Rumors of back room deals...

Dateline 11-30-23

This morning it’s 26 degrees Fahrenheit here in Middle Tennessee, which quite frankly is frigid in my opinion. The Old Hemp Farmers firmly believes if its too cold to grow Cannabis outdoors, it's too cold. So the situation calls for a brisk hot cup of organic Indonesian coffee and a goodly portion of Costa Rican Cacao fortified with Tennessee homegrown double distilled Cannabis extract. As the warmth of the coffee and caffeine combined with Cannabis jump starts me enough to once again joust with a word processor enough to spit forth an observation of contemporary Cannabis. For the folks outside of the state of Tennessee and those in state not paying attention to Cannabis, high THC Cannabis flower, vapes and edibles are being openly sold in places like gas stations, grocery stores, liquor stores and recently in parking lot trailers. Up to this point, there has been almost no oversight from the state of Tennessee in regards to high THC Cannabis products and the thousand of establishments that are selling them. This Free Market Capitalist approach to high THC Cannabis has been an interesting experiment to observe and to a large degree has worked. Oh sure there has been more than a few THC edible overdoses because there are still veteran and newbie Cannabis users that refuse to read labels, this also includes a few adolescents, whose parents that didn’t put away their stash. This laissez faire Cannabis situation has existed in Tennessee for a couple years now because it happened quietly over a period of time. Gradually more and more radio spots and billboards starting popping up trumpeting that their store had the best quality and most potent “Legal THC” products in Tennessee and they would even deliver. It actually took a period of time before Tennessee Cannabis users to realize they didn’t have to drive to Illinois or Missouri to get their favorite high THC buzz. People have told me that the quality of the high THC flower in Tennessee was as good or better than the flower being sold in Illinois and that it was cheaper too. When the Smoke shops first started selling high THC flower in Tennessee, the going price was about $20 per gram or $60 eighths, now with hundreds of places selling high THC flower, competition has driven the prices down and pushed the quality higher. In a couple of the stores, where Tennessee homegrown sells their high THC edibles, The Old Hemp Farmer will have to admit that the “THCa Flower” (almost all grown out of state) looks pretty clutch. Big buds (machine trimmed) with great terpenes and coated with sparkly little “diamonds” for $10 per gram or $35 an eighth. Granted that Tennessee does add a 15% excise tax (because of HB0403) but even that is quite civilized compared to what other states tax their high THC products. Lee Crabtree (Tennessee homegrown president and co-owner) and myself have been watching this situation unfold in disbelief. When Lee and I began farming high CBD Cannabis in 2016, rules were strict about what you grow and where, then three years later we watched as folks started to take advantage of the loop holes in the 2018 Farm Bill by starting to make and sell D8 THC and “THCa” flower. Now here in Tennessee, so much Cannabis products are being sold that stores that specialize in high THC products are having to run specials and have Food Trucks in their parking lots to drive customer traffic because Cannabis is almost everywhere, especially places with tourists. Cool, huh? But when things seem to good to be true something will come and screw it up, this couldn’t be more true than in Cannabis. Now yours truly is beginning to hear rumblings that the state of Tennessee has finally come to grips about how big the Cannabis business is in the state and now wants to wrangle it. Supposedly different groups of state officials (think TBI, TDA and DOR) and legislators are meeting in small little groups to discuss how best to put structure on Cannabis in Tennessee. So now the rumors are starting to run rampant, ranging from getting rid of anything over .3% total THC including D8 THC, to raising the cost of licenses for producing or selling high THC products so high that it prices many people out of the business. So the next couple of months will be quite interesting in the Tennessee high THC Cannabis business. Anyway as always, Hemp Dawgs and Hemp Puppies keep one eye on the weather and the other eye on the market.

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