Dear Pot Lawyer,
I try to buy groceries from local sources. How can I make sure my pot is local too?
All pot for sale in your neighborhood dispensary is local, in the sense that it was grown right here in Oregon. But if you are asking how to support homegrown dispensaries, processors, and growers, it can seem like an impossible task. Few consumers will want to dig through state records to determine the actual owners and investors of a particular brand or business, if that information is even available.
This wasn’t really an issue until early last year. As originally conceived, Oregon’s recreational cannabis regulations required that each pot business be controlled by an Oregon resident, and be at least 51 percent Oregon owned. These residency restrictions were eliminated, for both recreational and medicinal businesses, in March 2016. Since then, there has been no reliable way for consumers to know whether they are supporting homegrown businesses.
A new trade organization is looking to change that.