Leaked Document Shows How Legal Weed Could Go Horribly Wrong

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastAs an emerging industry with sky-high revenue projections, lofty social-justice promises, and ground rules currently being written from scratch, no business in America prompts ready comparisons to Silicon Valley like legal cannabis.But though analysts project legal weed sales to balloon from $17.5 billion last year to $70 billion by 2028—exponential growth fueled by the beginning of adult-use sales in East Coast states like New York and the potential of a legal national market, as the U.S. Senate for the first time seriously debates federal legalization—cannabis businesses in legacy West Coast states like California and Oregon are struggling. Among other problems, they’re being squeezed by high taxes, low margins, and oversupply as companies large and small rush to enter the fray.To avoid this uncertainty and to guarantee high profits, the country’s biggest cannabis companies—some of them publicly traded with valuations in the billions of dollars—are angling for regulations that would see government hand them what critics say is a near-oligopoly, according to source who leaked an internal document to The Daily Beast.Read more at The Daily Beast.