Posted on 12/14/2022 7:54:10 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
… Pot farms across the state are shutting down as wholesale cannabis prices have crashed by as much as 95% since California voters legalized weed in 2016, according to SFGATE interviews with over a dozen California cannabis farmers, who could get as much as $2,000 for a pound of pot in 2016. Today, they’re lucky to get $400 — and some pot is selling for as little as $100 a pound.
Economists have been predicting that legalization would cause a drop in wholesale pot prices since states first began discussing the pot reform. But cannabis farmers say that California’s government has made the problem worse than it has to be, by enforcing expensive government regulations and allowing the largest pot farms to grow infinitely large.
Vahan Petrossian, the chief operating officer at the Humboldt Sun Growers Guild, said there’s a hopeless feeling in the industry, with some farmers struggling to even find buyers for their crops.
“We’re in this really tender place where everyone is selling out at a race to the bottom, just to sell their herb,” Petrossian told SFGATE.
Despite all the market pressures, third-generation farmer Wheeler told SFGATE it was his interactions with the local government that ultimately convinced him to shut down his family’s farm.
“The regulations are so extreme and the taxes are so extreme that it was basically impossible to make any money at it,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
“The regulations are so extreme and the taxes are so extreme that it was basically impossible to make any money at it,” he said.
= = =
... to keep any money from it.
By the way, 3rd generation?
Grandpa, Pa, and the kid.
That extends way back before legal growing, right?
Now that is BIG!
So formerly illegal pot farms are going out of business, and the industry is flooded with the product and having to generate demand?
What a strange, dysfunctional problem.
Why, you’d almost think the stuff grows like a weed.
Who knew? Prohibition makes stuff expensive. Next you’ll be telling me that shady people got rich during the 1920s.
Supply/Demand...............It’s the Law...................
Hmmm…can’t seem to identify the real problem here.
“...the industry is flooded with the product and having to generate demand?”
I think what we are seeing is the equivalent of what happened in retail when Walmart and Costco showed up. Since they could sell massive amounts of product, they could order massive amounts, and thus get massive discounts, and then sell those products for less than any competitor. Soon all their smaller competitors were gone.
Not saying I ever partook of the wacky-tabacky, but I wouldn’t even consider it nowadays. Maybe if I grew my own. But definitely wouldn’t buy any off the street.
I remember one at Texas Tech back in ‘79 that called themselves the Gordon Hall Growers Association.
The chinese have a monopoly in many states.
there’s nothing new here: leftist fascist governments deliberately bankrupting small businesses with endless harassment and regulations, while favoring a few ginormous businesses that are much easier to control and extort for “contributions” and support ... it’s the way of ALL fascist governments ...
When they legalized pot in California they said it clamp down on all the illegal activity.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/californias-illegal-pot-business-booming
https://laist.com/news/chinese-immigrants-navajo-nation-cannabis-farm
https://nextshark.com/chinese-immigrants-keep-getting-arrested-marijuana-farm-raids-california
There isn’t one thing that liberals do that is a benefit to anyone.
i have relatives that converted a large cherry orchard into a very large pot farm in Washington state.the cherry orchard was going out of business. so did the pot farm. prices went from 2200 a lb to maybe 250-300. poof. their business went up in smoke
Its funny how when products stop being taboo, they lose a lot of appeal. Don’t get me wrong as pot will always be popular, but this reminds me of when I first moved to Reno in 1988. At the time, it was illegal to sell clove cigarettes in Nevada. I thought this was odd since I grew up in LA where they were legal but not particularly popular. But all the kids at UNR and especially the sorority girls were absolutely obsessed with them and everyone would make frequent runs to Truckee or Lake Tahoe to acquire them. Not long afterward, cloves were made legal to sell, and literally overnight everybody stopped smoking them.
It is when you are smoking the right 💩man.(said in Cheech Marin’s voice.)
and in 10 years...there will be a clinic to get you off the sh**.
“...convinced him to shut down his family’s farm.”
I guess the meaning of “family farm” has changed.
Maybe they should switch to poppies or God forbid, CORN!
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