Kevin Hurley
Audio By Carbonatix
The legal status of weed could change under the Trump administration, opening up the door for marijuana retailers to finally sell cannabis products across state lines. According to one study, Arizona’s weed is in a prime position to take advantage of that new market.
Ever since states started legalizing weed for recreational use starting in the mid-2010s, distributors and dispensaries have had to grow, cultivate and sell completely in one state. Marijuana is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning the federal government considers it illegal, even if it has turned a blind eye to legalization efforts at the state level. An Arizona dispensary attempting to ship its products to New Mexico could be charged with a federal crime.
But the rescheduling of marijuana and the opening of interstate cannabis commerce could happen any day now. And if or when that change occurs, Arizona could be a top weed distributor nationwide thanks to its low weed prices, according to a study published by the Cannabis Policy Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Arizona wouldn’t seem the obvious candidate to be a weed hotspot. The hot and dry environment of the Sonoran Desert doesn’t make for a “naturally good climate for growing outdoors,” said Robin Goldstein, the study’s author. Still, Arizona compensates by producing “really cheap greenhouse-grown marijuana.”
At the time of the study, Arizona weed was selling for about $600 a pound, a price that was “among the lowest in the country” and “kind of a miracle” considering the environmental factors, said Goldstein, who is also the director of the Cannabis Economics Group at the University of California, Davis.
Although Arizona imposes high taxes on cannabis as a result of the state’s 2021 legalization of recreational weed, the state’s greenhouse-grown flower is cheaper than that of any other state on the West Coast. The state is also “leading the way among smaller western states in interstate hemp exports,” according to the study, which suggests success for interstate weed exports.
According to Goldstein’s study, Arizona ranks medium to low among the five factors that determine the cost of cannabis by state in the future. Compared to other states, Arizona’s regulatory, labor, electricity and gas costs are average, while the cost of the state’s land is low.
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We’re No. 8!
Arizona ranks No. 8 out of the 25 states listed in Goldstein’s rankings. Oklahoma, which has only legal medical marijuana, tops the list, while Arizona’s neighbors — California, Nevada and Colorado — come in third, fifth and seventh, respectively.
Still, the competition coming from the four corners is unlikely to impact Arizona’s ability to succeed in interstate commerce. Marijuana is “very valuable by weight,” Goldstein said, which makes it “not that expensive to transport, even across the country.” However, Arizona wouldn’t be competing just with its nearby neighbors but against the entire country. Compared to the rest of the country, the Grand Canyon State is poised to come out on top.
It’s unlikely that Arizona will catch up to California and Colorado in terms of growth potential. California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996. Colorado, along with Washington, was the first state to legalize recreational weed use in 2012. With these two states having an early jump on the weed industry, they’ve been able to create a very developed interstate industry with lots of large-scale operations.
“They’re always gonna have that advantage of longtime leaders,” Goldstein said.
When this interstate commerce race will actually begin is unknown. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a longtime supporter of weed legalization, both medical and recreational. But in the first nine months of the second Trump administration, that hasn’t been a priority, Goldstein said. Instead, RFK Jr. has focused on dropping vaccine mandates, cutting public health funding and telling Americans that Tylenol spreads autism.
Rescheduling could happen tomorrow or it could happen 10 years from now, Goldstein said. A decade is an “extreme outside estimate,” he said, but an accurate timeline is “very unpredictable.”
Still, Goldstein is “almost positive” that rescheduling will happen sometime during the next three and a half years amid the Trump administration. “Donald Trump could wake up on a Wednesday morning having scrambled eggs,” Goldstein said, “and he could decide to legalize marijuana.”
