Florida's Legal Cannabis Problem
Florida's Legal Cannabis Problem
A caller is upset that the top cannabis dispensary in Florida is putting profits over the cause. He contends that they put out an inferior product. They keep opening stores but can’t stock them. Their app doesn’t reflect accurate inventory. And when it comes to fighting for legalized marijuana nationwide they only pay lip service.
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Caller: I wanted to talk about Florida. Specifically the cannabis industry. true leave is the number one cannabis company or at least they’ll declare themselves the number one cannabis company in the world. And I don’t know if people really realize how legal cannabis is going in other states compared to their own. But in my instance, I’ve had the specific I guess dealings with truly where I’ve seen them sort of act like a gang. Where they’re legal but they sort of treat it mostly for-profit and they don’t really care too much to communicate what their goals are or that they’re going to try and supply more products for their patients. One of the things that they tell us that they are number one but they continually open up new stores and they continually have shortages at their other stores. And what they’ll do is they’ll provide products for the major cities and they’ll have Kim Rivers the CEO go on national tv and tell how good her company is and how great they are doing for the movement. But one thing that really stands out is something even like their website. They make so much money so much profit but they can’t even help out and make a website that shows accurate inventory on a consistent basis. And they can’t provide that inventory on a consistent basis to the stores that they already provide.
Sam Seder: So wait wait wait wait so let me just be clear. Like you then this is the medical marijuana dispensaries just not not not doing a good job.
Caller: Yes I would say that for sure. Basically.
Sam: But I just want to be clear on what the issue is. I mean it’s just like I mean I think you know part of it is that because my sense is the part of it is because we have such a sort of like a tepid entrance into this market. I don’t know if it changes state to state. and part of it also probably you know because of federal inhibitions. that there’s just not the um the amount of regulation that should be going on with some of this.
Caller: It looks like I mean they don’t really fight for the legalization as much as they fight for their profits. For example, if they really cared about their patients they would provide more for their patients instead of for their profits like the inventory issue. The website issue. These are things that if they don’t fix it immediately or if they don’t fix it over time after hearing it consistently that it’s a problem and that it needs to be fixed then it starts to show as a point from a to b of what their goals are. Open stores get profits. But I feel like we’re sort of missing out on this opportunity to push for legalization when it comes specifically to the employees and the communication through their stores. That hey this is something that works we legalize it because it works but we need to push and we need to do more this is what you can do like for I was an employee in one of these dispensaries and we didn’t really push for information sharing. We only pushed the products out. And that was their only goal to have low wait times in the dispensary.
Sam: Yes of course!
Caller: But we’re not but I don’t think there’s enough outrage or enough people’s voices going out into the world and saying this is wrong. It’s not only wrong now but it’s been wrong for the past 50 years. Yeah, I just don’t know if I hear it enough on your show because I don’t maybe listen enough. But I just was hoping that we could maybe start to push this often if we could. As often as possible.
Matt: The problem isn’t that like this is a monopoly this is a medical marijuana monopoly in Florida that is absolutely not incentivized to like do broader legalization.
It’s just a gateway to medical cocaine.
If you want a license to grow in Florida the requirements are nuts. $50million and have to have run a plant nursery for 20 years.
I’m a medical marijuana card holder in Florida. It is also my experience that I can not get my medicine consistently. I have suffered because of this. I’d buy more If I could afford to stock up when my needed meds are in.
I’ve been to that website and it’s true
Dude, NORML has been fighting for State & Federal legalization for over half a Century!
Are you too stoned to know that?
That is a problem. Grow your own only laws
They operate like a corperation, you don’t say son…🤦♂️
This caller is a such a dork. He’s just complaining about his job. The company isn’t a gang. I’m glad Matt broke it down for him.
I feel like everyone on this call should talk about something else. They obviously do not know how it works. Florida is a monopoly each licensees gets X amount of licensed and can be fully vertical which means they need to grow what they sell. What most people don’t know is that many of these companies don’t know how to grow large scale. I’m not even talking about amounts which is still an issue, many times the product cannot even pass tests because their SOPs for growing are not fine tuned. Cannabis unfortunately is to difficult for the common person to understand especially federal and multi state laws.
There’s a lot of problems with how MedMJ was implemented in Florida, mostly stemming from Republican propaganda. The voters actually had to force it thru, while the politicians continued dragging their feet even after it passed. There are like 10-20 players so they do need to be competitive. Possibly the caller lives in an area lacking in dispensaries, and it could be the chains are putting their focus on stores in areas where they do need to compete. I am not sure his issues with the website, because it is up to modern standards. Maybe an inventory issue where between the time he selected a product and tried to purchase it someone else may have bought the last one. We do need to get rid of the full-vertical requirement where stores can only sell their own products, and there is no wholesale market [legally].
The Caller should just open up his own Pot Store. Competition lowers the price, Monopolies do not lower profits. There is no means of creating change through complaining. This caller does not get that he doesn’t own the store. He needs to own a store first to create the change he wants.
The feds need to regulate the cannabis industry pursuant to The Commerce Clause in the Constitution because this clearly affects interstate commerce. We need uniformity here and we need to prevent companies from monopolizing the industry.
Yeah, I live in CA, and he is describing the exact same shit that happened here. I would say that competition has forced weed companies to be more consistent over time though, but that really depends on the product you are talking about. Liquid THC is very very consistent, but flower will never be consistent no matter what, because of the nature of production. Fresh weed is like produce, you look at it and have to check what looks good. And yeah, websites are always out of date in CA too, always had that issue, but this guy really sounds like he is just being bitchy about par for the course stuff. It is one thing to legalize it and open stores, but the production takes time to adjust until the market stabilizes. My man ironically needs to chill and wait it out, but he is not being specific with out of stock products, so I am not sure what he is complaining about, cuz if he is just mad he can’t get the same strain week after week that is just the life of a stoner, so tough titties
Selling weed,legal or illegal, being in the weed game is always about profit. The cops want you if you’re illegal, and the banks don’t roll with you when you’re legal, so robbery may be an issue around the clock. Just legalize it.
Just dropped in to say my plants are looking marvelous right now!!! Can’t wait for late October! Nothing like pounds and pounds of free weed! I’m a good friend😊
He lost me at Florida – sane people should just move the fuck out of there before it becomes Atlantis anyways. It’s too far gone in too many ways.
its republican cannabis therefore it is expensive and really sucks.
Trulieve sucks. They were also keeping the THC levels low in their growing so you would have to buy more. They were called out on that and did improve levels. But websites and inventory continues to be sub par.
What do you expect with no competition!
I own a med retail in Mt. Pleasant MI. Last year the city selected 2 businesses for 3 recreational retail spots. My business was not chosen despite being the first licensed med shop and zero compliance issues. They gave 2 to Lume which is the largest retail in the state. If you are not a super rich company, it is hard to start a business. I got a ballot initiative to increase retail spots so my business can survive. Lume is now suing the city to stop it from being on the ballot.
I’m in Florida trulieve is trash.
I can’t speak for this person’s experience, but this was not anywhere close to how things happened in Oakland. The dispensaries and ancillary corporations knew that medical marijuana was just a step toward full legalization. There were programs for helping indigent patients. The chief lobbyists pushed for legalization across the board.
There were a few profiteers, more now, but at the beginning, they were pushing the compassion angle. And if one operator became non-competitive, you could always switch dispensaries. Issues like bad service or terrible inventory control generally comes down to monopoly power and higher level corruption.
Florida legal weed is terrible. The retail experience is shit. In any other state, it feels like walking into a candy shop. In Florida, it’s like showing up to a gang hideout in GTA cuz more than half the people are packing heat. I don’t know why, they always seem to be low on pot. What are they defending even? On top of that, their prices for cartridges is extortionate. There’s absolutely no reason to not keep buying from dealers, especially in Miami where I live. The weed is cheaper and pretty much dispensary caliber anyways.
Smoking weed daily is a drug addiction lmao
idk, my local trulieve has really good reviews and everyone always praises them.
Of course the weed vendors are interested only in their profits. This is corporate capitalist America.
Cannabis corporatism!
Thumbs up and an additional comment to beat the algorithm. Thanks for the video! 👍🔥👍
I’ve been buying weed since the 70s. Oh you want to push it to a "player". What a bozo. Wasnt Gaetz’s buddy trying to corner the market?
“Yes ending the war on drugs is important but we really need more people speaking out about poor customer service in legal weed businesses” smfh lol
We do need to demand that allowing homegrow is a part of every legalization bill. And MR is shockingly bad at covering the many different areas of psychedelic news, from impending FDA approval to MDMA, to the general corrupt shitshow that is FDA approval process, to Wall Street trying to patent psychedelic treatment methods like “holding hands” “listening to music”, to the startups trying to come up with analogues they can patent, to the recent release of Leonard pickard. The problems for indigenous South Americans caused by western ayahuasca tourism. There’s so many different areas and angles to cover it and great people to have on and they almost never cover it at all. Another good topic is new harm reduction curriculum for high school kids to replace the DARE like lies and fear mongering. Have on Ismail Ali, Rick doblin, people from drug policy alliance
Leafly in Illinois is basically just as bad.. They have a virtual monopoly, they refuse to lower their prices, and instead raise them by like $5 every 6 months.. They keep their stock limited, and because of state regulation you can’t even see what you’re buying. And they don’t even get good strains here, it’s really weak stuff compared to what I was finding on the street before ‘legalization’. :/ Dono how we can fix this..
grow your own and hang in there. unless the trumpists somehow actually manage to overthrow the government desantis is on his way out and things will commercialize eventually with cannabis. my states weed sucks too.
I just moved to FL from WA and it costs a t least 5× as much. I stocked up on RSO before I left.
I love this guy. Innocence is so rare these days. He doesn’t even realize this is the CANNABIS industry. ‘They don’t even keep up there inventories’ ROTFL… What happens if a capitalist rapes a stoner? The cannabis industry – duh!
Well. Is it wrong that a private company only cares about profit ? I expect that.
Trulieve is going to make as much money as they can. As a publicly traded company that’s what they’re supposed to do. I am a medical patient in Florida and these problems are true at Trulieve but are just as bad or worse at all the other dispensaries. Trulieve still has the most product offerings and has pushed for full legal use including home grow. The barriers of entry the state has created is the problem. Less barriers and more competition equal better service and products.
Legalization means new dispensaries which would mean competition for medical suppliers. No capitalist organization wants competition.
States that are legalizing now are delaying commercial sales 2-4 years to kill the black market and are spending that lay time providing growing permits to large corporations rather than small farmers, making sure cultivation will only be in the hands of a few select players
From what I understand, (granted this is hearsay so please take it with a grain of salt) in Florida once the Republicans saw that they were not going to be able to stop the medical marijuana industry from coming to the state, they decided to make the price for a license so exorbitantly high, that only well established cannabis companies were able to afford to open up shops. This leads to the monopoly which in turns leads to no motivation to the ruling company to ever try to improve anything. Everyone can write this off with "Blah blah that’s capitalism man!" but even the most hardcore capitalists will agree you must have competition for the market to function adequately.
Floridas cannabis laws are just for the few to make tons of money. Kim Rivers pays her employees minimum wage, she does nothing to help patients as it seems to be ok with her the rip off amount of money you have to pay just to get a stupid card. The weed here SUCKS. I lived in CA for over 30 years and was spoiled. Floriduh needs to get with it.
mfw capitalism breeds innovation
This problem would be solved if people just grew their own, it’s easier than you think.
this is a big problem; medical patience are being forced to shill out a lot of money for an unreliable supply chain because in Florida the services are privatized.
I love the quality of medical weed i get in PA.
Hemp traps a lot of carbon per acre too. Jus’ sayin
Lol. Millenials.
Biden really needs to decriminalize this already smh
Feel like I just listened to a Google review
Why would anyone think a corporation cares about customers or patients? Welcome to the real world buddy.
It’s the same to some degree in California. Harborside in Oakland has an assistance program for low income disabled people, but it’s a joke. They don’t really help and it mostly exists on paper. Even if one were to get approved to get the assistance, they only provide a tiny amount and one would have to go there every week to get it; not exactly easy for many low income disabled people. They make it as hard as possible to discourage people actually using the assistance.
stop calling customers patients. Its a business and recreational is it. Medical was a means to an ends. If they want to make certain components into medicine reschedule the specific molecule, de-schedule the plant. All medicine should be made in a cGMP 2.11 lab, not a 1.11 hemp facility.