Californian growers and retailers brace for cannabis competition

As the state prepares to fully legalise marijuana, established players are wary of new generation of start-ups
Financial Times (UK)
Wednesday, December 27, 2017

California has long been a cannabis pioneer. The state became a hub for the drug-induced counterculture of “turn on, tune in, drop out” of the 1960s, from hash-smoking hippies of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco to Cheech & Chong driving around the streets of Los Angeles in a van made from weed. California was both the first state to criminalise pot in 1913 and then the first to legalise medical marijuana in 1996. From the start of January, California is set to become the latest — and by far the largest — state to fully legalise recreational use of marijuana by adults. The decision completes a cultural and political shift all along the west coast of the US where the drug has been gradually decriminalised.