Bill Paschall, the managing director and chief lobbyist for the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, sees a supply and demand imbalance for the state's eight licensed medical marijuana cultivators.
"I think we have a bigger supply with eight cultivators than we have demand," Paschall told Whispers last week in a conversation that also touched on whether cannabis companies have lived up to pledges made years ago in their license applications. The number of cultivators has "forced a pretty hefty competition between the eight," Paschall said. "It's healthy."
The industry on the whole is delivering strong local economic benefits, serving the state's 115,000 patient cardholders and competing for their business with top-level products, he said. But the bottom line? His members need more customers.
"What the industry is focused on is trying to help make people aware that they are eligible for cards," Paschall said. "If they have a condition that meets the eligibility (criteria), we try to help them work through all the hurdles you have to cross from the state to get a card. So we're really focused on growing demand, because we have a static number of cultivators, and they're producing plenty of marijuana now for the number of cardholders in the state."
Read more at Arkansas Business
