I’m scared of seeing out of control weed taxation happening in states like California.
Once heralded as the mecca for American cannabis, the current market in the Golden State leaves a lot to be desired for both businesses and customers alike.
Somewhere around 90% of the Los Angeles cannabis industry operates in the gray market, with some lacking any kind of licensing whatsoever. The rules, prices, and lack of availability on legal cannabis licenses forces some business owners to operate illegally while following the other regulations built into the law that oversees this industry. You can’t be 100% sure that a company is following the correct lab testing requirements if they’re skirting the rest of the law at the same time. It doesn’t exactly set a good precedent when your supplier is working illegitimately. I just don’t see that level of weed corruption here in Michigan. It’s relatively easy to get a legal marijuana business license here in the Great Lakes State compared to California. Our state taxes are also only 15% for recreational cannabis, which is half of the marijuana tax rate in some places of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, there are so many cannabis stores around Ann Arbor and the rest of Michigan that we’re seeing prices go down drastically. I was visiting this amazing cannabis store on Packard St for years but the prices for an eighth of an ounce of cannabis flower buds used to be $75 after paying the state recreational cannabis taxes. Now I can get the same products for half that price after costs dropped recently.