Nike John walked to the back of her auto shop-turned-cannabis dispensary in Charlestown on a recent morning and threw open the heavy metal door to the vault.
Inside were rows of shelves stacked with colorfully packaged marijuana products.
“We have chocolate, taffy, gummies,” she said, surveying her inventory. “Over here we have vapes, disposable vapes.”
This store room is the lifeblood of John’s business, The Heritage Club. But lately John isn’t seeing green. All that product is bleeding value as the price of marijuana plummets across the state.
” It feels like the bottom’s being ripped out from under you,” she said. The turbulence is so bad it has John re-thinking her decision to get into the industry: “Knowing what I know now, I would absolutely never do it again.”
The state’s Cannabis Control Commission just touted record-breaking marijuana sales of $1.64 billion across Massachusetts last year — proof, the commission declared, of a “robust and thriving market.” It was a rare piece of good news for a commission beset by infighting, toxicity and accusations of regulatory lethargy.
Yet even as sales are booming, the price of weed is falling, squeezing individual businesses, including those the commission is charged with helping to support.
Marijuana at retail shops was going for $14.09 per gram in November 2018, according to commission data. The cost has plunged 62% since then, to $5.36 per gram last year.
H/T: www.wbur.org
