California's Struggling Cannabis Market vs. Michigan's Thriving Industry: A Tale of Two States
California’s legal weed system is broken, while Michigan’s is thriving, what gives?
In this small town in the rural palm of Michigan’s mitt-shaped peninsula, a 250,000-square-foot warehouse produces 300,000 cannabis vape cartridges per month.
Wide doors lead off long hallways into brightly lighted grow rooms with rows of fragrant weed plants at all stages of development. Workers in hairnets bag cannabis gummies while Green Day blasts in the background. A whirring machine fills, twists and trims more than a dozen joints per minute.
The operation is part of the Lume Cannabis Co. empire, which has 1,100 employees and 38 dispensaries across Michigan. According to chief cultivation officer Kevin Kuethe, Lume is the largest company in the country that produces and sells cannabis exclusively within the bounds of a single state. Lume grew 100,000 pounds last year alone.
