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KIVA Confections
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Kristi Knoblich Palmer
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Today, most Americans live in states with at least some access to legal legal marijuana — 18 states have broad legal sales for those 21 and older, similar to alcohol laws, while more than two-thirds of states provide access through medicinal programs.Kristi Knoblich Palmer, co-founder of top edibles brand KIVA Confections, lamented that the migration of business into the illegal market was damaging the effort to establish a stable, consumer-friendly marketplace.“To have this system that now appears to be failing, having people go back into the old-school way of doing things ... it does not help us get to our goal of professionalizing cannabis and normalizing cannabis,” she said.In California, no one disputes the vast illegal marketplace continues to dwarf the legal one, even though the 2016 law stated boldly that it would “incapacitate the black market.” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was lieutenant governor at the time the law was approved, called it a “game changer.”But California’s legalization push faced challenges from the start. That’s roughly double the amount of legal sales, though some estimates are even larger.In September, a cannabis company sued government regulators in state court in Orange County, alleging so-called burner distributors were using shadowy “front men” to get licenses to buy wholesale cannabis, then selling it in the illegal market to sidestep taxes.No state is claiming to have eliminated illegal operators.
As said here by MICHAEL R. BLOOD