Printsmith,
Id be happy to answer your questions and i think i can help you understand where im coming from as far as the strategy of the business and my opinion of where the market is going. Please be patient as these answers are kind of long. I contemplated starting a medical only store but the fact is, less people are getting their red cards because of the hassle of going to the doctor. Most people that do get their card renewed now are either growing for themselves or are looking for a slight discount but for most people it isnt worth the hassle anymore since the recreational side is only 15% above the cost of medical. Im not sure if medical licenses will be offered in a few years as the state loses a lot of money. On top of these concerns, the 70/30 issue of maintaining perfect records and monitoring total inventory each month in and out, and where it comes from, along with restricting how many plants are grown based on the number of patients is a nightmare, especially when employees are trying to keep all the numbers straight in a very confusing software system that has not been fully developed to work out all the kinks. This tends to lead to discrepancies in the actual inventory vs the computerized version. If a patient decides to move caregivership from the center to somewhere else, the center must kill the plants immediately. The plants need to be kept separate from medical and recreational in a dual licensed premisis. Medical cannot wholesale to other dispensaries either, unless it is the 30% you dont need yourself, and in this case only to other medical facilities that have a need and are already supplying 70% themselves. A shrinking number of medical stores means less potential to wholesale. With a medical counter and a recreational counter running in the same facility, separate inventories need to be kept and this is also very confusing to anyone working there. More than any other reason, this dual system, or even the medical system working by itself is restrictive and very confusing. As a result, id rather offer the same discount the state charges so medical patients can use my dispensary without the confusion. This way if you have a card, you come in i pay for the tax difference, and avoid the potential loss of license, and eternal headache. I should also add that the MED is very strict as they should be but any discrepancy at all can lead to a facility losing their license. What is sold in a "medical shop" vs a "recreational shop" is identical except for the MG allowance for thc in edibles. other than this, its merely a question of how records are kept and how much tax it paid. Medical actually sells higher dose edibles, along with thc bud, and the like but rarely even has cbd oil available.
Therefore, i will be running a "rec store" but it will be just like it is both medical and rec. The other advantage to running a rec store is being able to wholesale to other stores all over colorado without any stipulations. This operation will not be cheap, and i cant count on Bailey alone to pay the bills. At least at first to maintain operations, I will need to wholesale a significant portion of what i grow. The county will profit in taxes from these transactions and instead of having massive inventory sitting around i will be much more liquid and able to pay bills.
I want to grow most of the garden as CBD strains, but just starting, around half will be THC strains, half cbd. since the oil is extracted from cbd plants that i grow, and the bud itself does not have nearly the effectiveness, if i only offered cbd, there would be nothing else on the shelf. From the demand in CO for CBD, I expect offering this will drive a lot of business from other parts of the state, from families and individuals who cant get the oil anywhere else. I will also be offering at a much reduced rate. Around half the cost. (the extraction companies charge 50% fee for processing, which really drives up the price to the end comsumer, but also the demand makes shops greedy as people are willing to pay whatever to get what they need.) Based on changing demand, I will shift the plants grown and I expect the shift to be towards the CBD end. I am not trying to create another pot shop, i am trying to serve the community and the state as a whole but getting there and staying in business need to be mutual considerations until i can reach the day that the CBD demand is large enough to shift almost entirely to CBD, keep about 10-20% Thc strains, and not wholesale anything.
I started working with CBD a few years ago, and from seeing what its potential is I am determined to bring it to the public but it takes a little feeling out to get there. Now that you understand a little of my thinking process, i can get down specifically to your questions. The rec shop will offer a full range of thc bud, cbd bud, and a few edibles. I am not a fan of edibles in general and will not offer high dose THC edibles, nothing more than around 15mg which is 15/1000 of a gram. Cbd oil on the other hand is sometimes needed in larger doses as the body tends to acclimate to it, and in some treatments, such as a cancer treatment, patients sometimes consume up to .5 to 1g per day. Most people for most pain, or seizures, or neuro regeneration dont need more than .05g, so 1 g would last almost a month. Remember that CBD is non psychoactive though, and does not get people "high." Normally a gram of CBD oil costs around 150-200/gram. I will be offering for around 75/g. If the laws allow someday for me to open an extraction company, i will do that and bring down the cost even more. As for methods of extraction, patients will have different desires and as such i will have the oil extracted in a few ways. The wax and shatter are thc based, and are made from the trim from THC bud that is grown. Because of the terpenes, and the general quality, these will be processed with butane. Nothing else extracts the flavors and terpenes as well. Using vac ovens the butane levels can be brought down to 1-7 parts per million. Thats .00000001-.00000007% remaining butane. If the TJ woods is allowed to operate, depending on what methods they use, i will use them or someone else. Different licenses are harder to get depending on the flammability of the extraction process. If i need to go to denver i will, but i will have it processed using alcahol, as well as a butane extraction with the butane removed using vacuum ovens. I would need to do more research to see if CO2 is a possibility. If it is as effective, i would not use butane extraction but rather Co2 as the CBD is consumed, not smoked. This would be a healthier method. Also please note the grow is organic this has a huge effect on the cleanliness and flavor of all products.
Hopefully from this answer you can understand exactly how confusing the whole thing is. Im working with whats available and the current laws though to make everything as simple and available to the consumer as possible. If you have further questions, or want me to elaborate on any specifics just let me know. I do appreciate your questions, as im sure many other people have similar concerns. One of the more difficult things to get people around are the rec/medical differences and why rec shops are everywhere and medical is harder to find. Trust me the medical laws are way too complicated to try to work with, and i dont have time to run every transaction behind the counter along with managing patient counts and growing everything. Even if i did, im sure i would still mess up. I would quit in a week. You might have noticed that sunrise solutions lost their medical license, and i can almost guarantee it was because of discrepancies in their inventory system, or too many plants at any given time.