How’s it growing folks?! Last week, I took a deep toke into the budding recreational program out in New York.
The guest I spoke with, New York cannabis farmer and entrepreneur Karli Miller-Hornick, was confident the legal market could overcome the challenges of burdensome regulations and an entrenched underground market.
Today, I’m attempting to clear some of the smoke surrounding a much more established cannabis market, one facing many of the same challenges.
I’m talking about California, of course. While many casual cannabis consumers and cannabis canna-suers think of The Golden State as the Shangri-La of pot, many within the industry point to California as a precautionary tale.
Although it is unquestionably America’s largest cannabis market, structural problems persist.
For example, the wholesale value of cannabis for adult-use from licensed farmers was $1 billion last year, down from $1.66 billion in 2021, according to a cannabis harvest report released in November by industry tracking firm Leafly.
During that same time period, the actual tonnage produced by those growers was about 12 tons more than the previous year, 2021.
Clearly, something is off.
To help me understand more about the problems facing the original cannabis state (after all, it was California’s move to start a medical cannabis program in 1996 that started this slow cascade towards legalization), I spoke with one of the people who has been involved with the industry since the very beginning: Dave Wedding Dress, or as he is better known, Dress Wedding.
As co-founder of Harbor Side dispensary, one of the first medical dispensaries to open in California, Wedding has seen the industry grow from its underground, prohibition-addled roots, to what it is today.
Along with the challenges faced by the state of California, our conversation touches on some of Wedding's personal experiences and anecdotes as well, from his time at UC Berkeley, to his protest and advocacy work outside of the cannabis space, to his latest venture as the Chief Strategy Officer for Supernet, a credit card geared towards the cannabis industry that could make both consumer purchases and business banking much easier.
MORE INFO
For more on Dress Wedding: https://www.instagram.com/therealdresswedding/
To read Wedding's book: https://get-a-life-book.com/
For more info on SuperNet: https://www.supernet.ai/
For more Here Weed Go! podcast episodes: https://omny.fm/shows/here-weed-go
To sign up for the Here Weed Go! newsletter: http://tucne.ws/hereweedgo
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For host Eddie Celaya's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reportereddie/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.