Gazing into the Cannabis Crystal Ball...

Gazing into the Cannabis Crystal Ball…

Dateline 12-28-23

Its a rather cool morning here in Middle Tennessee, The Old Hemp Farmer is nursing an exisite cup of organic Indonesian coffee and vaping some Tennessee homegrown flower while wading into this week’s Cannabis Blog. Normally at the end of the year, a lot folks write columns about the events of the last year but do we really need to review the year that is 2023, I think not. Especially when the year 2024 portends to be dynamic beyond imagination, especially if you’re a Cannabis professional in the good old US of A. An ever changing Cannabis market combined with continual tweaking of the rules and regulations means that way too often the life of a Cannabis professional can be quite intense. This is especially true in the state of Tennessee, where in a scant six months, it appears that THCa Flower and THCa concentrates will become prohibited. It will be the second time, a Cannabis prohibition will be enacted in Tennessee, the first time being in 1937 and the second time it will be 2024. For five years, a loophole in the 2018 farm bill has enabled folks in the Volunteer state to buy high THCa weed. Once folks figured out that high THCa flower and marijuana were the same thing, more and more started buying weed, which opened up THCa products such as dabs and a whole plethora of edibles. Once more and more people started making “Fat Sacks” selling the high THCa products, it was on! Soon THCa Flower and carts were in over 2,000 stores, meaning you could get weed or edibles almost everywhere. That my friends, is a loophole that’s hard to miss. Especially, when yours truly, started going into gas stations that had 1 gallon jars full of bodacious looking “budage” on the top of the counter with a scale right beside it. Don’t like to smoke weed? Well there was a Brownie that had 300 mg of D8/D9 THC in each and every bar. Slowly in 2021, the “powers that be” started becoming aware of the size and scope of the Cannabis industry in Tennessee and realized that something had to be done. So in 2022, the state of Tennessee tried to enact legislation that would be the rules and regulations of Hemp Derived Cannabinoids (that included THCa Flower) but they couldn’t get it together and they did what politicians do with difficult topics, they kicked the can down the road until 2023. Where an unknowing and uncaring Tennessee legislation passed an embarrassingly bad Cannabis Recreational law - HB0403, which is a mishmash of vaguely worded statutes, that is set to explode, July 1st 2024. An explode it will, liking a ticking time bomb set to detonate so close to July 4th, it will seem like fireworks.

Recently, The Old Hemp Farmer has been asked repeatedly what I think will happen as HB0403 starts to unfold. Which is an extremely hard thing to do because poorly written Cannabis laws are the poster child of the “Law of unintended consequences”. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld “There are known unknowns but there are also unknown unknowns” This is especially true with HB0403 because the Tennessee Department of Agriculture and Department of Revenue are trying to ride herd on horses that’s have already stampeded. There are two things that The Old Hemp Farmer can predict with some degree of certainty, first is that a lot of Cannabis Businesses in Tennessee will cease to exist, some because of the loss of revenue streams and cost of compliance, while other Cannabis companies will be bought and absorbed. Slowly, the Cannabis consolation has already started to some degree and I expect it to accelerate. The other thing, The Old Hemp Farmer can guarantee is that once THCa Flower is made illegal, there will be a King Hell Cannabis Black Market that will thrive in Tennessee. You see, the first time that Cannabis Prohibition was enacted in 1937, there weren’t hundreds of Cannabis suppliers with established connections in the state like there is 2024. Because of this, overnight “Speak Easy” bars and Courier services will start to take over the high THCa flower market. Where if you know someone, buying high THCa flower and carts will remain relatively easy. This is where it will get weird, will formerly compliant Cannabis companies go rogue to survive and how does law enforcement curtail an established Cannabis market that is comprised of almost a million people? So if you like soap operas, this will be a good one. Anyway as always, Hemp Dawgs and Hemp Puppies keep one eye on the weather and the other eye on the market.

Visit our Tennessee homegrown web site to try our great products: https://www.tnhomegrown.com

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