The marijuana industry is dead

The marijuana industry is dead, and not for the reasons you’re thinking

You may remember in July 2010 when Prince declared the “internet dead” and the world mocked him on social media and the internet. Fast forward to today, and no, Prince didn’t say the internet was dead, he looked to the beginnings of apps and smartphones and realized that everyone would be using apps as a medium to interact with information on the internet, not necessarily a web browser.

The marijuana industry, still in its infancy without even full state legalization, is dead. If you read the headlines and follow the industry, you might have an idea of ​​what’s coming next because you hear it all the time. Let’s just go through the standard thoughts you have right now:

• 280E tax codes render nearly 50% of cannabis businesses non-profitable

• Industry saturation between the legal and illegal markets, where wholesale and retail prices are falling like a stone, forcing small brands and businesses to shut down.

• The “race to the bottom” theory that cannabis is a commodity, like kale, broccoli, and tomatoes, and commodity prices leave little room for high-end brands and services

• Federal legalization will result in a massive lowering of the moat to enter a state market to legally ship cannabis through the mail and UPS, hence the Amazon’s of Weed will emerge online.

• With full legalization, low cost cannabis suppliers like Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, whose climate, electricity, water and labor costs will destroy more expensive growing countries like the US and Canada.

• All consumer surveys to date indicate that consumers are only interested in three factors when making a cannabis purchasing decision: price, effects, and distance or time to get to the cannabis product. Branding, packaging, colors, celebrity endorsements don’t even count as consumers at this stage of cannabis legalization.

These points would all be correct and points that we have addressed in numerous articles on Cannabis.net over the last 7 years. You would be right to be very concerned about all of the above, but you missed the most obvious one, which is already happening right in front of you, and that’s where we at Cannabis.net dropped the ball.

If you’ve ever seen Brad Pitt’s zombie thriller World War Z, you’ll know what the 13th Man theory is. We’ve touched on it in a couple of articles and it goes something like this: If 12 people all agree on a decision or outcome, it’s the 13th man’s job to object, no matter how stupid or stupid his point of view is, and to examine it. In the film, it was one person’s job to examine the early account of zombies taking over parts of the world and pretend it was 100% true. So what should we do if this crazy story is true?

Literally diving into the cannabis industry, we didn’t believe that theory to be true when then-President Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp. Hemp and all of the cannabinoids rationed in the plant were legalized federally, it was just that the cannabinoid THC in the plant had to be less than 0.3% to be considered legal hemp. Not enough THC to get anyone high or want to smoke it, right?

Then a chemist decided to get out the Bunsen burner and see if he could start mixing the legal ingredients in hemp to create something called “the real THC” from the legal elements of the hemp plant.

Then came the birth of Delta-8 THC. Lab-derived Delta-8 THC was high, lite when it was first released. I would call it the Diet Coke to Coke, but after looking up that Diet Coke is the best-selling soda behind Coke, it would be more like Delta-8 being the Diet Pepsi to Coke. A lemonade, sweet, fizzy, tasted a bit like cola but not really.

At this point, the 13th man, Cannabis.net, moved on. We tested around 7 to 10 Delta-8 THC products when vendors sent us samples and asked us to review. Most didn’t do much, we got vape pens, gummies, tinctures and even candy. The best product we got got you high 75% like real THC would, you were floating and feeling something but nowhere near the real coke.

We then moved on. Hemp-derived Delta-8 THC was a throwback to the times, a product that was kind of legal and got you “almost, kind of high.” It would only exist for a short time before marijuana was fully legalized, because once that happened, who would ever buy Diet Pepsi when you could get Coke anywhere and cheaply. It felt like a quick scam from a couple of opportunistic get-rich-quick guys making a quick foray into a niche product that was sure to disappear as the legalization of “true THC” continued state after state .

Boom! We just got eaten by zombies.

What we were wondering, not in true 13th Man fashion, was what if the pot guys had thrown enough money and lab promotions at the problem and actually did it, they actually had the ingredients of the “hemp -Hotdogs” directly in the laboratory? What if they actually got all the legal parts of the hemp plant from the Farm Bill in 2018 to taste, feel, and have the same effects as the “real THC”?

That would be stunning; it would solve legalization!

What if hemp could get you as high as you can from full THC marijuana, then the THC version of marijuana, which is still federally illegal, would become obsolete over time. They could then legally ship Delta-8 across the country and teach a generation of people what it means to get high from cannabis, and when the marijuana plant was legalized nobody would really care.

Why?

Delta-8 is derived from hemp, so it’s cheaper to source, cheaper to manufacture, and in the end, it would be cheaper for consumers. Hemp is legal, hemp can grow anywhere, hemp can be shipped. And to top it off, a federal court just confirmed that Delta-8 is essentially legal, since all parts contained in the THC version of Delta-8 come from a plant legalized in the 2018 Farm Bill.

If hemp-derived delta-8 THC could produce the exact same high or even better than the federally illegal marijuana plant, then you would have a tipping point that could wipe out billions of dollars invested in the legal cannabis market. Consumers could order online, the product could be shipped, lower production costs would lead to a “new race to the bottom”, only this time we are talking about completely legal hemp.

We gave up on hemp delta-8 THC too soon, we never asked what would happen if they threw $500 million and 50 double PHD chemists on the problem and locked them in a lab to find out.

It’s the one thing the industry has obviously overlooked, and it was right under their noses. If Delta-8 and Delta-9 THC were indistinguishable, you literally couldn’t tell the difference, you would now have legal “weed” and it could be shipped and sold in all 50 states without fear of prosecution or punishment.

Not possible, no way?

We thought so too.

We were then invited to a private, NDA-only tasting, which we declined several times, only agreeing to do as a favor to a business partner. Delta-8 hemp pimped by serious chemists, doctors, and lab nerds.

As soon as we tried this new product, we were like, “OMG shit,” the hemp guys nailed it.

We never saw it coming, the report on zombies in North Korea had to be a farce.

Built on an archaic moat based on THC being a Schedule 1 drug on the CSA, the marijuana industry is about to be rocked.

What if, in a blind taste and “experience” test, 100 out of 100 people couldn’t tell the difference between delta-8 THC from hemp and delta-9 THC in the illegal marijuana plant?

Beverages, edibles, tinctures can all be indistinguishable between the delta THCs. The only realm where the currently illegal plant would reign supreme would be directly smokable buds. Because Delta-8 is made in a lab from “hemp parts,” there is no comparable smoking material that would mimic cannabis THC flower. Once you made hemp flower over 1% in some areas that would be considered hot hemp, the flower would then be considered illegal.

While flowers are still a very popular choice for cannabis users, how many people inhale and smoke everything, period? Smoking is obsolete, selling edibles and vaping are gaining ground as they are cheaper, more discreet and provide better results. Will smoking weed ever go away, of course not, but how often do you see people smoking cigars these days?

Oh damn.

The marijuana industry is dead.

The hemp guys figured it out first.

Stay tuned for part 2.

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