Weed Glut: Washington State Marijuana Growers Outpacing Consumer Demand

(Brett Levin Photography)

It sounds like your cousin Darren Who Still Lives In His Parents The Basement’s dream come true: Marijuana growers in Washington State are churning out huge piles of weed, producing more pot than people are buying.

Earlier concerns about legal weed running dry in the state seem to be for naught, as The Stranger’s Slog blog says prices have been falling in recreational shops as growers keep pushing out more product.

“It’s crazy what we’re selling weed for, it’s so cheap,” the owner of one shop says. His store’s prices rang from $10 to $23 a gram, on par with most medical stores. “Wholesale prices are literally half of what they were in September.”

Consumers aren’t keeping up however, as one farmer found out after filing a records request with the Washington State Liquor Control Board to find out how much product was out there. He’d noticed a glut of the stuff around Halloween and got curious.

The numbers showed that the difference between grams harvested and grams sold in the state is pretty vast — with 10 times more green being produced than what’s selling in stores. For the period from June through the end of November, farmers grew around 11,500,000 grams of marijuana. Stores sold 1,172,000 grams through November after opening in early July.

It’s important to point out per an update to the post, as ” it’s possible the liquor board’s harvest data comes from the weight of the pot before it’s dried, which could make the discrepancy between pot produced and pot sold somewhat smaller.

In any case, it’s not shocking to the WSLCB.

“The market is still maturing,” a spokesman told The Stranger. “Not everyone is going to make it… We knew the supply system would be pretty robust.”

Those stuck with excess product will find no relief there, either, as the WLCSB spokesperson warned against a “gold rush” mentality. The board doesn’t publish a list of sales data online with details like how much pot is being grown and sold in grams, which the farmer says he thinks it should. Sorry, says the WLCSB.

“I don’t know that we’re responsible for telling people how to run their business, and that’s what this is,” he said.

So what’s a pot grower with too much weed to do? Officials hope it’s not to other states where it isn’t legal, which could be tough due to the state’s tracking system.

This farmer, however, is not about to be the grasshopper who sang all summer: He put his surplus crop in bags flushed with nitrogen to keep the bud from oxidizing, explains The Stranger, and vacuum seals them before storing them in a dark, cool bunker.

“Under those conditions,” he says, “it keeps for years.”

Prices Fall as Washington State Weed Growers Produce More Pot Than Can Be Sold [The Stranger]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist