It’s been great to have this platform, and that BU has been supportive of our vision for the industry.”

Attendees also heard from previous competition winners Marion McNabb, president and cofounder of the Cannabis Center of Excellence, and Carl Palme, founder and CEO of Boundless Robotics. 

The Next Steps

Rotella and Bettini plan to set up a university ambassador program and advertise in local smoke shops and dispensaries, BU Today reports. They also plan to monetize their app.

The topic of social equity entered the conversation, something the judges wanted to see in the roster of aspiring start-ups.

“I think you guys had a great presentation and immediate application in terms of what you’re offering,” said Kim Napoli, one of the night’s three judges. Napoli is an industry consultant and advocate, a Massachusetts Cannabis Advisory board member, and chief diversity officer at Soulstar Holdings, LLC. “If I can make one point, it would be to ensure that those pieces of inclusivity and diversity happen, that you hire someone to be the prime accountability position for diversity inclusion within the app and within your company as well.” 

The other finalists were software company GreenCloud, developed by Eloise De Jarne; hemp company IPNPC, created by Ziwei Huang, Zhe Huang, and Xingxin Gu; and cannabis delivery service Smoking.com, created by Ethan Davidman and Bradley Magram. 

The university is adopting cannabis business with open arms. Boston University defaults to federal law on campus, so cannabis use is illegal on campus, per its drug policy. But rapidly changing laws are pushing the school towards change.

Boston University School of Law Professor Jay Wexler’s new compelling book, Weed Rules (University of California Press, 2023) argues that now cannabis has been legalized in nearly two dozen states, it needs to be normalized.

The university is also involved in medical cannabis research to some degree, while not allowing it on campus. Meanwhile, researchers from Boston University joined other researchers from Brown and the University of Minnesota to find data to suggest that cannabis improves physical activity from people living with HIV.

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Rolling with one of the first legal delivery services on the East Coast.

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In 28 grams of game, Leafly breaks down the story of the legendary cannabis smugglers who are now navigating the legal market.

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Police have linked a rash of burglaries targeting New England cannabis dispensaries to a trio of suspects in Massachusetts, according to a report from the Portland Press Herald. Law enforcement officers say that a man from New Bedford, Massachusetts and two brothers from Boston are suspected in the string of burglaries of licensed cannabis enterprises going back to 2020.

Police began connecting the crimes after a burglary at a cannabis grower in Gorham, Maine in October of last year. In that caper, three individuals wearing face coverings, hats and long sleeves cut their way through an exterior wall of the business located in an industrial park while a fourth person stood watch outside. The three burglars inside the building moved cautiously from room to room, trying to avoid detection by motion sensors. When the team finally left a couple of hours later, they took 30 pounds of cannabis and 500 THC vape cartridges with them.

During their investigation, police reviewed video from the cannabis cultivator’s security cameras. One camera caught the image of the Massachusetts license plate of a pickup truck that entered the parking lot two hours before the crime. And inside the building, one of the camera’s microphones recorded the burglars talking to one another.

“Where the (expletive) is Dario?” one burglar clearly said to another.

“He’s putting the trunks in the truck, ” the accomplice replied.

Investigation Yields Three Suspects

The license plate led law enforcement officers to Dario Almeida, a 21-year-old man with an address in New Bedford, Massachusetts. When Gorham police Detective Stephen Hinkley called New Bedford police, they gave him a cellphone number for Almeida, who had had a recent contact with the department.

A week later, police in New Bedford contacted Hinkley via email to inform him that Almeida and his brother Rafael were suspects in a similar burglary of a cannabis cultivator in Warwick, Rhode Island, where the same pickup truck was also caught on video. Police believe that the brothers are from South Boston and a third suspect is from New Bedford, according to Mass Live.

After reaching out to other New England law enforcement agencies, Hinkley learned of seven similar burglaries that had occurred in Maine since June of last year. Another Gorham cannabis business was also burglarized by criminals who cut through an exterior wall on Thanksgiving night in 2020. Burglars also targeted a cannabis business in South Portland, Maine. In January, a Portland, Maine judge issued a search warrant for evidence including location data from one of the suspect’s cell phones for the times that two of the burglaries occurred. No arrests have yet been made, and the case is still being investigated.

Police in South Portland and Warwick did not reply to reporters’ questions about the burglaries. Gorham Police Chief Christopher Sanborn also declined to comment on the rash of burglaries.

“This is an open investigation that we are currently working on,” Sanborn said. “I’m sorry, but I cannot comment any further at this time.”

Maine’s cannabis regulatory agency, the Office of Marijuana Policy, requires licensed cannabis businesses to report burglaries, robberies and other crimes. But David Heidrich, a spokesperson for the agency, said that many businesses are not familiar with the procedure to submit such reports. The reports the regulator has received are confidential and an analysis of the information they contain has not been conducted by the agency.

“We are not a law enforcement entity, and our role in regulating cannabis is to ensure licensee and registrant compliance with Maine’s adult and medical use of marijuana laws,” Heidrich wrote in response to a request for information on crime reports at cannabis businesses. “Thefts and burglaries are crimes, and the best source for information about criminal activity is and has always been law enforcement.”

An executive at Tetrapoint LLC, a South Portland-based cannabis security firm that transports pot and cash for cannabis businesses, told the Portland Press Herald that many companies are lulled by Maine’s reputation as a low-crime state into being complacent about security. But he said that the threat to cannabis businesses still exists.

“The tendency is to say, the bank’s only a half-hour away, why would we pay people to drive there?” said the executive, who requested anonymity to prevent being targeted for robbery while he’s on the job. “We have clients who are next door to a bank, and they still utilize our services.”

The executive also noted that despite pot’s continued illegality at the federal level, many local police departments are treating cannabis businesses just like other crime victims.

“In several different communities, we’ve found that local law enforcement are very friendly because it’s driving new business,” the security executive said.  “Some folks may not be particularly happy about the industry, but it’s here, it’s now and it’s happening.”

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Looking for the best dispensaries in Boston, MA? This Leafly List will show you the highest-rated cannabis shops in Boston according to reviews by real Leafly shoppers.

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Former NBA star and ESPN basketball analyst Paul Pierce was in Boston over the weekend, stopping at a marijuana dispensary to promote his new line of “Truth Number 34” cannabis products. During his visit, the former Boston Celtics forward told fans and dispensary customers that the new brand’s products are as reliable as he was on the court with the clock ticking down to zero.

“I know we’re going to bring something you can depend on, something you can go to, something that’s clutch,” Pierce said at the promotional appearance on Sunday.

“Similar to my play,” he added. “That’s what my product is going to be.”

Pierce announced earlier this year that he would be launching his new brand in the capital of Massachusetts, where legal sales of adult-use cannabis began in 2018. Plans for the new venture include a line of cannabis edibles, topicals and concentrates sold under the brand name Truth, which was Pierce’s nickname as an NBA player. A signature strain of cannabis flower is slated to land on dispensary shelves next year.

“I have such a great connection with Boston,” Pierce told the Boston Globe in May, “so I’m excited to bring the brand there first and educate people on the plant—how it can help in everyday life and also in sports and recovery.”

Paul Pierce on Cannabis For Health

Pierce became a vocal cannabis advocate after surviving a brutal stabbing attack at a Boston nightclub in September 2000. He said that cannabis had saved his life after the assault, which nearly killed him and left him psychologically traumatized. Although Pierce recovered physically remarkably quickly, he struggled with paranoia, anxiety, depression and insomnia after the attack.

“I was dealing with a lot of depression and anxiety and sleep issues—a lot,” he said. “So I really leaned more on cannabis. But it was difficult, man.”

Pierce described how pharmaceuticals prescribed by the team doctors were ineffective and had undesirable if not dangerous side effects.

“Athletes don’t even know what’s in these pills. The league doctors just say, ‘Take this, take that, here’s a prescription,’” he said. “We get addicted to that stuff. It’s so harmful for your body. You don’t realize your liver and all your other organs are taking a pounding.”

“You really couldn’t do it while you were playing during the season because of the tests, but there were times I couldn’t even help it — I took an edible or smoked a joint just to get some sleep, and had to deal with the consequences,” he added. “It was really bad for me early on.”

Pierce Fired by ESPN After Posting Racy Weed Video

After retiring from the NBA in 2017, Pierce took a job as a basketball analyst for ESPN, working on the sports network’s shows The Jump and NBA Countdown. But after he posted an Instagram video earlier this year that showed him smoking marijuana with scantily clad women twerking in the background, Pierce was fired in April by ESPN, which is owned by family-oriented entertainment conglomerate Disney.

Pierce apparently took the job loss in stride, however, posting a video on Instagram the day after being fired in which he shared his positive attitude with the world.

“Yo, just want to thank all my supporters and thank my haters and everything,” Pierce said in the video. “Check it out, bigger and better things coming, baby. Don’t worry about it. You fall twice, you get up three times. Just always remember to smile, baby.”

Only three weeks later, he posted another video that showed him surrounded by cannabis plants in a cultivation facility, hinting at the upcoming business venture.

“We’re over in the lab, baby,” he said while panning the camera, adding “Coming soon, baby.”

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Pure Oasis in Dorchester is the first shop within the city limits—and the state’s first Economic Empowerment store.

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