Oregon as early state to legalize pot was mecca for biz opportunity, then came regs, hard times

America is smack dab in the middle of a major drug, business, and legal experiment. Twenty-four states and Washington, DC have now legalized recreational marijuana. Even more states—39 plus DC— allow medical use. 

Pot has been legal for recreational use in Oregon longer than most anyplace else. The story of how it has working out about 10 years later is complicated and depends on who’s telling it. 

Mike Getlin helped start up the Cannabis Industry Alliance of Oregon and now does public relations for Nectar Markets, the largest recreational cannabis dispensary chain in Oregon. Its expert joint rolling team rolls about 5 million "doobies" a year.

“If you had to give the whole effort statewide a grade in terms of success, whatever that means, what would you say it is at this point?” Full Measure asked Getlin.

“I think we get an A for the amount of legal market adoption. The number of Oregonians that choose to get their cannabis products from legal sources is probably the highest in the country,” he said. “We definitely get an A-plus for the best products around. … And I think we get an A for minimizing any public health or safety harms. We probably get about a C-minus for the business climate, um, and the ability of the regulatory infrastructure to modernize and adapt.”

Another downside is the reality of the business climate. Some small business owners lured by the promise of a new “green rush” have found it impossible to make a living at it.

In 2015, Myron Chadowitz started Essential Farms, a small organic marijuana farming operation in rural Veneta, Oregon, two hours south of Portland. He had high hopes – at first.

“How many people did you have at your peak?” I asked him.

“Twenty-two,” he said. “We were doing a million in sales. We were doing great. You know, were we making money? No but we were seeing there's an avenue ahead.”

But his dreams of the high life went up in smoke in March of 2023 when Oregon started requiring growers to test pot for a certain type of mold. It put him out of business – before the state decided a few months later that the tests weren’t necessary, after all.

“Law's gone. But here we are. Laid off everyone,” Chadowitz tells me. “What's to stop the state or federal [governmenrt from]  throwing another regulation out of the blue that we're gonna have to adapt to that maybe we won't be able to? And it's like, ‘Can I do this any longer?’ And as a businessman, I said, ‘I'll take the loss. I'm, I'm done.’”

I asked Getlin what has been the most challenging part of the legalized pot movement in Oregon.

“Trying to make a profit,” he says. “As someone who's worked in the trade association world in Oregon for many years, I would say 90-plus percent of my friends' businesses have failed. I have my farm failed that I originally started, and I was fortunate enough to be able to continue my work in the industry through Nectar and through the trade associations. But the business failure rate and the type of economic damage that it has done to many of my friends and colleagues has been really tough to watch.”