XPost: alt.atheism, sac.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: alt.society.liberalism   
   From: dirtbag@gavinnewsom.turds   
      
   Vince Ning has a singular perspective on California's weed industry.   
   He's the CEO and co-founder of Nabis, the state's largest pot   
   distribution company, which interacts with every single pot retailer in   
   the state. When Ning looks out across California's legal weed industry,   
   he sees a market in long, drawn-out freefall.   
      
   "It's like a wave crashing in slow motion," Ning recently told SFGATE.   
   "People thought the big crash was going to happen in 2022, and there was   
   certainly a crash, but things continued to get worse in 2023. And we are   
   still in 2024, and things aren't looking that much better."   
      
   The latest data confirms Ning's point of view, with signs of economic   
   trouble nearly everywhere you look: Overall sales have been falling for   
   the past two years. The number of legal cannabis growers and brands has   
   decreased by more than 70% since legalization first went into effect,   
   according to the Mercury News. A recent report found that pot companies   
   owe the state more than $730 million in back taxes, money that   
   California likely will never see as most of those companies have already   
   folded.   
      
   Furthermore, very few new farms are opening, even in places like   
   Humboldt County, the original capital of cannabis cultivation in   
   California. Overall employment in the legal industry is also falling.   
   Even the sacred mantra of California's cannabis market - that it's the   
   largest legal market for weed in the world - is at risk, as Michigan now   
   sells more cannabis products per month than California.   
      
   Most analysts say that there's no end in sight to the industry's   
   contraction. Or as Ning puts it, "We're still not fully bottomed out."   
      
   This is hardly the outcome Californians predicted in 2016, when voters   
   legalized pot. There were already warning signs back then that making   
   money in legal weed was nearly impossible in the four states that had   
   legalized pot before California, but economists still issued sky-high   
   predictions for the market's size. More than 10,000 businesses were   
   launched as entrepreneurs jumped into the so-called Green Rush.   
      
   Yet today, six years after legal sales started, the first wave of   
   California's legal cannabis industry is crashing.   
      
   California's Green Rush   
   California, with its population of more than 39 million people in 2016,   
   was irresistible to cannabis entrepreneurs. The Golden State's massive   
   population meant that voters had suddenly doubled the scale of America's   
   market for legal weed by approving legalization of recreational   
   cannabis. It would take two years for legal sales to launch, but   
   capitalists wasted no time investing billions into California's pot   
   market.   
      
   Companies like the retail chain MedMen and distributor Herbl raised   
   massive sums of money under the promise that they would be virtually   
   printing cash. The bet was that folks who may not have been comfortable   
   purchasing illegally, but were hesitant to get into the medical   
   marijuana system, would spend money in recreational pot stores, opening   
   up a whole new subset of customers. Thousands of farmers applied to grow   
   cannabis to feed the state's massive new cannabis market.   
      
   Nicole Skibola can still remember the runaway optimism among   
   entrepreneurs at the time. She joined thousands of folks in opening a   
   new pot business, launching Cosmic View, a Sonoma County pot   
   manufacturer specializing in edibles, topicals and medical-focused   
   products, with her mother in 2017. Skibola and her mother are both   
   cancer survivors who found relief using cannabis during their fights   
   with the disease. They put every ounce of effort into their business,   
   sourcing ingredients like local Sonoma County olive oil for use in   
   cannabis tinctures and using only the best small-batch cannabis they   
   could find.   
      
   "Looking back I'm like, man, we were naive," Skibola told SFGATE in an   
   April interview. "We all thought California was different. California is   
   a huge market. California is sophisticated. California is the cannabis   
   capital of the world. I think there was a hope that California was going   
   to break the mold of other states that had stagnated [and other]   
   companies [that] were already starting to falter."   
      
   But with the birth of a new legal industry also came a new maze of   
   bureaucracy. California's many layers of government also wanted a share   
   of the newly flowing cash. The 2016 legalization initiative gave local   
   governments nearly total control over regulations, which allowed   
   politicians at both the city and county level to restrict how many   
   licenses were allowed in their communities. They could also require   
   hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees, a trend that one   
   industry blog called "extortionate" in 2019. In some cases, California's   
   local pot laws allowed politicians to engage in outright criminal   
   corruption, as Politico reported in detail in 2020.   
      
   In short, lawmakers across the state saw the new industry as a "cash cow   
   that needed to be milked," according to Dennis Bozanich, who worked as a   
   cannabis regulator in Santa Barbara (he was once deemed the "cannabis   
   czar" by a local paper) during the first years of legalization. He now   
   runs his own consulting practice for government affairs.   
      
   "I think everybody got greedy," Bozanich told SFGATE, referring to both   
   private companies that expanded too fast and government officials who   
   created expensive regulations.   
      
   When sales first opened in 2018, things looked strong. A multibillion   
   dollar pot market grew from nothing in a matter of months. The COVID-19   
   pandemic gave the market an additional boost in 2020 and 2021, when   
   consumers across the West Coast spent more money on pot as they were   
   stuck at home during pandemic lockdowns.   
      
   But the growth didn't last long. California's pot sales peaked in early   
   2021 and have since been coasting at a lethargic and slightly downward   
   trajectory, with overall sales much lower than the estimates from   
   pre-legalization had predicted. For the thousands of new pot business   
   owners who invested heavily on the assumption their businesses would   
   grow quickly - and keep growing for years - that spelled disaster. By   
   the end of 2021, California was offering not a money-printing machine,   
   but an overinvested market with nowhere near enough people buying pot.   
      
   Now, midway through 2024, thousands of pot companies have gone out of   
   business, from the state's biggest players like MedMen and Herbl to   
   small family-run companies like Skibola's Cosmic View. She decided to   
   shut down her business this past April.   
      
   "This is a conscious choice for us to no longer participate in what is a   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)