Pot Clubs Slash Prices, Inventory As July 1 Deadline Looms On New Regulations
SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) - Marijuana retailers across the Bay Area are selling weed and edibles at deep discounts to get rid of inventory as they rush to meet tougher new state regulations by July 1.
Buddy's Cannabis in San Jose is busy getting in line with new requirements.
Packaging must be childproof and labels will have to include information like ingredients and the batch number. Also, all products must be tested.
Owner Matt Lucero says testing a batch of cannabis could be up to 50 pounds and cost him about $850.
"It's obviously a bit more work for us, but we're a pretty organized outfit, and to us this is just the cost of doing business," he said.
But since sales are up so dramatically, almost 80% since recreational marijuana became legal at the beginning of the year, Lucero doesn't plan on passing much of the costs of complying with new rules onto the consumer.
Some customers like Joe Johnson welcome the new rules. They are concerned about the quality of their cannabis product.
"Yeah, all the time," says Johnson. "I'm from New Jersey so yeah we're concerned about cannabis over there a lot, you don't know what you're getting sometimes."
Donovan Nimmo owns to cultivation farms in Sacramento, and is a regular user.
"It's healthy, it's what people need to do," he says. "It's as if people are putting pesticides in food, and what not, everybody doesn't want to eat it. So I think it's great and it'll kind of weed out the people that aren't doing good business."
The state of California gave businesses six months to get in compliance, so Buddy's Cannabis says it is prepared with ready to sell products after July 1. The owner says all of the discounted non-compliant products that don't sell, must be destroyed.
