The Cannabis Industry Requires Reinvention, Not Revolution

It’s been 20 years since medical cannabis was first legalized in California, but due to the recent unprecedented growth geographically and monetarily the phenomenon of legalization still seems brand new. In a lot of ways the industry IS brand new compared to those early days on the West Coast. Today, according to the 2016 ArcView Report, over half of the U.S. population lives in a state that provides access to some form of legal cannabis, be it personal adult-use, medical-use, or CBD oil. The plant is heavily regulated in many places across the country, including in Colorado, Washington State, Oregon, and Alaska which have all legalized cannabis for consumption by adults over 21, and in 2016 a number of states on both coasts are set to follow suit. Because the re-introduction of cannabis as a commodity has come so quickly in recent years, and because the plant impacts so many different markets, many have been tempted to call this a revolution. The overturning of an old system to build something completely new. This idea that cannabis means building an industry entirely from scratch, however, is neither necessarily true nor truly necessary. The building blocks for a successful and sustainable legal cannabis industry exist all around us; we just need to shape them to fit our needs.