Montana Producers Prepare for Recreational Cannabis in January
FOUR CORNERS, Mont. (AP) — Anticipation for Jan. 1 hangs in the air of a parking lot here where four cannabis dispensaries sit shoulder-to-shoulder.
Next month could mean a budding business plan blossoming into its full potential, or it could bring possible failure in an industry as crowded as this lot.
“It’s kind of like charging into the dark,” said Cody Lundmark, co-owner of Sacred Sun Farms, one of the four shops of the Four Corners cluster.
Montana will launch recreational cannabis sales on Jan. 1. The road to recreational use has been thrust onward by Montana’s voters, who legalized medical use in 2004 and then took the full plunge in 2020. In last year’s election, 58% of voters enshrined cannabis use in the state Constitution alongside alcohol.
In the final weeks ahead of recreational sales, providers have been ramping up their production, specializing their craft and bracing for the unknowns like what demand will be, the Montana State News Bureau reports.
Local governments, meanwhile, have been trying to balance the voters’ will with regulatory framework rolled out by the state Legislature, along with feedback from the industry.
In this lot, providers are nervous and excited, but their position in the weeks leading up to recreational sales makes all the difference in determining who is confident and who is keeping their options open.
New market opportunities
Sacred Sun Farms has 11 greenhouses and a high-end laboratory to engineer concentrate products like oils, and Lundmark doesn’t expect their shelves will go bare in the first wave of recreational sales. He said Sacred Sun is working on contracts to wholesale some of their concentrates to other dispensaries and let the product advertise itself in regions where Sacred Sun doesn’t have retail.
Wholesaling is arguably the second-largest shift in the industry come Jan. 1, behind recreational sales. Previously, cannabis providers had to be vertically integrated, meaning must they grow, manufacture and retail their entire product line.
In order to provide edibles, like cookies, concentrates and oils, dispensaries had to make huge investments in their equipment and quality control.
But under the new regulatory structure, providers can be horizontally integrated. That means they can run growing, manufacturing or retail operations, or any combination of the three. Theoretically, that could make a provider better able to play whatever hand they’re dealt in terms of size, location and access to cash investments.