The majority of cannabis CFOs believe that Biden does not endorse cannabis

Most cannabis finance leaders do not trust the Biden government, new data suggests. On December 14th, GreenGrowth CPAs announced the cannabis industry’s first 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey – a 22-page analysis of business and market outlook data from over 75 CFOs, CEOs, founders, controllers and other finance functions in 20 markets across the United States.

The report revealed a lack of confidence in President Joe Biden’s government’s commitment to federal cannabis reform and provided some fascinating details on how the opinions of those in financial positions in the cannabis industry differ from members of other industrial sectors.

Finance chiefs were asked about their perspective on the cannabis business environment, progress in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and prospects for raising capital and assessing the potential impact of the Biden government. “The answers were provided by finance executives across the cannabis ecosystem,” Kristofer Lenz, chief marketing officer of GreenGrowth CPAs, told High Times. “We have emails to our internal distribution list ([over 40,000] Mixture of customers, prospects and people who have signed up for our newsletter), posted on social media and made personal contacts with industrial partners who also shared in their networks. “

Remarkably, over 62 percent of those polled question the support of the Biden government. In particular, President Biden doesn’t have a great cannabis track record like most other members of the Silent Generation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated last July that President Joe Biden is opposed to legalizing cannabis – which puts him at odds with top Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Cory Booker.

GreenGrowth CPAs provided four highlights from the 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey:

• 70.2 percent of cannabis operators think the cannabis business environment is improving (but only 28 percent of breeders agree)
• 18.2 percent of operators are financially stronger today than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic
• 79.2 percent of the operators are planning to raise capital, 19.5 percent through an IPO / RTO go public transaction
• 62.4 percent don’t believe the Biden administration supports cannabis, and 41.6 percent believe we are more than 5 years away from state legalization

One problem is the disagreement between the opinion of cannabis operators in general about the health of the cannabis business environment compared to growers in particular. While over 70 percent of operators believe the business environment for cannabis is improving, only 28 percent of breeders agree.

“In the past six months, wholesale prices have dropped absolutely due to oversupply, lack of demand and many other problems, and you can really see the effects of this in the data,” explains Lenz. “There is a gap between East and West. Essentially, we are going through this type of top and bottom development in the market. When new markets go online, there is a lot of catching up to do, lots of licenses. “

Lenz explained the difference between newer and older state markets. “So there’s Illinois, Massachusetts, in these newer markets where the wholesale price is high, the demand is really high, and this vision of cannabis capitalism – as people imagine it – is really thriving,” he said. “But in more states that are older, we see a valley shape. It actually happens in Colorado, California, especially where more and more growers are going online, the more sophisticated these growing options, the more flowers are coming out, but demand is not necessarily catching up. “

Perhaps this could be due to the “collapse” in the wholesale value of cannabis plants in California, partly due to sky-high taxes, fees, and light weed. For example, farmers in the Emerald Triangle in Counties Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity call this an “extinction event”.

The 2021 Cannabis CFO Survey Findings were reported by a mix of multi-state operators, retailers, growers and auxiliary service providers across the cannabis industry itself. The report is free to download from the GreenGrowth CPAs website.

The report shows distrust of the Biden government’s priorities among industry financial leaders. Remember, however, that no president can directly get cannabis out of control under the Controlled Substances Act, but he could order law enforcement agencies either to consider changing the classification of cannabis or to change their enforcement approach.