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JESSUP — Tucked at the back of an industrial park shared with a spice company, the thick summer air outside Verano’s humming two-story production warehouse smells faintly like cinnamon, cumin and cannabis.
Inside, cannabis production has tripled.
The plant’s sticky flowers are pressed into joints rolled by machinery, distilled into tinctures, pressurized into vapor cartridges, and cooked into gummies, caramels and a line of edibles — all labeled, as required, with a little red marijuana leaf sticker and the words “THC MARYLAND.”
Verano, one of Maryland’s first medical cannabis companies, has shut down its on-site dispensary and moved it to Elkridge to make production space to prepare for July 1, when the state becomes the only in the region with a full-fledged adult-use cannabis market.
“Five years ago, this industry didn’t exist,” Verano President Darren Weiss as he played tour guide at the company’s facility in Howard County. “Think what you will about whether or not you’d like to use cannabis. But it’s hard to argue economic development and jobs.”
State legislators moved fast to create a regulatory structure for the industry before the July 1 deadline after Marylanders voted overwhelmingly to legalize recreational cannabis last November. State lawmakers grappled with stamping out black market sales before they start and reducing racial disparities, deciding to launch the industry with the medical marijuana industry that has been criticized as lacking diversity. A more diverse set of owners are expected to enter the market a year from now, though industry observers acknowledge it will be far more challenging for businesses to break in later. [Read More @ The Washington Post]
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