The Daily Mail
A San Francisco dispensary owner has been exposed boasting about how he has made ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ by ripping off cannabis farmers – as the state’s cannabis $600million ‘debt bubble’ grows.
Norman Yousif, founder and CEO of the dispensary chain Off the Charts, was caught on camera bragging about deliberately failing to pay ‘mom-and-pop’ vendors.
The video sparked outrage as it highlighted a recurring problem in California‘s legal cannabis market that sees farmers short-changed.
Small family-run operations are particularly vulnerable and have even been put out of business by the practice.
‘You know how much money we have saved by not paying the vendors because they have been out of business or they never collect it when they’ve done a lot of this?’ Yousaf said.
‘I ain’t talking about the 30 staple brands that are here to play, I’m talking about these f***** mom and pop shops that come and go.
‘Probably saved hundreds of thousands, you don’t have to pay. You don’t have to pay.’
The video quickly went viral with viewers fuming that his comments exemplified ‘everything that is wrong’ inside California’s cannabis industry.
Growers Big Red’s Cannabis Co. were among those to condemn Yousif’s remarks.
‘Us mom and pop brands are the whole f***** reason,’ the company wrote on Instagram.
‘We are the ones that put ourselves on the line for medical and recreational. I’m calling for a boycott of all Off The Charts stores no vendors sell to them and no customer should buy from them support the mom and pop brand support the small guy.’
Yousif apologized in a statement to SF Gate, but claimed his recorded statement was taken out of context and was in reference to a situation from five years ago when a number of brands went out of business before his company could pay them.
‘I’m not the most polished person in the world. This was a big lesson learned from me,’ Yousif told the outlet.
Read more
