Any adult in the area who wants to buy legal recreational marijuana doesn’t have to go far to find it. And that’s before Rhode Island’s long-awaited dispensary market expansion begins in the coming months.
The state clearly missed the first wave of the market for legal marijuana sales that Massachusetts began tapping into in 2018.
Tiny Rhode Island has just seven legal recreational dispensaries, but there’s another 38 licensed retailers in Bristol County, Mass., alone.
Market saturation in the Bay State and legalization in Connecticut have created fierce regional competition in the industry.
Rhode Island, meanwhile, has spent more than three years developing a regulatory framework to manage growth in its own industry.
Now the state is preparing for a lottery to issue up to 24 new dispensary licenses. The R.I. Cannabis Office believes it will get hundreds of applications based on comparisons with what’s happened in other states and Rhode Island’s previous lottery process for issuing medical cannabis licenses.
Those that do jump into the local market will find dozens of struggling cultivators eager for new customers. But they will face an uphill battle to grow their businesses amid uncertain demand and entrenched competition.
For the cultivators, even limited industry expansion will be celebrated.
“Most of us bet the farm on the farm,” said CultivatingRI LLC owner Karen Ballou. She sunk her life savings into the West Warwick business.
She’s all in, she says in this week’s cover story, because she has no choice.