We are thankful that no law enforcement officer was hurt in these efforts to combat illegal cannabis.” CSLEA President Alan Barcelona. NEVADA CITY – …
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Study: Low-Dose Cannabis Extracts Reduce Chronic Pain, Patients’ Reliance on Analgesic Medications
Twenty-six percent of patients reduced their use of traditional analgesic medicines. No participants increased or added analgesic drugs during the study.The post Study: Low-Dose Cannabis Extracts Reduce Chronic Pain, Patients’ Reliance on Analgesic Medications appeared first on NORML.
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Analysis: Botanical Cannabis Products Often Possess Less THC Than Advertised
THC potency was over-labeled in a significant percentage of the herbal cannabis products. By contrast, most (96 percent) concentrates were accurately labeled.The post Analysis: Botanical Cannabis Products Often Possess Less THC Than Advertised appeared first on NORML.
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Study: Low-THC Cannabis Extracts Improve Symptoms in Children with Rett Syndrome
Rett Syndrome is a rare genetic disorder associated with developmental delays, seizures, loss of speech and motor coordination, and involuntary/repetitive movements, among other symptoms.The post Study: Low-THC Cannabis Extracts Improve Symptoms in Children with Rett Syndrome appeared first on NORML.
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Hawaii: Governor Signs Medical Cannabis Expansion Bill Despite Privacy Concerns
Medical providers may now issue cannabis authorizations to any patient for whom they believe “the benefit of the medical use of cannabis would likely outweigh the health risks.”The post Hawaii: Governor Signs Medical Cannabis Expansion Bill Despite Privacy Concerns appeared first on NORML.
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Is recreational marijuana legal in Wisconsin? – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Recreational marijuana has been legalized across nearly half the U.S. … Rhode Island; Vermont; Virginia; Washington. Hope Karnopp and Vanessa …
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FOHSE Signs Exclusive 5-Year Master Service Agreement With Green Horizons
The partnership will power Green Horizons’ cannabis cultivation projects with FOHSE’s industry-leading lighting and technology.
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Airship Unveils AI Agents to Speed Brands’ Delivery of High-Impact Customer Experiences
Airship’s new intelligent agents work independently or in tandem to create, test and optimize customers’ entire experience across apps, websites and all channels. Designed for brand safety, all agents keep humans in the loop, adhere to brand style guidelines and proactively ensure accessibility requirements are met
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – July 10, 2025 – Airship, the cross-channel customer experience company, today built on its leadership in no-code native mobile experiences by unveiling Airship AI Agents. These task-specialized, intelligent agents automate the creation, testing and optimization of the entire customer experience — from the orchestration of highly personalized cross-channel messaging to the resulting experiences and outcomes on brands’ critical conversion destinations, their apps and websites.
Unlike generic AI tools, Airship’s agents work in concert, enabling a continuous, goal-based optimization loop. For example, a retail brand can now:
- Instantly create a rich, multi-screen onboarding Story or a branching Survey to capture customer preferences with the Scene AI Agent, driving greater engagement and valuable zero-party data collection for future personalization.
- Use the Experimentation AI Agent to automatically and continuously test which message variant and app or website experience best drives conversion or other goals, optimizing the path from messaging to outcome.
- Close the loop with the Recommendation AI Agent, which delivers prescriptive next-steps that marketing and product teams can implement in just a few clicks to scale performance.
Each agent is designed to work independently or in tandem, allowing teams to start small with the agent that solves their most pressing need and scale over time to unlock powerful agentic benefits. By default, every Airship AI Agent keeps a human in the loop, ensuring teams retain full control and transparency. As the agents learn and adapt to achieve specific goals, brands will be able to adjust their level of autonomous operation—providing a responsible, scalable path to greater efficiency.
“For too long, teams have been stuck in a cycle of manual creation and analysis that prevents them from moving at the speed of their customers. They need a system that not only creates experiences, but continuously optimizes them toward specific goals,” said Mike Herrick, CTO, Airship. “Our AI Agents are the natural evolution of our no-code platform, automating the entire creation-to-optimization process that we first enabled teams to accomplish without developer support. Airship AI Agents now close the loop between testing, learning and action at a speed and scale that was previously impossible. By keeping teams in control of this powerful cycle, we are empowering them to connect every marketing effort and customer interaction to meaningful business outcomes.”
The task-specialized AI agents are purpose-built to solve critical pain points:
- The Scene AI Agent acts as an instant creator, transforming simple prompts or existing images into a variety of fully-branded, interactive app and web experiences—from onboarding flows and activation sequences to rich Stories and branching Surveys.
- The Experimentation AI Agent serves as a tireless analyst, recommending and running complex multivariate tests on app or web experiences and cross-channel messages to continuously optimize for specific business goals.
- The Recommendation AI Agent functions as a strategist, closing the optimization loop by delivering prescriptive next-best actions that turn complex performance data into clear, easily implemented suggestions.
A fourth agent, the Accessibility AI Agent, serves as a compliance guardian, proactively generating elements to ensure experiences are built to meet accessibility requirements and critical standards like the new EU Accessibility Act that went into effect June 28, mitigating significant legal and financial risk.
This focus on safe and responsible AI is foundational to the entire system. Underpinning all agents is the Airship Brand Hub, which ensures every piece of AI-generated content, from app and web experiences to cross-channel campaign copy uses the brand’s style guide adhering to the company’s unique voice, tone, and visual identity. It solves the core tension between generating content at speed and scale, while maintaining brand integrity.
“Using AI agents to generate contextual insights and action them in a role- and scenario-relevant way will supercharge insights-driven marketing and sales by enabling differentiated interactions based on relevance, responsiveness, and value, not quantity or scale. AI agents must be able to continuously learn about your business and customers using quality first-party data … human oversight is needed now more than ever to help AI agents learn about the business and its customers to best guide and use their goal-oriented behaviors” (Forrester Research, Inc., “AI Agents: What It Means For B2B Marketing, Sales, And Product,” April 1, 2025).
About Airship
Airship is trusted by the world’s leading brands such as Alaska Airlines, BBC and The Home Depot to drive revenue growth and customer loyalty with exceptional cross-channel customer experiences.
Airship’s no-code, AI-powered platform makes it easy for marketing, product and growth teams to create, test and orchestrate hyper-personalized experiences across apps, websites, email, SMS, mobile wallets and more. Airship’s modular network of AI agents empowers teams to continuously enrich customer data and rapidly launch experiments to confidently improve every interaction and the entire end-to-end customer journey, helping brands drive repeatable conversions, higher lifetime value and durable revenue growth.
For more information, visit www.airship.com.
The post Airship Unveils AI Agents to Speed Brands’ Delivery of High-Impact Customer Experiences appeared first on The Wise Marketer.
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Gen Alpha Is Coming: How to Prepare for the Next Generation of Payment Preferences
A new generation is quietly but steadily beginning to influence the future of retail, yet many merchants have yet to take notice. Born from 2010 onward, Gen Alpha has grown up surrounded by smartphones, voice assistants and digital wallets. As they move closer to adulthood and gain spending power, their expectations around payments will be higher, faster and more digitally integrated than anything retailers have encountered before.
Those who take steps to understand Gen Alpha’s preferences now will be in a stronger position to connect with them later. So what should retailers consider?
Mobile-First Payments are the New Standard
For Gen Alpha, paying with cash or even using a plastic card may soon feel as dated as writing a cheque. Mobile and digital wallets, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, are not simply convenient, they are expected.
Retailers must ensure that their payment systems are optimised for mobile-first experiences, offering fast, secure and seamless integration with popular wallets. That includes maintaining reliable NFC terminals in-store, enabling QR code payments where appropriate and ensuring online checkouts are mobile-responsive and friction-free.
Payment processes must also be low-friction and lightning fast. A cumbersome checkout experience could quickly lead to cart abandonment, especially among younger customers who are used to instant app-based interactions.
Flexibility also is a must. As digital currencies and new payment technologies mature, merchants that have built adaptable systems, rather than locking themselves into legacy infrastructure, will be better placed to meet changing customer expectations without costly overhauls.
Smooth Journeys will Foster Loyalty
Gen Alpha has grown up with instant access to information, entertainment and services. As a result, they will expect shopping journeys to be quick, intuitive and uninterrupted.
Features such as one-click checkouts, autofill options, biometric logins and even invisible payments — where transactions are completed automatically, without requiring conscious action — are likely to become baseline expectations.
Merchants also should rethink account creation and onboarding processes. Long forms, multiple verification steps and tedious re-entry of details will simply not align with the speed Gen Alpha expects.
By investing in technologies that minimise friction at every touch point, from browsing through to payment confirmation, retailers can not only drive immediate conversions but also build longer-term brand loyalty.
The Promise and the Pitfalls of AI, Voice and Biometrics
Using a fingerprint, face scan or voice command to approve a payment will feel entirely natural to Gen Alpha. Biometric authentication combines speed and security, making it a smart investment for retailers aiming to future-proof their operations.
Smart technology is set to become even more influential in how retailers connect with customers. It can help tailor offers to individual preferences, anticipate what shoppers might need next and adjust pricing in real time. Tools like chatbots and voice assistants also could gain popularity with Gen Alpha, who are used to fast, on-demand interactions and may prefer these over traditional browsing.
However, caution is essential. This generation has grown up amid heightened conversations around data privacy and online security. Over-personalisation or overly intrusive AI experiences may be viewed as unsettling rather than helpful. Younger consumers will expect retailers to be upfront about how they handle personal information, and they’ll want clear, easy ways to choose how much they share.
Should Retailers Embrace Cryptocurrency Payments?
Blockchain and digital currencies have steadily moved into the mainstream conversation, and Gen Alpha may drive the next wave of adoption.
While widespread consumer use of cryptocurrency for everyday purchases remains limited today, it is likely that new forms of digital payments — from stablecoins to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) — will become increasingly viable over the coming decade.
Retailers thinking ahead do not necessarily need to accept Bitcoin or Ethereum today, but they should start future-proofing their payment ecosystems. Integrating flexible payment gateways and remaining open to partnerships with fintech providers specialising in digital assets will allow retailers to move quickly if, or when, demand among Gen Alpha rises.
Social Commerce and Peer-to-Peer Payment Integration
Shopping for Gen Alpha will not be confined to websites or physical stores. It will happen organically through social media, gaming platforms and digital communities.
Many young shoppers already treat Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube as places to discover and buy products. Social media is becoming a natural part of the shopping journey, not just a way to see advertisements.
Retailers must think beyond the traditional ecommerce model. Embedding shopping functionality directly within social media posts, influencer collaborations, livestreams and virtual events will help brands meet younger consumers where they are most active.
In parallel, partnerships with peer-to-peer (P2P) payment providers, such as PayPal, Venmo and Cash App, will enable retailers to offer instant payment options that mirror how Gen Alpha is accustomed to transferring money among peers.
Even emerging technologies like token-gated commerce (where access to products is granted via ownership of NFTs or digital badges) may present new opportunities for brands willing to innovate.
The Opportunity Ahead
While Gen Alpha may still be in their early years, their impact on the future of retail is already taking shape.
The businesses that succeed with Gen Alpha will be those that focus on making payments effortless, protect personal data and create buying experiences that feel natural, not forced.
Gen Alpha will expect payments to happen in the background, as part of everyday interactions, without interrupting what they are doing. Preparing for it today is not just an investment in new technologies; it is an investment in long-term relevance.
Azimkhon Askarov is Co-CEO and Partner at CONCRYT. He is an expert in developing, managing and executing go-to-market plans and strategies to facilitate business growth in the fintech industry across all key markets. With extensive experience in diverse roles within the payments and financial services industries, Askarov has amassed substantial expertise across business development and product management and brings to Concryt a wealth of knowledge in card acquiring, alternative payment methods and gateway/ecommerce platforms.
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Cannabis Employment Compliance: How to Navigate Complex State and Federal Regulations
What you need to know to protect your business and your license.