Folio Weed

Words by Shelton Hull

This is a very retrograde era, and it’s not just Mercury I’m talking about. One of my first weed columns was about a dispensary opening, and one of their people went on to be a source and a friend, to whatever extent friendship is ever truly possible in a place like this. Well, that fell apart over politics. Liberal, through and through, but they just had to take a stand and vote for Trump, to protect their daughters from trans people. On that one issue, they flipped their values, and now I should care about their buyer’s remorse? FOH. FAFO.

It’s interesting that so many key players in Cannabiz went overtly MAGA, even though it got them seemingly nothing in return. I assumed the point was that Trump would force DeSantis to stand down on Amendment 3, in exchange for their continued fealty. If that had been the case (and they bent the knee in order to guarantee a return on their $100 million investment), that would be fine. But instead, the amendment failed by a narrow margin, one created by DeSantis’ direct intervention. 

Trump didn’t act on their behalf, so they lost the initial investment, as well as the billions that they’ll have lost by the time they ever do get it legalized. Plus the whole industry loses face with both their core market, which is young liberal-minded folks who’d prefer to procure flower from the black market than from dispensaries that gave money to Trump. And all the Black readers who’ve said that the cannabis industry is fundamentally racist? Well, they’re right.

It also raises concerns among potential investors of these companies, because if they failed in this effort, can they be trusted with more capital? The answer, of course, is NOPE. One might guess that a big part of the sales pitch to outside investors in these companies was that it was a market guarantee for exponential growth. Anyone who got in on the ground floor, on any level from mom-and-pop to corporate, was guaranteed to make all their money back within a year or two. And that would have absolutely been true if the amendment had passed.

Aliens watching from Mars (not to mention the ones in El Paso, Detroit and Seattle) would have expected Susie Wiles to call Gov. Ron DeSantis and tell him to stand down and let Amendment 3 pass. If DeSantis hadn’t run for president and flamed out so badly, he’d be VP now, and his lieutenant governor would be keeping his old seat warm for Casey in 2026. And in that scenario, he’d have had neither the time nor the resources to basically veto Amendment 3 unilaterally, costing the industry billions in lost income and public relations. The petition process is only harder now, so one may guess it will cost as much as last time. 

So even if it makes the ballot and passes in 2026, which I hope it does, the industry could have spent a quarter billion just on getting petitions signed, not to mention mailers and TV ads lobbyists and consultants (hopefully not the same ones they had last year) and other miscellaneous costs — costs sunken before they make their first dollar from recreational use sometime in 2027, at the very earliest.

Sales figures are great across the board, so the industry is fine. But if one views the cannabis industry, from a business standpoint, as the very-newly legalized and legitimized evolution of an extremely lucrative, high-volume cash-based business that was the exclusive domain of organized crime for 100 years, then one might wonder if these factors may act to further splay any existing fissures in the firmament of their business model(s). Everything was different in the old days, and this particular industry was totally different.

I haven’t fully parsed the data, but a cursory view of financial disclosures and media reports besides just my own suggest something of a plateau for stock prices and general liquidity, which had been traditionally trending more explosively than ticket sales for Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, currently starring in “Othello” on Broadway right now. What that means, metaphorically, is that outside investors from daddy day-traders all the way up to the most voracious vultures on the venture-capital scene have been given more pause than mixtapes in the ’90s. Folks bought in, expecting to be cashing in at this very moment, but instead they’re cashing out, and some of them are crashing out.

Most people didn’t see it coming until it was already gone. Poor saps woke up on the morning of November 5, 2024 expecting their holdings in cannabis to start spiking harder than volleyball players going through a breakup. Instead, they were basically told that they have to wait until November 3, 2026, just to find they have to wait until November 7, 2028. All of which presumes that America is still a functioning democracy in 18 days, let alone 18 months. Big Weed made more money selling wolf tickets in 2024 than anyone since Leonardo DiCaprio back in 2013. It remains to be seen if the sequel has broad mainstream appeal. There’s a lot of activity in the various board rooms right now, but I’d guess the real action is happening underneath the table.