Let’s put some context around a number: 105 years. That’s how long Forbes magazine existed before it put a cannabis executive on its cover. Founded in 1917, the publication has celebrated industrialists, tech visionaries, oil barons, banking dynasties, and retail empires. It took until the August/September 2022 issue for someone who built their fortune in cannabis to appear on that iconic front page. That person was Berner, co-founder and CEO of Cookies, and in my view, it was one of the most symbolically loaded business magazine covers of the decade.
Berner didn’t just happen into that moment. He built it, brick by brick, in an industry that the federal government still classifies as Schedule I, meaning, officially, no accepted medical use and high potential for abuse. The DEA’s drug scheduling framework still places cannabis alongside heroin in the most restrictive category. And yet here was Berner, on the cover of one of the most prestigious business publications in the world, representing a company valued at a minimum of one billion dollars. If that’s not a statement, I don’t know what is.
Who Is Berner, and Why Does It Matter?
Berner, born Gilbert Milam Jr., came up through the Bay Area music scene as a rapper before building one of the most recognisable cannabis brands in the world. Cookies started as a strain, became a brand, and then became a cultural movement. By the time that Forbes cover ran, Cookies had 49 dispensaries across the United States. Their clothing line alone had done over 50 million dollars in sales. This wasn’t a cannabis company trying to act like a fashion brand. It was a brand that happened to start with cannabis and expanded because the identity it built resonated with a generation that grew up with cannabis as part of its cultural landscape.
The achievement is remarkable by any business standard. But it becomes even more remarkable when you factor in what Berner himself described as “massive overregulation and overtaxation.” The cannabis industry in the United States is subject to Section 280E of the federal tax code, which prevents cannabis businesses from deducting normal business expenses because they’re technically trafficking a federally illegal substance. You can’t use a federally insured bank. You can’t easily access capital markets. You operate in a legal grey zone where the rules change state by state, and where a business that is entirely compliant with state law remains a federal crime. Building a billion-dollar business in those conditions isn’t hustle. It’s something closer to a miracle.
The Cultural Significance of the Cover
The Forbes cover wasn’t just a business story. It was a cultural inflection point. Cannabis has been part of American, and global, life for generations. It has shaped music, art, film, and subculture. It has also been used as a tool of racially targeted enforcement for most of that time, with communities of colour bearing a wildly disproportionate share of cannabis arrests even as consumption rates remained roughly consistent across racial groups. The BusinessWire press release announcing the cover framed it as a milestone moment, and it was right to do so.
Honestly, the image of Berner on the cover of Forbes sitting with that kind of headline legitimacy sends a message that no amount of cannabis industry advocacy could buy. It says: this is a real industry, these are real businesses, and the people building them are visionaries, not criminals. In a landscape where more states are moving toward legalisation in 2026, that shift in cultural framing matters enormously.
Let’s be real: the stigma hasn’t fully evaporated. There are still investors who won’t touch cannabis, banks that won’t lend to it, and landlords who won’t rent to it. There are still politicians who treat cannabis legalisation as a political liability rather than a public health and economic opportunity. The Forbes cover doesn’t dissolve all of that. But it contributes to a shift in the Overton window that makes those positions less and less defensible over time.
Building Cookies: A Decade of Defiance
What Berner built in roughly a decade is extraordinary by any metric. Start with the brand itself. Cookies is immediately recognisable, instantly associated with quality, and genuinely aspirational in a way that most cannabis brands, with their clinical green-cross aesthetics, simply aren’t. The clothing line succeeding at over $50 million in sales independently of the cannabis business tells you everything about the strength of the brand identity. People were buying Cookies hoodies who had never set foot in a dispensary.
The dispensary network of 49 locations at the time of the Forbes cover represents real operational infrastructure. Running a multi-state cannabis retail operation means navigating 49 different sets of compliance requirements, 49 different state regulatory frameworks, and doing it all without access to the banking and financial services infrastructure that any comparable business in another sector would take for granted. Each new state licence is a bureaucratic and legal mountain to climb, not a box-ticking exercise.
Understanding the product side of what Cookies built also matters here. The Cookies strain that started the whole thing is a specific genetic cross known for its flavour profile and potency. The terpene science behind what makes a cannabis strain distinctive, and what makes certain strains better for certain patient or consumer needs, is increasingly well understood. Anyone interested in how terpene profiles shape the cannabis experience will find that the genetics obsession that Berner brought to Cookies is part of a broader science of cannabis quality.
The Regulatory Gauntlet
I think it’s worth dwelling on the regulatory environment for a moment, because it’s easy to understate how hostile the landscape actually is. Cannabis operators in US legal states pay federal tax rates that can exceed 70% of their revenue, because 280E strips away the ability to deduct cost of goods sold and normal business expenses. They often operate in cash-only environments because banking relationships remain inaccessible. Property taxes on cannabis facilities can be punishing. Licencing fees are substantial. And the constant risk of regulatory change, particularly as political winds shift at the state level, makes long-term business planning genuinely difficult.
Berner built a billion-dollar enterprise in those conditions. The federal Schedule I classification remains in place, creating a permanent structural headwind that his competitors in any other consumer goods sector simply don’t face. When you understand that context, the Forbes cover becomes even more significant. It’s not just celebrating a business success. It’s celebrating a business success achieved despite a system actively working against it.
The broader cannabis industry has been watching federal rescheduling discussions with enormous interest. Any movement on scheduling would fundamentally change the economics of the sector, unlocking banking access, normalising tax treatment, and opening capital markets in ways that would transform what companies like Cookies are able to do. The evolving regulatory picture at the state level in 2026 is a useful lens for understanding how patchwork and unpredictable the legal environment remains.
What the Forbes Cover Means for the Industry
One of the most underappreciated effects of moments like the Forbes cover is what they do for the next generation of cannabis entrepreneurs. Cannabis has historically struggled to attract mainstream business talent, particularly on the operational and finance side, because of the stigma and legal risk associated with the sector. When the most prestigious business magazine in the world puts a cannabis CEO on its cover, it sends a signal to MBAs, finance professionals, and operations experts that this is a legitimate industry worth building a career in.
That talent pipeline matters. The cannabis sector is going through a professionalisation phase, moving from its origins in the grey and black markets towards a more formal industry structure. Companies like Cookies, which combined genuine brand vision with operational scale, are part of what that professionalisation looks like. The growing body of cannabis research is another dimension of this professionalisation, as the science catches up with decades of practical knowledge accumulated by growers, patients, and consumers.
I think Berner would probably be the first to acknowledge that one Forbes cover doesn’t change the fundamental structure of federal cannabis law in the United States. The fight for federal legalisation, or at least rescheduling, is ongoing and uncertain. But cultural recognition matters. It builds momentum. It shifts what is considered possible and what is considered normal.
A Milestone Worth Celebrating, With Eyes Open
The cannabis industry has a lot of hard work ahead of it. Banking reform, tax reform, social equity in licencing, expungement of prior convictions, and the ongoing challenge of competing with a still-substantial illicit market are all live issues. The importance of cannabis education for both consumers and policymakers has never been greater, as the gap between what the science shows and what public policy reflects remains wide.
But moments matter. Berner on the cover of Forbes in 2022 was a moment. It marked 105 years of a publication ignoring an industry that millions of Americans have participated in, legally or otherwise, for generations. It put a face, and a story, and a billion-dollar valuation, on what was previously either invisible or criminal in the mainstream business press. That kind of recognition doesn’t solve the structural problems. But it changes the story being told, and in the long run, the story matters.
In my view, the fact that it took this long is an indictment of how slowly institutional media has moved to take cannabis seriously as an industry. The fact that it finally happened, and happened with someone who built their empire from the ground up under genuinely hostile conditions, is worth celebrating without reservation. Berner didn’t just make the cover of Forbes. He earned it.
