In the cannabis market, nothing is simple, says Seth Bock, founder and CEO of Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center Inc. in Portsmouth. The legalization of recreational sales in Rhode Island isn’t going to change that.
“I think most people that have succeeded in this industry … have learned how to adapt to often very big changes in the market that happen fairly abruptly,” Bock said.
But the often-chaotic nature of the sector also leaves Bock confident that the state’s cannabis industry has the preparation and resilience to meet the demands that will come with the rollout of recreational cannabis sales in December.
Bock spoke on a four-person panel at Providence Business News’ 2022 Business of Cannabis Summit held at the Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick on Sept. 15. The panel discussion, one of two that took place at the summit, focused on the challenges and opportunities awaiting Rhode Island as it dives into the industry that neighboring Massachusetts has already had five years to refine and Connecticut entered a year ago.
Rhode Island’s later entry into the recreational cannabis market means that redirecting customers’ attention to the Ocean State could be an uphill battle, said Dr. Jonathan Martin, co-founder of PureVita Labs LLC in West Warwick.
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Panelist Spencer Blier, CEO and founder at Mammoth Inc. / PBN PHOTO/MIKE SKORSKI[/caption]
“It’s going to take a lot of work from the cultivators in Rhode Island to develop a brand, get the people back here and keep people in,” Martin said.
Another complication in developing a brand is that due to the new legality of cannabis, many restrictions remain on where and how distributors can advertise, said Spencer Blier, CEO and founder of Mammoth Inc. cultivation and extraction facility in Warwick.
For years, Blier said, his own cultivation company couldn’t even advertise on its own packaging and had to rely on social media as its primary form of marketing. The still-controversial nature of cannabis can also place extra difficulties on staffing and recruiting, Blier said.
But with medical and recreational cannabis now legal in Rhode Island, more are embracing the industry. That includes Johnson & Wales University, which launched a cannabis entrepreneurship bachelor’s degree program in 2021.
“We need innovative education here to really make this a credible marketplace,” said Michael Budziszek, a professor of biological sciences at JWU.
The university’s program is “half science degree, half business,” Budziszek said. Courses teach students how to grow, extract and handle the industry side of the cannabis market.
Around 30 to 40 students are enrolled in each of the program’s classes so far.
As recreational cannabis becomes more widespread, Bock said that sellers need to prepare for the likelihood that they’ll have to lower the prices of their products.
While dispensaries currently can sell at relatively high prices, especially compared with unregulated products, that too will come to an end, said Bock. He believes prices “are going to go way down, eventually.”
While that’s welcome news for customers, sellers will need to adapt to reduced revenue per sale.
Though Rhode Island’s small size lends itself well to innovation and connections within the industry, the state isn’t isolated, Bock said. With cannabis becoming well-established elsewhere in New England, the “cannabis bubble … has started to burst a bit due to market saturation, pricing wars,” he said.
But while Rhode Island is late to the game compared with its neighbors in legalizing recreational cannabis sales, the Ocean State is “light years ahead of a lot of other markets” in including on-site laboratories, Martin said.
This in-state development can give Rhode Island a leg up as the traditional dichotomy of indica strains of cannabis versus sativa strains becomes “antiquated,” Martin said.
Most products are hybrid now, he added, and new formulations require extra work to develop labels – similar to food nutrition labels – that help customers understand the effects of the particular cannabis strain that they’re purchasing, such as whether a product is energizing or sedating.
“We need this ability for people to rely on those labels and [know] they’re accurate, know what they’re purchasing and that this is something that they’re comfortable with,” Martin said.
The accuracy of the information presented to customers ultimately comes down to the sampling process, and with in-state sampling capabilities, Rhode Island can lead the way in this development, Martin said.
“Everything, in my opinion, falls back on the science of cannabis,” Martin said.
