Jerry Garcia’s cannabis brand joins California’s mass extinction

There’s a mass cannabis exodus out of California, and no, that’s not a reference to the Bob Marley song, although you should snag Marley Natural while they’re still golden, Cali buddies. However, another legacy stoner brand, that of San Francisco-born Jerry Garcia, the late co-founder and lead singer of The Grateful Dead, the Garcia Hand Picked cannabis line, is saying goodbye to the Golden State, as reported by SFGate. Quit “Fire on the Mountain,” even though climate change isn’t California’s only problem.

While for decades cannabis growers, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts found a verdant paradise tucked away in the libertarian Emerald Triangle (a region of Northern California, including Humboldt County, said to be the largest cannabis-producing region in the United States) or the liberal counterculture of cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles when California was finally legalized, well, the Fed’s bureaucracy and incredibly high barriers to entry kept even the most well-known names in cannabis from making legal profits in the state.

“We’re taking a break in California. We want to ensure that California consumers receive the highest quality flowers over the long term, so we are in the process of selecting a new local partner to grow, produce, sell and distribute Garcia Hand Picked in California,” said a spokesman for Holistic Industries, the brand’s parent company, wrote in an email to SFGate.

Previously Garcia Hand Picked sourced its cannabis from old farmers in the Emerald Triangle, the breeders may have even enjoyed Garcia at one point, although the brand is now looking for a new supplier. Working with legacy farmers brought the brand valuable street cred (well-known cannabis brands can have a reputation for being cheesy, and many consumers prefer their weed without a famous face), but that wasn’t enough. Despite California’s reputation as the cornerstone of the US for cannabis, to say it’s a tough market is an understatement. Attempting to sell cannabis in California is an almost impossibly expensive endeavor due to complicated regulations, high taxes, and the plethora of hassles that come with banking. Due to federal laws, cannabis companies don’t have equal access to credit. And under the Marijuana Revenue and Regulation Act, cannabis companies pay an effective federal tax rate of up to 80%.

Recently, other famous cannabis brands have faced similar problems. According to Celeb Stoner, in January, Jay-Z’s Monogram brand began restructuring by The Parent Company, and Canada’s Cronos Group called for the discontinuation of Kristen Bell’s Happy Dance CBD skincare line to “lower operating costs in the US.” According to Bloomberg, only a few famous cannabis brands have managed to turn a profit. In addition to the huge financial hurdles, as long as cannabis remains a Schedule I substance under federal law, there are huge marketing hurdles. For example, radio advertising is illegal even in states where cannabis is not. And when prominent cannabis brands, pre-approved and cash-backed by a household name, fail, consider the barriers to entry faced by smaller companies, particularly those owned by POC and anyone else affected by the War on Drugs.

While they are retiring from California, Garcia Hand Picked is still available in five other states. However, the next time you smoke in Cali with the Grateful Dead playing in the background, you will, like many others, go for the black market, just like Jerry himself smoked. Unfortunately, as the mass extinction of cannabis in California shows, state legalization is not the pipe dream (pun intended) that so many of us have been hoping for.