Inside California's cannabis crisis
Small weed farms are facing extinction under oppressive regulations, high taxes, and a statewide collapse in cannabis pricing
Monday, February 21, 2022
California’s marijuana market, which reached an estimated $4.4 billion in sales in 2020, has seemingly reached peak cannabis capitalism. But the overwhelming sense amongst the so-called “legacy growers” is that they’re at a breaking point, exhausted by the regulations of the industry that they largely created. Protecting existing growers was a pillar of Proposition 64, which legalized marijuana for adult use. Legalization advocates included a provision to encourage legacy growers to join the legal market, promising that no cultivation site would be larger than one acre until 2023, so that small farms wouldn’t face competition from multi-acre ‘mega farms’ for at least five years. But cannabis industry lobbyists persuaded the California Department of Food and Agriculture to change the provision.
