🌿 Canada destroys more weed than it sells

August 10, 2022

Happy Weed Wednesday. Thanks for checking out the newsletter that makes you smarter about weed in 4 minutes and 20 seconds or less. Here’s what we got for you this week:

  • Weed destruction: Canada destroys more weed than it sells

  • Business highlights: Canopy Growth reports a $2 billion net loss, best cannabis companies to work for in 2022, $100 billion cannabis opportunity in the U.S.

  • Inflation: Weed prices are going higher

  • Pot Politics: Britney Griner sentenced to 9 years in jail, federal workers union seeks to end marijuana testing, Booker says there is Republican support for 'Safe Banking Plus'

Best of social media

Before we get to the news, here's the funniest thing we saw on social media this week. We'll keep you in our prayers if you ever get to smoke with Snoop.

Canada destroys a lot of cannabis

@autoevolution

Picture a parking lot with 650 Toyota Prius cars. Now picture each of those cars filled to the top with weed. Now picture all of those cars being set on fire and destroyed. That pretty much sums up what's going on in the Canadian weed market right now.

Wait, what?

The Prius example might be a little dramatic, but Canada has in fact destroyed the weed equivalent of 650 Toyota Prius cars since 2018. Another interesting but less dramatic statistic is that Canada has been destroying more weed than it has been selling. In 2021, Seattle-based analytics firm Headset estimated that sales of dried cannabis and pre rolls totaled 293 million grams in the four key Canadian provinces. During that same year, Canadian cannabis companies destroyed 425 million grams of unsold, unpackaged dried cannabis according to MJBizDaily.

Why are they doing this?

Destroying that much weed seems like it should come with jail time. According to multiple industry sources, there are a few reasons all this weed is being destroyed, including:

  • Clogged sales channels, as provinces opened stores slowly in the early years of legalization.

  • Cannabis was produced before appropriate licenses had been secured, such as a sales license.

  • Low-quality production.

  • Production for testing only.

What stands out to Mary Durocher, president of Fox D Consulting in southwestern Ontario, is the amount of poor quality cannabis that is being produced. Per Mary, "some large-scale cannabis producers in Canada have been seeing crop losses of 30% annually. Agricultural industries such as corn, soybeans and wheat typically see around 5% crop loss."

We can understand Canadian companies destroying bad weed, but they definitely need to come up with a better solution for the good weed.

Business highlights

Weed prices on the rise

@wakenbake

Unless you've been too stoned to leave the house all year, you know that inflation has impacted everything from gasoline to Big Macs. Up to this point, pretty much only weed and Costco hot dogs have been able to avoid price hikes. Luckily for hot dog fans around the world, Costco has committed to keeping the price at $1.50. Unfortunately for weed fans, it looks like prices are going up.

What's the deal?

Weed enthusiasts have been very lucky up until this point. While prices on pretty much everything have been rising, weed prices have actually declined compared to 2021. Prices of marijuana flower, edibles and vape products, when averaged by the price per milligram or gram of THC, declined by 16.7%, 11.8% and 12.4%, respectively, from January 2021 to January 2022, according to cannabis analytics firm Headset, which tracked sales in California, Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Per a GreenGrowth survey of 700 cannabis companies, that downward price trend is likely to reverse over the coming months. Amid the rising cost of labor and materials that are necessary to make ready-to-consume cannabis, one in every four retailers reported that they have either raised or plan to raise prices by more than 10% in the next year.

40% of the survey respondents said the price hikes are due to policies that have been put in place by the Biden Administration. 30% of respondents blame leftover effects from policies put in place by the Trump administration. Other reasons cited by operators include supply chains, conflicts with countries like Russia and China and impact from the way petroleum companies conduct business.

If prices haven't already gone up where you live, it might be time to stock up before they do. If you like to do your weed shopping at Cookies, it might be time to find a second job to support that habit.

Pot politics

  • Britney Griner received a 9 year jail sentence in Russia

  • The largest federal workers union seeks to end marijuana testing for most employees

  • Government forced Elon Musk to get drug tested for a year

  • Senator Booker says there is Republican support for 'Safe Banking Plus'

  • Oklahoma will not issue any new medical cannabis licenses over the next two years

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Quick hits

Meme of the Week

Before we go, here's the best meme we saw this week. Great questions like these are what landed Keanu the leading role in The Matrix.

@hits_blunt_bruh