Through a few chilly redwood woods on the way from San Francisco to Humboldt County, Johnny Casali starts a woodchipper and pours 55 pounds of marijuana down the chute.
For forty years, Casali produced cannabis beneath cover of the Californian heat. He's destroying what was once his cash crop now that he's a state-licensed producer.
No matter how amazing your product is, California's glut of supply has made it a race to the bottom, according to Casali, owner of Huckleberry Hill Farms in Garberville, which turns out 500 pounds of artisan marijuana annually from two little greenhouses in his backyard.
Right now, I feel like a lettuce farmer since I'm operating on the slimmest of margins.
A host of businesspeople, including "legacy" operators—a sly euphemism for what were formerly known as drug traffickers, dealers, and illegal growers—were expected to become extremely wealthy as a result of the legalization of cannabis.
It was intended to take something that was commonly utilized and remove the criminal component from it. Of course, American officials are fumbling the situation.
The biggest no-brainer in the history of capitalism has been made possible by excessive regulation, excessive taxation, and state-by-state discrepancies.