• Skinvisible’s DermSafe® hand sanitizer provides long-term protection against viruses
• Patented technology delivers active ingredients topically
• Company generates revenue from four income streams

An outbreak of the deadly influenza A (H3N2) virus has devastated families across the United States this winter. Traditionally, the elderly and the very young are most vulnerable to the flu, but, this time around, it is attacking people of all ages. This outbreak follows on the heels of the potent H7N9 avian influenza virus, which has the potential to spread globally, although largely confined to China at present. Hand hygiene is vital to reduce the risk of contracting these flu strains. Skinvisible, Inc. (OTCQB: SKVI) has developed a unique hand sanitizer, DermSafe®, which offers long-term protection against harmful microbes.

DermSafe® uses patented polymer delivery technology developed by Skinvisible called Invisicare®. This proprietary technology binds active ingredients to the skin to enhance their delivery and resists wash-off and rub-off for up to four hours, even with hand washing. It creates a barrier to prevent attack by viruses and damage from toxins, retaining moisture in the skin while allowing normal respiration and perspiration. Left on the skin to do their job, Invisicare® formulations eventually wear off as part of the skin’s natural exfoliation process.

All of Skinvisible’s products utilizing Invisicare® technology are non-drying, as the formulations do not contain any organic solvents such as alcohol, silicones or waxes. Enhanced delivery means a lower dosage of active ingredients is required while still offering improved efficacy, reduced skin irritation and longer duration of action. To validate its marketing claims, the company uses FDA-registered independent laboratories to verify the efficiency of its products.

Through wholly-owned subsidiary Kintari, Skinvisible has developed a range of anti-aging products, including day cream, night cream, sunscreen and hand and body lotion. All of these products use the patented Invisicare® topical delivery technology. The company has 14 global patents for over 40 skincare products powered by Invisicare®. The Kintari website (www.Kintari.com) is a marketing portal for its products, offering consumers the ability to purchase these patented products online.

Looking ahead, Skinvisible’s development pipeline using Invisicare’s topical delivery technology includes products for acne, dermatitis, skin cancer, warts and first-aid pain relief, as well as formulations with anti-aging, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory properties. In November 2017, the company issued a letter of intent to merge with Quoin Pharmaceuticals Limited, a developer of post-surgical pain relief products that replace or reduce opioid use. Quoin is also developing a transdermal formulation for anti-depression treatment of military veterans showing suicidal tendencies related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Skinvisible’s business model provides four revenue streams. By licensing its formulations, the company generates research and development fees for new products. It also charges license fees to secure exclusive territorial rights to a product, while generating ongoing royalties based on a licensee’s sales. Direct revenue is generated from the sale of Kintari products and the sale of the company’s Invisicare® polymers to its clients.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Skinvisible.com

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• Global testing services market expected to achieve 10 percent-plus CAGR growth
• California cannabis testing market also set for exponential increase
• EVIO to double national testing footprint to 18 labs

California, befitting its history as part of America’s westward expansion, has earned an appellation as the ‘Wild West’ of pot. Medical marijuana, legal in the state since 1996, has been largely bypassed by quality control and safety regulations. That is about to change. To coincide with the opening of the adult recreational market, a plethora of rules and rubrics has been issued. California MMJ businesses will have until July 2018 to ensure compliance. As a result, demand for cannabis testing services in California is set to increase rapidly, a development that means EVIO, Inc. (OTCQB: EVIO), which has acquired testing facilities in Berkeley, California, is in the right place at the right time.

The supply shortfall in California cannabis testing services is rising to crisis proportions at a time when one report warns that ‘much of the marijuana sold in dispensaries in California would fail safety standards in other states’ (http://ibn.fm/nXnjU). Quality issues plague the industry, as recent examples from further afield demonstrate. A couple of MMJ companies licensed under Canada’s ACMPR were found to be using banned pesticides, and a cancer patient died after acquiring a fungal contamination, which was said to have originated in smoked marijuana.

Despite this alarming state of affairs, there are only 22 testing laboratories operating in the state (http://ibn.fm/t9mH3). However, where there is crisis, there is also opportunity, and EVIO has been quick to recognize this. Earlier this year, the company announced that it was acquiring C3 Labs in Berkeley, California, which will give it a presence in the Bay Area to go along with its labs in Southern California and north of Sacramento. This will bring the number of labs operated by the company to nine in five states. These include four in Oregon, two in Florida, and one each in California, Colorado and Massachusetts.

Reporting on data compiled by Markets and Markets, High Times recently commented that ‘cannabis lab testing for potency, purity and detailed information such as terpene counts was worth $866 million in 2016.’ By 2021, the global testing services market is expected to hit $1.4 billion, representing a CAGR of more than 10 percent. Driven by such a powerful tailwind, EVIO is set for further revenue growth. The company saw testing services revenues for the nine months to June 30, the last reported period, climb 1,100 percent year-over-year in 2017 to $2.1 million. Now, through testing subsidiary EVIO Labs, the company plans to open 18 laboratories by the end of 2018 at locations throughout the United States.

EVIO is headed by William Waldrop, MBA, chairman and CEO. Waldrop, a co-founder of EVIO Labs’ parent company, spearheaded the acquisition of the company’s first analytical laboratory facility in Bend, Oregon. He has since grown the company to its present five labs and nine operating locations, and he is the driving force behind the nationwide rollout of EVIO Labs.

Previously, Waldrop was chairman and CEO of Newport Entertainment Group and president and COO of College Partnership, a publicly traded company that provided student services. In addition, while working as a senior manager at AirTouch Cellular, he led the team that, in just four years, built a 44-store distribution channel generating over $100 million in annual revenues. As vice president of operations for Leading Edge Broadband, he oversaw the design and roll-out of a global telecommunications sales and outreach network. Waldrop has also provided advisory services to several public companies.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.EVIOLabs.com

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• Cannabis deals in Canada cross the billion-dollar mark
• DehydraTech™ offers new and innovative methods of oral delivery
• Committed to high quality products using revolutionary technology
• The only company in the world with patents for this innovative edible technology

Lexaria Bioscience Corp. (CSE: LXX) (OTCQX: LXRP) expects to benefit significantly as cannabis deals in Canada cross the billion-dollar mark in anticipation of the legalization of recreational cannabis, which is only months away (http://ibn.fm/n7ztX). Its newly developed oral digestion technology, DehydraTECH™, is a complementary layer that works with other R&D being done on cannaboids. LXRP has been awarded a patent in the U.S. and Australia, with patents pending in 40 more countries, for the improved delivery (oral or ingestible) of all non-psychoactive cannabinoids. As the only company in the world with patents for this innovative edible technology, LXRP is in a unique position to work alongside other cannabis industry players, creating partnerships rather than competitors.

DehydraTECH allows for faster delivery time, lower dosages and shorter treatment regimens. Oral ingestion of the client drug eliminates unhealthy practices of inhalation dosing. It improves the absorption rate, by as much as five to 10 times, of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), vitamins, cannabinoids and even nicotine. Delivery time, the time it takes from ingestion to payload molecules reaching the bloodstream, is reduced from the 60-90 minutes of current methods to a mere 15-25 minutes. High concentrations of unhealthy sugars or sweeteners are no longer needed to mask the bitter taste, and side effects are reduced, improving the bioavailability of its client drug. This provides an opportunity for new and innovative methods of oral delivery.

LXRP is committed to finding new ways to partner with companies in order to deliver high quality products, leveraging its technology that allows Lexaria to partner with, instead of compete against, other successful names in the cannabis industry. Recently, LXRP partnered with Cannfections Group Inc. to create high quality chocolate edibles using its oral technology. It continues to develop quality product lines in sports nutrition, teas, tablets, pills and beverages, using DehydraTech for optimal delivery.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.LexariaEnergy.com

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• Stock price increased by more than $3.00 in a two-month period
• Various acquisitions and partnerships in 2018
• Focused on incubating the new century’s technology giants

From numerous recent acquisitions to a stock price that has climbed dramatically in the past year, it’s an exciting time for blockchain-focused venture builder Victory Square Technologies Inc. (CSE: VST) (OTC: VSQTF) (FRANKFURT: 6F6) (WKN: A2AKL8).

Engaged in funding and empowering entrepreneurs to implement cutting-edge blockchain solutions, Victory Square is in the business of incubating a new generation of technology titans. The company’s diversified portfolio includes investment interests in the gaming, health care, artificial intelligence and virtual reality sectors, as well as others, and Victory Square’s portfolio companies are effectively disrupting a wide range of sectors across the global economy.

So far in 2018, Victory Square has announced various important acquisitions, including a 100 percent acquisition of established mobile games studio V2 Games Inc. (http://ibn.fm/PlGkn), a 31.35 percent acquisition of emerging payment processing company PayVida Solutions Inc. (http://ibn.fm/Viecy), and a 23.1 percent acquisition of emerging blockchain-focused fintech company Cassia Research Inc. (http://ibn.fm/AlbwZ). The company has further forged various exciting strategic partnerships this year.

Victory Square’s stock has enjoyed an impressive boost in a short amount of time, climbing from $0.298 in October 2017 to an impressive $3.32 by December 2017. As of February 27, the company’s price has remained well above $2.00 per share.

Victory Square operates on the idea that impactful companies are built upon experimentation of bold ideas, and entrepreneurs working with the company have invaluable access to Victory Square’s education programs, global mentor network, distribution partners, creative workspaces, operational support and other resources to help them scale on an international level.

The company’s impressive brag sheet includes assisting more than 1,000 entrepreneurs and more than 500 startups to date, helping these entities collectively raise over $100 million and create more than 1,000 jobs.

Victory Square recognizes blockchain as the new major technology and the next key platform for innovation, with the ability to revolutionize the interconnections and operations of business and social structures. Leveraging its extensive expertise and standout prowess in building companies, Victory Square is hard at work identifying, incubating, advising and investing in the industry’s very best blockchain entrepreneurs.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.VictorySquare.com

• ChineseInvestors.com provides first platform for Chinese-centric CBD market
• The company boasts real-time services in Chinese character sets
• ChineseInvestors.com launched CBD navigation application

Founded in 1999, ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. (OTCQB: CIIX) aims to be a leading financial information website that provides real-time market commentary, analysis and education-related services to Chinese-speaking investors through its dynamic financial website, www.Chinesefn.com. ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. went public on the OTCQB Venture Market in January 2012, under the symbol CIIX (http://ibn.fm/MrTES).

Having recognized the unprecedented opportunities that lie within the American cannabis industry, the company started laying the foundations to capitalize on the ever-growing demand for cannabidiol-based nutrition and health products. The end of 2016 marked the company’s implementation of plans for its new website, its mobile application and its online distribution of CBD oils for the booming global industry of medical marijuana. Although marijuana use is illegal within the borders of China, cannabis-based oils that include hemp-based CBDs are legal. This unique opportunity opens a potential market of nearly two billion people for the company.

Following the launch of ChineseCBDoil.com in early 2017, the company noted that it was the first online CBD health products store in the Chinese language. The website shows a variety of nutritional supplements containing CBD, including soft gels, capsules and concentrates marketed to Chinese-speaking customers worldwide. It is the company’s intention to open up a retail store in the predominantly Chinese community of San Gabriel, California, which is also where the company’s headquarters is located (http://ibn.fm/AGXuh).

ChineseInvestors.com also launched the world’s first Chinese-language-based mobile cannabis navigation application. This ‘Yelp’ style social media application is set to contain a database of marijuana dispensaries and cannabis strains, along with platforms to review and discuss various cannabis products and maps that show the locations of medical and recreational cannabis dispensaries. Alongside this, the application is set to offer cannabis business summaries and reports from Los Angeles, as well as other large cities, in an effort to provide customers with access to the best recommendations for local marijuana products. The application has been approved by the Apple store and is available for download.

In an effort to assist patients with Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, cirrhosis of the liver and a range of other physical and mental ailments, ChineseInvestors.com will continue its focus on investment in both the distribution and the R&D of CBD medicine and health products. With the company’s base of over 100,000 users, alongside its brand value built over the past 18 years, its mission is to become the leading Chinese medical marijuana-focused publicly traded company.

China has nearly 10 million patients that suffer from epilepsy, placing it among the most common diseases that Chinese researchers are eager to cure. Currently, in China, epilepsy cannot be wholly cured, with patients relying heavily on drugs or Chinese herbs to temporarily control the illness. In the United States, epilepsy has been successfully addressed through specialized surgical treatment. However, this option comes with a high risk factor. As a result, a majority of Chinese patients are inclined to seek conservative treatment methods in the field of Western medicine. CBD oil, therefore, has a huge potential within the market space for the treatment of epileptic cases that are located in the mainland or overseas.

Regarding clinical trials and research, ChineseInvestors.com intends to further study the efficacy of CBD oil for the treatment of the above-mentioned illnesses. Apart from that, the company will invest in CBD drug R&D enterprises with the goal of developing various CBD drugs that show positive results when used to combat epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. The application period for new drugs of this nature in China is two to four years, which is notably shorter than that of the FDA. It is the company’s goal to be the first company in China to use CBD oil to help mitigate the suffering of patients with epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease.

The company also offers support services to its various partners, consultative services to smaller private companies that are considering becoming public entities and advertising and public relations-related support services.

With the further legalization of medical marijuana supported by studies, greater market sizes can be expected. With fewer drug side effects and further drug development, it is likely that the number of CBD products will increase, with more people likely to opt for these safer treatments. On a wider scale the problem of acute and chronic pain can be combatted, resulting in fewer production losses in the workplace.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.ChineseInvestors.com

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• Company, exploring economics of cryptocurrency loans and an initial coin offering (ICO), has formed a 100 percent-owned subsidiary, Investment Evolution Crypto, LLC
• ACF Equity Research sees IEGH revenue reaching $8.2 million in FY2020 with positive EBITDA

IEG Holdings Corp. (OTCQB: IEGH) is a Las Vegas-based fintech provider of $5,000 and $10,000 unsecured, five-year consumer loans under the brand name ‘Mr. Amazing Loans’ on its website (www.MrAmazingLoans.com). It is licensed and/or holds certificates of authority to originate direct consumer loans in 20 states. The company provides loans through its online application portal to residents of those states. All loans are originated, processed and serviced out of the company’s centralized head office in Las Vegas. The company was launched in 2010.

ACF Equity Research projects the revenue of IEGH reaching $5.328 million in FY2019 and $8.227 million in FY2020, with positive EBITDA in both years (http://ibn.fm/p07y0). That projection is based on ACF Equity Research liking the no-debt position of IEGH, its free cash flow, its business model, and its 80 percent repeat business loan book. It also sees value in the company’s exploration of cryptocurrency loans and the formation of its new 100 percent-owned subsidiary, Investment Evolution Crypto, LLC. IEGH is said to be looking into launching an initial coin offering (ICO), the report said.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.InvestmentEvolution.com

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• New strategic agreements expand gaming opportunities in United Kingdom
• Company leveraging secure payment processing experience, eyeing fintech and data analytics
• Mobile app market forecast to top $110 billion by year-end

Following a year in which mobile gaming recorded remarkable growth, occupying nearly half the total market value of the gaming industry (http://ibn.fm/C6BRZ), some market watchers are predicting that worldwide consumer commitment to mobile app stores will grow about 30 percent year-over-year to exceed $110 billion by the end of 2018 (http://ibn.fm/wrDbN).

Consorteum Holdings, Inc. (OTC: CSRH), a mobile platform company focused on “delivering compliant complex mobile-based transactions,” is placing its markers on partnerships and licensing agreements that allow it to develop its software and mobile publishing resources for a variety of mobile offerings, including the online gaming industry. In January, Consorteum Holdings announced an agreement with XpertX, Inc. to release XpertX’s Wild Spots Bingo® mobile game in new international markets. Later that same month, the company announced that it had extended its strategic agreement with Knockout Gaming, Inc. to integrate Knockout’s operator platform into Consorteum subsidiary 359 Mobile, Inc.’s Universal Mobile Interface™ (“UMI”). The subsidiary will provide gaming delivery to certain regulated markets worldwide, including the United Kingdom.

New developments in augmented reality and eSports are revitalizing mobile gaming apps. Particularly in the field of eSports, millions of people are interacting on a multi-billion-dollar competitive stage. The Clash Royale Championship made news when it became the first tournament to offer prize money at the million dollar mark, and more such mega tournaments are expected. Consorteum Holdings targets end users who will use their smart phones in radical new ways. Its UMI platform has the ability to provide secure transactional processing, which opens a door to the gaming industry’s verticals but also provides a variety of solutions in fintech and data analytics that reach beyond the gaming industry and into the corporate world’s operating standards. Add compliancy lead transaction management suited to geographic regions, and the company’s platform becomes a targeted tool for removing the complexities of delivering a rich mobile experience to the end user and “bridging the mobile divide.”

Consorteum Holdings was incorporated in 2005 in the state of Nevada to process payment transactions and, in 2012, became licensed to market and license the world’s first regulatory-compliant mobile gaming platform. In July 2013, the company launched a new era, building on its business model to become a provider of digital content across mobile devices by engineering its platform using branded partnerships in the mobile sports betting and casino gaming verticals. Following years of continued research and development that provided new levels of experience, the company emerged with its 359 Mobile subsidiary providing end-to-end payment solutions for cloud-based and host-based offerings in the mobile gaming, fintech and data analytics markets.

The UMI platform will see its first application this year in the United Kingdom, and the company will evaluate its options for additional territory deployment. Consorteum Holdings’ securities registration filing with the SEC on January 31 states, “Going forward we expect our revenues to be derived from transactions processed using our UMI software platform technology in various countries outside the US starting with the United Kingdom as we explore other international distribution opportunities. We will also explore any US opportunities that are feasible.”

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Consorteum.com

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• Goldman Small Cap Research forecasts overall CBD market to grow to $1.15 billion within the next three years
• MCOA’s hempSMART product line drives new industrial hemp-based CBD products to consumers
• Industrial hemp offers a non-psychoactive, less controversial alternative to cannabis

Advocates and investors riding the current cannabis policy roller coaster are turning an optimistic eye to the industrial hemp sector, as its cannabis industry sibling battles for respectability and legalization in the United States.

Over the last three years, Marijuana Company of America Inc. (OTC: MCOA) has observed the political changes in the U.S., with regard to hemp and cannabis regulation at the local, state and federal levels. With this knowledge, the company is navigating its way through multiple state regulatory systems, court decisions and public opinion to build a market position to develop and drive innovative product development and distribution.

MCOA delivers turnkey products and services to consumers in U.S. states where the cannabis plant’s derivatives have been legalized. While federal drug policy continues to target state-by-state normalization of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use, MCOA’s hempSMART subsidiary is turning out branded products containing industrial hemp-derived, non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) formulations for retail distribution via an affiliate marketing model.

Although 2018 began with the advancement of new state laws legalizing cannabis and hemp – most notably in California, the world’s fifth largest economy – Attorney General Jeff Sessions reaffirmed on January 4, 2018, that cannabis remains illegal under federal law. Sessions concurrently rescinded previous Obama-era federal prosecutorial guidance on state-legalized cannabis and hemp that allowed states having strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems the discretion to regulate the production and distribution of cannabis and hemp, as long as the state-enacted rules were consistent with federal priorities. Cue multiple lawsuits around the country and Congressional debate over the propriety of existing cannabis laws. These repeated flare-ups in drug policy have left many cannabis investors nervous (http://ibn.fm/6EPLX), but other industry insiders have seen the cannabis debate as a boon to the less controversial industrial hemp plant, which contains less than 0.3 percent THC.

In 2004, the Hemp Industry Association won a Ninth Circuit Court decision to allow hemp products with less than 0.3 percent THC to be distributed legally, and hemp production was legalized nationwide for university research under the 2014 Farm Bill.

MCOA has now been an active player in the North American cannabis and hemp markets for the past three years (http://ibn.fm/yAU3Y). The company has ensured, via clear and regular communications with the markets, customers, affiliates and media, that the development of hempSMART’s range of non-psychoactive products has been transparent, informed and compliant. hempSMART’s new take on wellness products include formulations for the brain, pain and Full Spectrum Drops. Newly-launched products include pain cream and, for our four-legged friends, Pet Drops.

MCOA also recently partnered with Convenient Hemp Mart, LLC to develop the “BeniHemp” CBD brand. Currently in development, BeniHemp will be targeted for sale in convenience stores, gas stations, smoke shops and similar types of small retail businesses focused on the impulse buyer, with its products located at the cash register. The BeniHemp brand is expected to offer a range of topicals, tinctures and edibles. With its unique national marketing and distribution plans, BeniHemp will work with its partners to create recognition for CBD wellness and personal care products.

On February 15, 2018, Goldman Small Cap Research, a stock market research firm specializing in the small cap and microcap sectors, released a white paper (http://ibn.fm/JEMpt) in which it predicts that the overall CBD market in the U.S. will grow from a base of $262 million in 2016 to something exceeding $1.15 billion by 2020.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.MarijuanaCompanyofAmerica.com

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• Canada expects to make recreational marijuana use legal nationwide later this year
• Legalized revenues have forecast potential to reach up to $8.7 billion, with more than $20 billion for ancillary services
• CHOOF invites ‘good people’ to open franchise retail dispensaries

While winter days in frigid northern climates mean snow and cold winds, a company in Canada’s British Columbia is embracing the timeless warmth of Hawaii’s laid-back lifestyle. Choom™ Holdings Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTCQB: CHOOF) is building a friendly entry into the country’s growing legalized cannabis industry as it awaits final stage approval of its Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (“ACMPR”) license and application to serve the anticipated recreational marijuana market once full nationwide legalization takes place later this year.

In early February, the company announced it was seeking ‘good people’ interested in opening their own Choom™ store retail dispensary franchises across Canada, wherever marijuana is legalized. “We’re inviting people to open a dispensary with a world class brand built exclusively for the recreational cannabis market. We’re encouraging entrepreneurs to join our family by registering for their own Choom™ store,” President and CEO Chris Bogart stated in a news release about the proposal. “We are telling our Choom™ story with our stores and will elevate the concept of a high-quality product through our new retail environments, and we’re inviting others to join us.”

A Deloitte survey of attitudes in 2016 arrived at the conclusion that revenues for the legalized market may reach anywhere from $4.9 billion to $8.7 billion with ancillary markets that could top $20 billion; these are figures that Choom™ Holdings has taken note of while planning its expansion strategy as the end of cannabis prohibition nears.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to enter a potential Multi-Billion Dollar industry,” the company’s website states. “Marijuana dispensaries in legalized states in the US make more per square foot than Whole Foods, and you can get in on the ground floor in the Canadian Market.”

According to the company’s investor presentation made in November, by 2021, the recreational marijuana industry that Choom™ Holdings exclusively aims to serve is expected to be almost eight times the size of the medical marijuana industry, which is served by Choom’s Medi-Can Health Solutions Ltd. subsidiary, with benefits spilling over into the tourism industry, governmental tax and licensing coffers, and paraphernalia manufacturing market. Its nimble business model aims to be ready from the ground up to adapt to the changing cannabis landscape as recreational use becomes legal. Choom™ has a planned production facility capable of putting out 660 kg of dried cannabis per year and plans a second phase expansion that would take it to 2,400 kg per year at two British Columbia locations. Choom™ obtained C$2.7 million in financing through a non-brokered private placement in February, following on another $1 million raised to advance its efforts in December shortly after the company began trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange and shortly before beginning trading on the OTCQB exchange in the United States.

“Our products will be focused on cultivating good times and good friends,” the company’s website states. Choom™ refers to an old Hawaiian term for people who hang out and smoke weed, evocative of that spirit of adventure and fun that the company wants to promote.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Choom.ca

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• Relaxed U.S. restrictions on hemp production increasingly likely
• Hemp extraction legislation expected to occur in Canada in mid-to-late 2018
• Hemp used in dozens of applications across the industrial spectrum
• “Soil-to-Shelf” strategy for development of hemp in Canada and the United States

If you lived in Jamestown in the late eighteenth century, the first permanent English settlement in what became the United States, and you did not grow cannabis, you would most likely earn the contempt of fellow citizens. You could also end up in jail; refusing to grow cannabis sativa, known as Indian hemp, was actually against the law in Virginia. Hemp enjoyed such a favorable status that you could even pay your taxes with it, and, during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, cultivation of hemp flourished. By 1938, after new methods for stripping fiber from the plant were developed, the widely read Popular Mechanics Magazine was touting hemp as the ‘New Billion-Dollar Crop’.

It was the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act in 1938, which banned cultivation of cannabis, that changed the fortunes of the industry. Hemp production in the U.S. shrank and has remained in that atrophied state since then. However, recent legislative initiatives are a signal that happier days lie ahead for hemp, and Global Hemp Group, Inc. (CSE: GHG) (FRANKFURT: GHG) (OTC: GBHPF) is well positioned to benefit. The company is out to build a comprehensive portfolio of hemp-based companies that can interact to capture synergies. With hemp having so many uses, Global Hemp is betting that America’s ‘New Billion-Dollar Crop’ is set for a renaissance.

Recent legislative action is reshaping the regulatory landscape. Section 7606 of the Agricultural Act 2014, known as the ‘Farm Bill’, authorizes institutions of higher education or state departments of agriculture to grow industrial hemp for “research conducted under an agricultural pilot program or other agricultural or academic research,” so long as state law permits the growth and cultivation of the plant. There are now 34 states that have enacted hemp legislation and will eventually allow cultivation for research and commercial purposes. It has sparked a renewed interest in commercial cultivation. In 2017, there were 25,541 acres of hemp grown in 19 states, up from 9,770 in 2016, with 1,456 state hemp licenses issued. By comparison, in 2017, Canada cultivated more than 120,000 acres across the country.

The catch phrase of ‘New Billion-Dollar Crop’ is more than hyperbole. An analysis of the commercial product potential of industrial hemp in North America reveals an astonishing array of applications. Hemp seeds (achenes) are used in the manufacture of baked goods, salad oil, personal care products, animal food, dietary supplements and specialty industrial oils. Fiber from the plant is used to make plastic-like molded products and biocomposites, specialty papers, construction fiberboard, biodegradable landscape matting, plant cultures, carpet and upholstery textiles, as well as finer textiles. The woody stem core (hurd) is used for building materials, animal bedding and thermal insulation, while the floral bracts give us medicinal cannabinoids and oils for food flavors and perfumes. The whole plant is useful; it can also be employed for fuel and silage (fodder for cattle and other ruminants).

Global Hemp has already begun growing hemp. In January, the company reported on its successful joint venture with Marijuana Company of America, Inc. (OTC: MCOA). The two companies are collaborating on an industrial hemp project in New Brunswick, Canada. Results of the 2017 season were encouraging, and the partners are now planning a minimum of 125 acres of commercial hemp cultivation for 2018 (http://ibn.fm/4fIe6). Over the following three years, acreage is planned to expand to more than 1,000 acres.

Global Hemp plans to apply for a license to extract cannabidiol (CBD) and other cannabinoids from the upcoming industrial hemp crop in New Brunswick. Discussions are also underway with potential processing partners for the extraction of cannabinoids and straw processing for building materials from this harvest in the fall of 2018, with a longer-term plan to establish permanent processing facilities by the end of 2019. Global Hemp also continues to evaluate industrial hemp opportunities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, with the goal of replicating its New Brunswick hemp project in the United States.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.GlobalHempGroup.com

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