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Supply Chain Sparrow –Supply Chain News and Resources

The Perishables Ecosystem –Food, Wine, Cannabis & More

California Agency Seeks More Cannabis Cops to Boost Compliance and Product Safety, While Tamping Down On Black Market

Lara L. Sowinski · June 2020 ·

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While California’s legal cannabis market earned an estimated  $3.1 billion in 2019, the black market raked in approximately $8.7 billion last year. The good news is that legal cannabis sales in the state are expected to overtake illicit sales in 2024, reaching $7.2 billion compared to $6.4 billion for the latter.

Meanwhile, California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control is requesting additional funding in the new state budget to expand its police force to 87 members to boost compliance, support legal operators, and protect consumers from products such as cannabis flower, edibles, tinctures and concentrates that are untested and potentially dangerous for consumption.

Andrew Sheeler, a reporter with the Sacramento Bee, explained that deploying more police officers as opposed to investigators would give the Bureau of Cannabis Control more power to enforce regulations.

For example, peace officers could investigate unlicensed and criminal cannabis activity and assist the bureau’s special investigators with on-site inspections.

This authority is more than what a “regular investigator” is able to provide, according to Sheeler. 

Specifically, “Regular investigators are unable to seize any unlicensed or illicit cannabis that they find. They are also unable to make arrests, verify whether a person is in proper possession of a firearm, write search warrants or access criminal databases,” he noted.

The product safety aspect concerning legal cannabis versus black market cannabis was highlighted in May, when excessive levels of lead were discovered in a watermelon tincture manufactured by Florida-based Summitt Labs. A voluntary nationwide recall was issued for the tainted product, which has the potential to cause pain, nausea and kidney damage if ingested.

The company had performed its own test on the tincture using an accredited, independent lab that found acceptable levels of lead as set forth under Florida’s state law. However, another batch of the tincture tested by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services showed excessive lead outside of the allowable range.

Photo credit: Next Green Wave 

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Filed Under: Cannabis Tagged With: black market cannabis, cannabis, cannabis compliance, legal cannabis

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I VOTED (for cannabis)

No matter their political stripe, many Americans are in agreement with efforts to legalize recreational and medical cannabis.

On November 3, voters legalized marijuana for adult use in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota. Initiatives to legalize medical cannabis passed in Mississippi and South Dakota. The rapid expansion of legalized cannabis throughout the U.S. has a direct impact on the supply chain.

Let’s start by considering the food supply chain–a valuable case study with COVID-19 as the backdrop. Early on, Americans experienced food shortages at the retail level. Manufacturers and distributors scrambled to realign networks to supply grocery stores where demand was spiking, while shifting away from restaurants and the hospitality sector where demand was tanking. In a matter of months, online shopping and food delivery to consumers’ homes grew dramatically. As a result, the food supply chain is in the midst of reinventing itself.

The cannabis supply chain faces some similar challenges. Most importantly, there’s an opportunity now to learn and adopt best practices from the food and pharmaceutical supply chains with which it shares key commonalities.

What are the risks to the cannabis supply chain? California’s unprecedented fires this year threatened growers throughout the state. How quickly can infrastructure scale-up to meet demand, and at what cost? Commercial and industrial real estate is currently at a premium with the proliferation of e-commerce. What about transportation, distribution and logistics capabilities, including reverse logistics in the case of product recalls? Facilities, equipment, and skilled workers are in high demand, and as competition for these various assets tightens, what does that mean for the entire perishables sector (food, cannabis, wine, beverages, pharma, etc.) that need them? Collaboration and creativity can provide critical solutions across the board.

On a related note, a small handful of American and European companies are in talks with Rwanda now about exporting cannabis to the country to meet rising pharmaceutical demand. Supply Chain Sparrow has previously identified cannabis exports as a massive opportunity for the U.S., which of course, would require legislative changes at the federal level.

Vote. And keep on voting.

Be Brave. Fly Right. And keep in touch at info@scsparrow.com.

Lara L. Sowinski, Executive Editor

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