California's cannabis market posted the biggest sales drop in legalization history.

That's right. Huge masses of people just quit smoking weed. Not. Everybody, I'm Steve Green with Bill Whittle and Scott Ott. This is Right Angle, brought you by the members of Bill Whittle.com. Gentlemen, there has been a huge drop in California's weed sales, but contrary to the San Francisco

Gate headline that I just read to you, it's the legal cannabis market that's shrinking

faster than ever. That's according to tax data that just came out this week. Also from the

SF gate, they said taxable sales at California's legal cannabis stores amounted to $1.088 billion in the first

quarter of 2025, the lowest figure in five years and an 11% drop in sales compared to

the same quarter a year earlier. That's the largest drop in history in legal cannabis sales

in the state. But get this, the licensed market, that's what they call the legal sales, the licensed market,

supplied only 38% of the weed consumed in California in 2024.

And that's according to California's own Department of Cannabis Control.

So they legalize the stuff, but the black market still dominates sales. Scott,

could you care to take a guess why that might be?

My guess is that it's so expensive to run one of those businesses that the price of the so-called, what did you call it, the licensed market?

Licensed.

Yes, the price of the licensed market weed exceeds that of the very high-quality black market

weed that people grew to know and love over the years.

And so basically the government has priced the legal business people out of the market. That's right, because

it, you nailed it. It's the regulations that are apparently exceedingly difficult and

expensive to follow and the sales tax. They thought they're going to collect all this tax revenue.

So if you're California and you're a politician, Scott, what do you propose to do about this?

Because you were supposed to collect all this tax revenue.

You want your tax revenue.

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