It has pained me to watch what has happened to the marijuana industry in Michigan in the past several years. This was all so very preventable, and it shows how Big Business will ruin and corrupt everything it touches.
When the caregivers and the patients ruled the day, there was a great and bountiful cannabis marketplace in Michigan. Patients could get high quality medicine tailored to them for free. Small growers made enough to put food on their families’ plates. The industry thrived, and the wealth was spread around equitably.
But then the big money mafia came in to gang rape the industry. Legalization, undeniably a great thing in many respects, unfortunately opened the door for these interests to commit mayhem. They paid off the lawmakers. They bribed the regulators. They paid off seedy lobbyists like Steven Linder to do their bidding. They pushed for legislation that was supposed to give the big money players a monopoly over the industry.
But things didn’t go according to plan for the big money mafia. They didn’t get the legislation they wanted. The lawmakers who they bribed got prosecuted and thrown in prison. They were not able to game the system effectively, and now they are losing on their investment.
Big money operations overexpanded. They got too greedy. They built too many facilities. Dispensaries opened on every street corner. Now, they are losing money and being forced to close shop. Their arrogance got the better of them, and they are scrambling not to go bankrupt.
And who are they trying to squeeze to prop up their failed business plans? The growers.
Growers are being squeezed by dispensaries who want them to sell their fine product to them practically at cost so they can mark it up and keep their mansions, their fancy cars and their massive coke & whores budgets intact.
My question to growers who are going along with this is: Where is your self-respect?
Where is your dignity? Why are you complying with these lowlifes who are screwing you? Why are you playing along with their charade?
There are dispensaries out there that will pay you what your cannabis is worth. Those of us in the community who are not big players but have focused on building a small number of dispensaries and running them right will take care of you.
Moral and just cannabis entrepreneurs who have built our businesses on relationships, on getting the best product out to our people, continue to expand even within this tumultuous market. Our customers know that we are for the people and have not forgotten the cannabis industry’s humble roots. They support us knowing that we support the community and do not help the big money’s gangbang of the industry.
Growers: It’s time to let the big money hustlers die on the vine. They created their own peril. Now it is time to let them choke. They got greedy and now they must pay. This is the free market in action. Those of us who do right by others can keep the cannabis industry going for generations to come without the presence of these assholes.
Let them go into bankruptcy. We do not need continuous growth of massive dispensary conglomerates. We do not need the expansion of corporate cannabis. Many great products have been discontinued because of needless regulations. Many patients no longer have their caregivers who would tailor their cultivation of life-saving medicine directly to the needs of the individual because these greedy bastards flooded the marketplace and made competition unsustainable.
It is time to piss on these big money players while they are down. They should not receive any sort of bailout. They are reaping what they have sown. The day has come to pay the fiddler. We should be laying out jagged rocks to cushion their fall from grace. They are losing badly in the market they created and attempted to rig in their favor. They have been hoisted on their own petard due to their own lack of wisdom and foresight. Let their failure serve as an example for others that unethical business practices will eventually hurt you in the end.
Growers, it is time to start boycotting these big money giants. Whatever money they are offering you now will keep you in bondage. Come to Big George. Come to small business dispensary operations that are thriving. As we continue to grow intelligently and sustainably, the giants will fall around us, and the people will be better off as a result.