Santa Barbara County has become California's powerhouse of legal cannabis farming. It's home to some of the largest marijuana farms in the world and grows more pot than any other county in the state. But new government data shows there's serious trouble in the breadbasket of California's weed industry.
Santa Barbara County recently posted its least valuable first quarter harvest since cannabis legalization, collecting only $1.3 million in taxes, down from a high of $5.3 million during the same time period in 2020, according to county officials. The drop in tax collections reflects a plummet in the value of the county's cannabis crop.
Carmela Beck, the county's cannabis program manager, said during a Jan. 14 Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors meeting that the industry is struggling and will likely continue to contract. "We're just seeing … a lot of large, well-known companies going out of business and then also consolidating," Beck said. "Many small-sized farmers are going out of business."
Santa Barbara's shrinking tax collections come as the entire California legal cannabis industry goes through an economic slump, with thousands of companies going out of business. Industry leaders say high regulatory costs and taxes have made it increasingly difficult to run a profitable cannabis company.
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