On Sunday, stringent new marijuana regulations will go into effect in California in what has been described as the “Weed Apocalypse.”
The new rules have caused a scramble among marijuana dispensaries to sell-off any products that do not comply, Reuters reports.
Designed to come into effect six months after the state made recreational use legal, the regulations—which are being implemented by the state Bureau of Cannabis Control—require shops to switch to new labelling, packaging and quality standards after July 1.
For example, dispensaries will only be able to sell marijuana that has passed tests for potency, pesticides and contaminants. Furthermore, any cannabis products will have to be sold in child-resistant packaging marked with information such as ingredients, batch numbers and “best use” dates.
“There’s going to be a lot of massive sales, a lot of retails fire-selling a lot of products,” Nick Danias, manager of The Pottery cannabis dispensary in mid-city Los Angeles, told Reuters.
“It’s about getting rid of a lot of older product that doesn’t meet city and state requirements and getting through that old inventory and moving on to the next steps after July 1,” he said.
Any cannabis goods held by dispensaries that do not meet the new requirements must be destroyed, according to the bureau.
The “weed apocalypse” is creating problems for business owners because a lack of approved testing facilities has created a bottleneck in the supply of compliant marijuana products as the deadline looms
However, it is also providing an opportunity for consumers who are benefiting from big discounts on everything from joints to edibles as dispensaries quickly try to unload any remaining non-compliant products.
“People are buying stuff they don’t really need,” Scott Lambert, the chief executive of The OG Collective in Cathedral City, told The Desert Sun. “It’s just like Toys ‘R’ Us going out of business.”
Credit: www.newsweek.com
