West Memphis — The Body and Mind (BaM) dispensary on OK Street in West Memphis is under construction, slated to open later this month.

When it does, the medical cannabis dispensary will be the first to open in the West Memphis area. Body and Mind is a Vancouver-based, publicly traded company investing in cannabis cultivation with a production facility in Nevada. Its products include dried flower, edibles, topicals, extracts, and vape pen cartridges. Body and Mind strains have won the Las Vegas Hempfest Cup 2016, High Times Top Ten, and the NorCal Secret Cup.

click to enlarge Body and Mind/Instagram

A 3.5 gram bag of Purple Punch may soon be available to Memphians — uh, West Memphians, that is.

The company will team up with Arkansas' Comprehensive Care Group to open the West Memphis dispensary. The project will get underway with $1.2 million in start-up costs, according to a news release issued by Body and Mind.

AR Cannabis, Arkansas' largest marijuana-doctor clinic network, will open a clinic in West Memphis soon. The clinic's site says it will begin taking patients there on March 31st. The clinic is planned close to the corner of Broadway and Missouri.

West Memphis was a topic of debate during last month's meeting of the Arkansas Marijuana Commission. Leaders wanted to add another dispensary license to Zone 3 (the West Memphis zone) because no dispensaries had opened yet, according to a report in the Arkansas Times.

Earlier in the meeting, the commission voted to approve an additional license in another zone for the same reason. However, they held back on the West Memphis request, noting that dispensaries there were close to opening their doors.

According to commission documents, Delta Cannabis Co. will open in West Memphis in mid-2020.

Kroger — In recently released business documents, Kroger Co. revealed it has been lobbying Congress on CBD. In a fourth-quarter 2019 lobbying report issued to the feds by the company, Kroger has said it lobbied on "issues related to the regulation of topical products containing CBD oils and hemp-derived products following the implementation of the 2018 Farm Bill."

A reporter for Cannabis Wire said Kroger was "the first company of its kind to" lobby on the issue.

Trump budget — If you didn't already love President Donald Trump, he's coming to take your (legal-ish) cannabis.

Trump's new budget strips a policy that has, so far, protected state medical marijuana programs from the Justice Department. The Boston Globe reports that the policy has been stripped from Trump's last two budgets and that former President Barack Obama had asked for it to be removed, too. But Congress — since 2014 — has always restored the protections.

Tennessee hero — Lebanon canna-bro Spencer Boston took a stand at the stand for marijuana about two weeks ago.

The 20-year-old was on trial for possession (natch). During his impassioned speech against the tyranny of the country's prohibition on herb, Boston removed a fatty from his pocket and lit it, right there in the courtroom before, well, everyone.

A cuffed and orange-jumpsuited Boston said in a YouTube video later that it was marijuana (not CBD) and that "it was disrespectful, but it was what needed to be done."