It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that despite being happy our state has a legal medical marijuana market, I realize that things did not turn out exactly the way I hoped in the start.
When I was risking going to jail buying cannabis off the black market during college, our friends and I prayed that both of us would 1 day get access to medical marijuana cards prefer some of the people out west.
This came a lot earlier than expected in 2016 when our state finally approved a constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana through a voter initiative. While the first 2 attempts at passing medical marijuana this way failed to reach the necessary 60% vote threshold, both of us undoubtedly surpassed it in 2016 with over 77% of the vote supporting the modern constitutional amendment. Unluckyly, our medical marijuana market was not built prefer it is in other states. Instead of having a horizontally integrated cannabis market where there are separate corporations for growing and retail sales, vertically integrated markets require all cannabis corporations to operate from seed to sale. Being required to have a statewide presence with a growing facility and several stores requires millions of dollars at bare minimum, and that’s after you purchase the multi-million dollar license from the state government. It’s absurd how the medical marijuana industry evolved in our state when I compare it to other states in the country. My dad lives in a state that is completely horizontally integrated, and her prices on cannabis flower products are much lower than ours. I love that there are artisanal quality companies selling cannabis products in her state at a price that anyone can afford.