USA: Too Much Weed! CANADA: Hold my beer

Salutations~

There was recently a report on Vice that was called What happens when a state grows too much weed?

I just want to take a minute to envision the next few years of legalization in Canada- and what we can learn from the mistakes of our well meaning southern neighbors.

For a quick summary of the short 6 minute feature, Oregon legalized cannabis for recreational use in 2014.  But they went about it in a very gung-ho way, with no limits on production, licenses or out of state workers.     Now in a state of just over 4 million people- they are now serviced by 1100 licensed producers and 550 dispensaries ( more than Star bucks and McDonalds combined in the state )

This was initially driven by wholesale prices of close to 1500$/lb for outdoor grown, and that price has since crashed to right about 300$/Lb.  If they can't find a way for stores to move their product, growers can be forced to destroy their products, auction it off to the highest bidder, or take it to the black market.

Just a quick peek at the online dispensaries around Oregon and I see plenty of products listed at 3$/g but also a variety of boutique genetics that are still fetching 12$/g and up, like Wedding Cake, Lemonade and Sherbet.  Prices of concentrates are sitting low as well- 20$/g for shatter and up to 50$/g for diamond sauces and live resins

This is a smokers dream scenario as far as accessing quality product on the cheap, but at the expense of small businesses with less capital being hedged out hoping for some sort of balance between too much and too little.  And then what do those families do? Close up and let Big Cannabis Corp. steamroll the market into a homogeneous blur.

Right now the Canadian cannabis bubble is still expanding, with a shortage of product driving an increase of LP licensing and hopefully creating some supply for our demand.   Will this mean a dramatic decrease in pricing, when competition becomes more cut throat?

I doubt it.   There will always be the cheap option out there somewhere, and there will always be the over priced "luxury" strains as well- but will they ever be able to compete with the ever dropping prices in the black market? It seems like a lot of good people in the south are already choosing to break the law, and smuggle their crop illegally across state lines. 

Here in Canada- that probably won't happen as we have the luxury of FEDERAL legalization and obnoxious amounts of red tape when it comes to becoming an LP, so I doubt that anyone's going to be auctioning off old storage lockers full of unsalable weed here any time soon.

Expect slow and steady growth with a never ending consolidation of newer business under the larger umbrellas and the emergence of a new, higher end boutique market with waiting lists and exorbitant packaging.