Of course this is something I’ve been talking about for years so it’s good to see others with similar views
Hot take: Metrc isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to… protect monopolies, not markets.
Did you see the lawsuit?! (see the Ganjapreneur article )
California operators are drowning in compliance costs.
Burning hours on glitchy interfaces and delayed tag shipments.Getting fined for tiny clerical errors.
Meanwhile, actual large-scale diversion gets ignored.
A whistleblower (former Metrc exec) —says the company knew about it, and regulators looked the other way.
This isn’t failure. It’s selective enforcement.
Mom-and-pop shops get squeezed.
MSOs exploit the cracks. And the state pretends it’s about “public safety.”
Compliance has become a cover.
Not for transparency, but for control.
More surrendered licenses than active ones.
A majority of California cannabis sales still in the unregulated market…Legacy operators pushed out while the system rewards volume, not values. Obviously.
This isn’t a glitch, I’m prretttty sure it’s by design.
Whaddaboutyou?!
Metrc isn’t protecting the industry.
It’s gatekeeping it.
And we see it.
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The operational expense of just tagging plants is immense especially on medium and large licenses. When we were operating in Lake Co in ’21 we had pallets, yes, pallets of tags delivered and had a whole storage container solely for storing plant tags. Between the added labor expense and the waste they generate- its a zero sum game; METRC the winner, operators and the environment, losers.
The state is just as much to blame. They expected METRC to flag irregularities on their behalf, because the state is too lazy or complacent for its own enforcement actions. Kind of the state(s) fault for allowing tracking software to have a monopoly and expecting them, a privatized entity, to make enforcement moves on the states’ behalf.
METRC is protecting their own business, they got super lucky in Colorado and large commercial operations have built their inventory models and SOPs around their garbage product ever since. The same businesses are in fear of the financial impact of going with something else (changes to inventory processes, retraining etc…not climbing Mt. Everest) but at the same time scream bloody murder when METRC and its dependent enterprise systems crash around 420 annually. Change is long overdue.
the irony of it all it was to protect the legal market from the legacy market purchasing legal weed out the back door ironically, only the opposite has really ever been caught happening. But who wants to talk about canopy buying illegal cannabis lol
Metrc is a joke, as are its owners. When I saw legit, tested, and fully packed CPG product from my home state of California in Bangkok a few years back, that confirmed my suspicion. I decided to investigate and find out how this came to be. The lawsuit outlines the loopholes well.
What’s worse is coming across Metrc conquesting into the European markets the past few years.
The problem lies with the political class. Politicians appoint politicians at the highest levels of cannabis commissions. Therefore the system that is built is a top down political system. A couple of years ago I had access to Metrc data through a financial institution. My assignment was to monitor for inversion, diversion, and money laundering (California). I built a system from scratch that monitored data and gave me alerts. Very effective. Burner distros, inventory discrepancies, and the like are very simple to monitor and address. Very simple. Overly cumbersome investigations and huge fines are not what is needed. A system ran with integrity, designed to identify discrepancies remotely, with a fine every time we catch you program, will dramatically change the entire industry. Couple that with punishing fines for wholesale fraud. Call me when you’re ready to execute meaningful change.
even blind folks can see this! Holes so big you can feel the draft and hear the echo!!! And I just barely use the platform compared to a lot of folks here! I didn’t understand a lot of the platform because I was expecting accountability. I had to really loosen my expectations in order to just simply use it because I have to. I hired a METRC consultant to keep me compliant and have asked many times,”what’s the point of that?” Because the entry didn’t reflect meaningful data or was strictly reliant on the honor system which yields it useless. Just hoops burning my time and resources justifying someone’s job doing squat for the economic benefits of the industry or its benefactors! One man’s dead weight is another man’s crow bar-
I wouldn’t say hurt but definitely aggravated and put out! When I call they have been great to help and very friendly but when they answer my questions with directives that leave gaps in accountability I just shake my head and wonder why so much of my time is pissed away for not!!! I end up with records of information that means almost nothing as far as proof of diversion goes! Maybe somewhat helpful for me to track certain info that I can do myself for much less time and money and aggravation. But it is miles off the mark as far as controlling nefarious activities by those inclined to do so- its purpose as a mandated system is about as valid as a fart in the wind!
I challenge anyone to find, within the charter, bill language, etc, of regulatory bodies that collect fees, where it says they aren’t for generating revenue for the state! And I’m terribly sorry to inform people that this crap started when they figure out a large swath of the community doesn’t much care about medical just REC!
Had medical been respected in the first place, this off the wall roller coaster would have been much easier to correct but, no, ran right over medical and into REC… And now, they want home medical growers regulated under metrc too! Once REC steamrolled medical, that was the beginning of the end!
They love reducing an organic crop into tons of single use, toxic laced, non recyclable plastic tags (the RFID makes them toxic and non recyclable). They make millions on the tags.
This post hits it. What we’re seeing isn’t a glitch—it’s systemic protection of MSOs at the expense of the very people who built this industry. Legacy operators are getting squeezed out by selective enforcement, while political connections and corporate loopholes allow large-scale diversion to go unchecked. Compliance has become a weapon, not a safeguard. At Meza, we recognize this corruption and are building tools that not only help bring transparency to the market, but also expose the cracks designed to push small operators out. We stand with the culture, not just the commerce.
