Spirituality

Oregon grew more cannabis than customers can smoke. Now shops and farmers are left with mountains of unwanted bud.

“This time last year, it was basically all mom-and-pop shops,” says Mason Walker, CEO of Cave Junction cannabis farm East Fork Cultivars. “Now there are five or six companies that own 25 or 30 percent. Stores are selling for pennies on the dollar, and people are losing their life savings in the process.”

Deep-pocketed companies can survive the crash and wait for the market to contract again. “What this means is, the market is now in a position where only the large [businesses] or the ones that can produce at the lower cost can survive,” Whitney says. “A lot of the craft growers, a lot of the small-capacity cultivators, will go out of business.” Oregon faces another consequence of pot businesses closing up shop: Leftover weed could end up on the black market. Already, Oregon has a thriving illegal market shipping to other states. U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy Williams has said he has little interest in cracking down on legal marijuana businesses, but will prosecute those shipping marijuana to other states. “That kind of thing is what’s going to shut down our industry,” Chadowitz says. “Anything we can do to prevent Jeff Sessions from being right, we have to do.” … Ask someone in the cannabis industry what to do about Oregon’s weed surplus, and you’re likely to get one of three answers. The first is to cap the number of licenses awarded by the OLCC. The second is to reduce the canopy size allotted to each license—Massachusetts is trying that. And the last, equally common answer is to simply do nothing. Let the market sort itself out.

Original Article (Willamette Weekly):
Oregon Grew More Cannabis Than Customers Can Smoke. Now Shops and Farmers Are Left With Mountains of Unwanted Bud.
Artwork Fair Use: Stephen Gaskin and the ECfES.org Public Lending Library

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