This week Connecticut comes up short, Florida stays on brand, cannabis produces killers and Washington considers home growing a decade after legalization
Time is a precious commodity here at Marijuana Venture, so when it comes to news briefs, we like to run the most impactful stories possible and let the more incremental coverage fall to the wayside — until now. Here is a candid, possibly even antagonistic, recap of the stories from the past week that we didn’t cover in full detail.
Shortage of flower in Connecticut
Connecticut has more than 3.6 million residents, 41,717 of whom are medical card holders, and five growers who are each licensed to grow up to 15,000 square feet of cannabis. To me that doesn’t add up. Normally, states over license cultivators and the market sees a shortage of product for the first three months or so and then an over supply for the next couple years. But the state’s recreational cannabis sales launched more than a year ago and since then they added 21 retail stores and one producer.
I wouldn’t say the approach is wrong considering the over supply problems in other states, but it’s obviously not enough. I couldn’t imagine what Oregon’s market would look like if they took a similar approach.
Recreational Cannabis could be Lucrative for GOP Donors
This would be an amazing, shocking and outrage-fueling story if it were from anywhere other than Florida. Everything about how Florida went about regulating its medical cannabis program was gross, and with the lengths that have been taken to delay nearly anyone from legally joining the state’s industry have completely numbed me to any Florida cannabis controversy. At this point, it would honestly be incredibly shocking if the state took an ethical approach to legalizing recreational cannabis.
What is Cannabis-Induced Psychosis?
I don’t know, and from what I could find there isn’t really a straight answer. I have been trying to stow my cynicism as each report I came across seems to reek of “Reefer Madness” and reads like a wet dream for pharmaceutical companies. It’s being connected to psychotic episodes including one gruesome murder in California, but the research always seems to mention things like “linked to a higher chance of developing schizophrenia” and “bipolar disorders.” Then I start questioning if I am biased because I work in the industry, but then again, I have reported on cannabis for nearly a decade and suddenly this is being reported like it is a looming pandemic of cannabis-driven violence.
Bill could Legalize Home Growing in Washington
How did we end up being one of the first states to legalize adult-use cannabis and then ended up being late to the party in every other way possible? We should have home cultivation, for sure. But we also need to ease state excise taxes, which I believe are still the highest in the country. It’s just a proposal, not really anything more than that at this point.
Least appealing of the week
We had a slew of uninteresting stories this week, but for my money the blandest of the bland were: Jersey City wants to fire cops for smoking weed; Oklahoma licenses down by 27%; and white males file reverse discrimination suit in New York.
So in short: Jersey City is being regulated by the devil; Oklahoma finally found a roof on licensing; and, no — you know why.