![]() ![]() “Oregon just has too much weed,” said Amy Margolis, founder of the Oregon Cannabis Association, a network group for hundreds of businesses. “This is a real problem-and one we should take seriously from a policy perspective.” These days, growers who once sold a pound of pot for $2,000 are unloading it to wholesalers for just $600, and barely breaking even. It may be pothead paradise-but it’s far from the “green goldrush” business owners foresaw in 2014, when recreational weed became legal in Oregon. The glut of ganja sparked a buyer’s market with joint prices plunging to as low as $1, less than a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. In 2017, the state produced 1.1 million pounds of marijuana, roughly three times more than its population of 4.1 million people could possibly smoke, eat or vape, according to state data, which was first reported by the Willamette Week newspaper. But the oversupply is more than a buzzkill for entrepreneurs who thought they were blazing a trail to big bucks. It sounds like a fun problem to have: Oregon is drowning in bud. “They think, why not sell it out of state for 15 times the price?” “TOO MUCH WEED” ![]() “A lot of legit growers can’t turn profit,” said Michael Getlin, 35, one of the founders of Old Apple Farm, a family-run cannabis farm in the Willamette Valley. Instead, some farmers are returning to the bad old days, hawking weed illegally across state lines for four to 15 times the price, everywhere from Idaho to New York and Texas, law enforcement officials and cannabis industry insiders told me. If state data is right, Oregonians have destroyed at least 186,800 pounds of marijuana-more than the weight of a Boeing 737 airplane-in the past two years, according to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which oversees the industry.īut not everyone who claims to trash it really does. He added, “Who the hell is going to burn it?” “People have a hard time destroying tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of product.” “I’d be surprised if that’s actually happening,” said Donald Morse, chairman of the Oregon Cannabis Business Council. Or they can turn it over to state bureaucrats. Farmers who fold are supposed to get rid of their pot by burning, burying or composting it. ![]() #AMBERLIGHT PORTLAND CANNABIS FULL#Some growers in the too-crowded market were left with garbage bags full of weed they can’t sell anywhere legally, they told me. In the past two years, at least 150 cannabis businesses, ranging from family farms to trendy Portland dispensaries, closed in Oregon-where farmers grew three times more weed than the state could consume, according to a state data. He isn’t the only legal weed farmer who has been pushed, at least temporarily, back to the black market. (*Griffin asked to use a pseudonym to avoid incriminating himself.) ![]() #AMBERLIGHT PORTLAND CANNABIS SOFTWARE#When it came time to trash the rest of the crop, he logged into the state’s cannabis tracking software system and listed it as “destroyed.” But instead of actually tossing it, he handed some of it off to a friend, who converted it to THC known as “shatter” and sold it illegally out of state. And there was no way to donate it to poor folks with health problems.įrustrated, he soon broke the law. ![]()
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