Ive been reading up on the state of the cannabis industry lately and honestly some of the stats are kind of alarming, especially when I think about the neighbrhood spots I visit around the city.
Apparently only 27% of cannabis operators in the U.S. reported being profitable in 2024 according to Whitney Economics . That's rough. And it makes sense when you dig into why. Some businesses are dealing with effctive tax rates as high as 52.5% , which is absolutely brutal for small operators trying to keep the lights on. Add to that the fact that most dispensaries still cant access normal banking services , and you start to understand why so many local shops feel like they're barely hanging on.
Then there's the whole hemp-THC market situation. That unregulated market has apparently blown up to somewhere between 10 and 12billion dollars annually . So you've got licensed dispensaries in SF jumping through every regulatory hoop and paying those insane taxes, while hempderived products are being sold in gas stations and bodegas with basically no oversght. It's creating this weird competitive pressure that doesn't feel fair to the businesses that did everything by the book.
On a slightly more hopeful note, the DEA started formal hearings on rescheduling cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III back in early December , . If that goes through it would at least acknowledge that cannabis has medical value and isn't as dangerous as heroin or meth, whch is obviously overdue. But there are still questions about how different cannabinoids would be classified under the new framework .
I guess Im just curious how people here feel about all this. Do you think about the business side when you're choosing where to shop? Are neighborhood dispensaries in SF holding up better or worse than other places? It feels like supporting local spots matters more than ever but I wondr if that's enough when the system is stacked against them.
Published: 2025-11-24T13:18:37+00:00
