California’s legal cannabis market has hit another grim milestone: There are now 10,828 inactive and surrendered pot licenses in the state and only 8,514 active ones, meaning dead pot licenses now outnumber active ones, according to the Department of Cannabis Control’s data dashboard.
This inversion comes seven years after the legal cannabis market opened. While it’s not clear exactly when the threshold was crossed, because the state does not release historical licensing information, California’s legal market has been struggling for years, with thousands of companies going out of business.
Jonatan Cvetko, a cannabis advocate and executive director of the United Cannabis Business Association, said the figures show that state regulators and the entire regulatory framework for cannabis in California is a “complete failure.”
“We’ve finally hit a threshold where we’ve seen the number of participants who have come into the industry who have failed outweighs the number of people succeeding, and succeeding is probably too strong of a word,” Cvetko said.
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