Why some of California’s cannabis rollout has been a failure, and what other states can learn from it.
In 2016, roughly 57% of Californians voted to legalize cannabis yet today, it is only available to less than 20% of the state’s population. Communities where citizens voted for cannabis are denied access to it. In December 2017, there were more than 3,000 retail shops. In January 2018 with the start of regulation, that number dropped to 300.
This seems to be a recurring theme, as we have seen this type of difficulty with access in other states that have legalized cannabis as well. Overregulation and taxation also continually seem to hurt the emerging and newly legalized cannabis industries, and California seems to have been particularly hard hit in their process here.
Gavin Kogan is the Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder of Grupo Flor and one of California’s earliest cannabis business attorneys. Kogan is speaking out on the implications and solutions of overregulation and overtaxation so new states coming online can learn from California’s mistakes.
I was able to get some insight from Kogan about these very issues…
Leah Maurer (LM): What do you think is the…