How Much Legal Cannabis Is In California? It’s A State Secret.

The legal cannabis industry in California is big. As it should be, California is very big – more people live there than anywhere else in the United States – and California has the oldest and most established marijuana industry of any other state.

But how big? Nobody really knows, save for certain state regulators and select elected officials.

For everyone else, data from California’s legal cannabis industry is a state secret. And that is damaging the industry, said experts.

BUELLTON, CA – JUNE 16: Rows of plastic tire houses generally used for growing crops such as crops. B. can be used … [+] like raspberries and blueberries, have become popular shady shelters for growing marijuana, as seen in this aerial photo taken June 16, 2021 over Santa Rosa Road near Buellton, California. Despite extreme drought conditions, Santa Barbara County has become the epicenter of water-intensive cannibis production in California, granting more permits than any other county. (Photo by George Rose / Getty Images)

Getty Images

Although every other agricultural sector has data on crops harvested and sold – and this informs about decisions made by industry players – state law prohibits the Department of Cannabis Control from disclosing this important data, a spokesman for the agency confirmed. This leaves the rest of us in the dark and guessing.

“We really don’t have any numbers,” said Natalynne DeLapp, executive director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance, which works for the state’s small open-air farmers in the region.

This data gap makes cannabis unique among agricultural commodities like grapes, almonds and milk. This makes it difficult for entrepreneurs, bankers, and regulators to decide how much cannabis to grow, how much money to invest, how much return to expect, and how many cannabis companies to license.

And there don’t seem to be any plans to release those still-secret cannabis numbers.

The California Compassionate Care Network (CCCN) marijuana dispensary grower is one of the … [+] stops on the cannabis tour organized by LA Green Tours on January 24, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. – Los Angeles became the largest city in the world where cannabis is legal in 2016. Many travel guides offer tourists the opportunity to immerse themselves in this industry. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK / AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

It’s not that there is no data. It is that the data available are inaccurate. According to tax information released by the State Department of Taxation and Finance, legal cannabis is an industry of at least $ 5 billion in California. In the second quarter of 2021, the latest data available, more than $ 1.3 billion in “taxable sales” were recorded.

If these numbers hold steady for four quarters, legal sales will exceed $ 5.2 billion.

We have an idea of ​​what was sold and how much – but only a few.

Between July 2020 and July 2021, the 2020-2021 fiscal year, more than 11,501,212 ounces of cannabis flowers and more than 11,586,026 ounces of cannabis leaves were released. Another 14,221,561 ounces of “fresh cannabis plant” came onto the market. Taken together, that’s all of the cannabis flowers and cannabis scraps that were eventually packaged and sold as grams or eighths, extracted into oil and processed into edibles, and extracted into other concentrates, according to industry observers.

How Much Weed Does California Consume? That is far less clear. The above is that cannabis is getting into the wholesale system and not all of it is being retailed. Point of sale data is not available and it is not known how much final product the above numbers correspond to.

According to DeLapp, “total demand” for cannabis flowers in the state could be 2.3 million pounds. According to Daniel Sumner, a distinguished professor at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Agricultural Issues Center at UC Davis, it could be closer to a million “pound equivalent” with an understanding that various end products like vape pens , Edibles, and flowers have similar starting materials.

Meanwhile, the state secret of the California cannabis industry makes things difficult. Breeders enter the market who are unsure which products are in demand or which have already been unsold. Lenders aren’t sure how big loans should be. There are some sales estimates out there, but these are published by industry organizations – and so they really can’t be trusted, Sumner said.

California is an outlier here too. Other states, including Washington and Oregon, have released their data on the cannabis industry, even if it is granular or requires processing to be useful to industry watchers or participants.

“I know what the price of peaches and certain parts of peaches is every day,” said Sumner. “But we don’t get any of it for cannabis.”

Some industries, like California winemakers, create this data themselves and then report it – and even go so far as to pay extra to have someone collect and process this data. Growers could do that – but that may not be as reliable as government data, which the state has spent up to $ 100 million on.

A spokesman for the State Department of Cannabis Control says it is simply state law that track-and-trace data cannot be made public. That may be the law, but that doesn’t mean it’s good policy.

“I think a lot of people would be very interested and would like to get it,” said Sumner. “Industries are more efficient when you know something about the industry as a whole.”

“I don’t know why the state of California is no longer providing this.”