Bad for Buyers & Sellers: Nevada is the Middleman’s Marijuana Market
Nevada is experiencing major distribution problems when it comes to cannabis.
Unless a trip to the Grand Canyon or a prizefight where the outcome is actually in doubt comes packaged with your marijuana vacation, please do yourself a favor, and stay far, far away from Las Vegas. Or maybe you appreciate the towns grand tradition of hucksters and suckers, and want to participate. Just be forewarned: Your role will be that of the taken.
Ongoing and entirely predictable supply woes have swollen retail prices of recreational marijuana products by as much as 300 percent. Prices remain high even as sales figures plummet because, you see, its not through lack of demand. Nevadas licensed marijuana distributor is working overtime to keep the industry going. Reno-based Blackbird is making as many as 150 deliveries a day to dispensaries across the state, who are in turn running out of product, and spending days watching dust collect on empty shelves before a resupply can come through.
You read that right: distributor, singular.
Nevada is the first of the four states to legalize marijuana for adults over 21 last November to record a commercial transaction, but rather than a model for quick and efficient stewardship to follow, Nevada is becoming a cautionary tale. Written into the states legalization law are restrictions on who can distribute the product. For now, only alcohol companies can provide the essential middle link between product producer and product seller and at the moment, theres only one company providing this key service.
The ensuing disruption hasnt really helped anyone. Cultivators might be happy, considering the price of a pound of trim has tripled, according to Forbes. Retailers should be happy, seeing as how they cant keep edibles, pre-rolls, and low-THC products in stock. But its not so. Somehow, nobody is happy.
Cultivators and producers have product sitting for days waiting to be delivered to stores while the quality of the product degrades. Retailers do not have the products their customers desire, products that are legal and should be available to them, wrote Deonne Contine, director of the Nevada Department of Taxation, in a recent report lamenting the status quo, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal.
According to state regulators, despite steady demand, thanks to dwindling supply, recreational marijuana sales have dropped since adult-use dispensaries opened for business for everyone and anyone 21 and over early last month. By volume, dispensaries ledgers are down by as much as 30 percent in August ...
