Did You Ask The Plant? Why East Coast Cannabis is Repeating West Coast Mistakes

In 2014, my dad moved from New Jersey to Colorado because he didn't want to risk jail time over a joint anymore. Colorado had just become the first state to legalize adult-use cannabis, and once he left, he never looked back.

At that point, I was in college in Florida studying political science and economics—using every research paper I could to study cannabis market structure, regulatory frameworks, and tax policy. I had no idea I was actually preparing for what would become my career. I thought I was headed to law school. The plant had other plans.

I drove out to visit my dad, and we checked out the first legal dispensaries together. He stayed in Colorado while I kept moving—eventually landing out West with a camera, documenting cannabis operations across Alaska, California, and Oregon. That documentation work turned into facility work. The facility work turned into management.

Years later, he came out to California to work on the farm while I was the GM. The guy who had to leave New Jersey to avoid jail was now harvesting thousands of plants legally in Trinity County. We didn't talk about it much at the time, but looking back, that felt like the whole journey coming full circle.

It's funny to think I'm writing this from the neighborhood where my dad used to live—the place where he smoked many of those joints. Now I can walk three doors down from where I grew up and buy legal cannabis. Eleven years from fleeing the state for a joint, to his kid serving on the New Jersey Cannabusiness Association's Cultivation Committee.

I think he'd be proud. And definitely amused.

But after my first full year back in New Jersey, I keep asking the same question: Why is the East Coast making the same mistakes we already watched fail out West?

Getting Into the Rooms Where Markets Get Designed

Changing from work boots into a suit in the back of my converted ambulance 20 minutes before presenting to the Virginia Joint Committee on Retail Cannabis. This is what 'bridging the gap' between operations and policy looks like. Suit for the hearing, rig for the facility audits.

I didn't come back East to watch quietly. My goal for 2025 was to get into the rooms where cannabis markets are actually being built—and make sure operational reality gets heard before the blueprints are finalized.

Virginia: Preventing Market Capture Before Launch

In October, I presented to Virginia's Joint Committee on Retail Cannabis on competitive market design. Virginia has a rare opportunity—they get to design an adult-use market with 24 states' worth of evidence. The question is whether they'll learn from failures in mature markets or repeat them.

I laid out the structural risks of limited-license models and proposed evidence-based guardrails: phased market launch prioritizing new Virginia operators, strict prohibitions on license stacking, and data-driven market reviews. Beyond testimony, I authored policy memos on canopy vs plant-count, local opt-out, and the licensing mechanics that determine whether independent operators get a fair shot or get crushed by incumbent advantage.

For the Virginia Cannabis Small Business Association, I authored Pillar 1 of their legislative report to the Virginia Senate—Market Structure & Operational Timelines. The report was written to ensure legislators understand the operational realities of cannabis before debating policy. This section translates the non-negotiables: how long it actually takes to build a compliant facility, the biological timeline from clone to consumer, and the capital requirements independent operators face—so policymakers can write rules that align with how the plant and the business actually work.

The conversations I'm part of focus on the structural fault lines that keep appearing across new markets:

• Market launch tied to competitive readiness, not arbitrary calendar dates

• Testing lab accountability—the bottleneck that chokes new markets but never makes headlines

• Preventing seed-to-sale vendor monopolies

• Ensuring equity priority survives beyond the first licensing round

  
  

New Jersey: Three Years In

Being invited to the NJCBA Cultivation Committee gave me a seat at the table in a market that's finally hitting its stride. Three years in, New Jersey is on its way to becoming a mature market—no longer dominated by converted medical operators selling industrial mids. More high-quality products hit shelves this year than in all previous years combined.

That's not an accident—it's timing. It can take 2-3 years to build a facility (especially factoring in local opt-out delays), which means some first-round application winners from 2022 are just now coming online with product. The quality improvements we're seeing are the result of actual competition finally reaching shelves.

The committee work focuses on improving operational realities for current operators and the ones coming behind them. These are the same workforce barriers, regulatory bottlenecks, and access problems I watched play out in mature markets—showing that states need to look at who came first and adjust, otherwise predictable problems will follow.

Stockton University

I walked students through the 8-Question Reality Check—the diagnostic framework I use to evaluate whether a cannabis venture is operationally viable or a speculative fantasy. Does your drying space match your harvest schedule? Does your staffing plan account for labor peaks? Does your budget include contingency for inevitable infrastructure failures?

They invited me back for 2026, and I'm looking forward to bringing this framework to more college classrooms.

Behind the Scenes

And behind all of this, I've been reviewing facility plans across multiple states—catching bottlenecks before they're baked into construction documents, walking owners through architectural drawings and equipment specs before the money gets spent.

What Keeps Showing Up

Across all these conversations—whether in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or DC—the same structural fault lines keep appearing:

States treating cannabis as a cash cow before there's a cow to milk. Tax rates set like cannabis is a mature, stable industry when operations still need capital to build compliant facilities and survive the gauntlet between license issuance and doors open. Tax them like utilities before they reach profitability and you guarantee independent operator failure.

"Licenses issued" celebrated as the success metric. Every press release brags about how many licenses a state handed out. That number means nothing if most never become operating businesses. The real question: How many licensees made it through construction, passed inspection, survived their first harvest, and are still operating 18 months later?

Flower square footage obsession while bottlenecks hide in plain sight. Investor decks obsess over canopy and flower room automation. Meanwhile, the dry room is 50% undersized for the proposed harvest schedule, veg space is an afterthought, and post-harvest has no dedicated infrastructure.

These are the mechanical details we're working to fix before they're baked in. And they keep showing up in early drafts—which is exactly why having operators in the room matters.

What's Next

Virginia licensing applications could open in 2026. The question is whether the operational fixes make it into the final bill—or whether good policy intent gets undermined by launch timelines that favor incumbents. I'm working with future applicants to build facility and operational narratives grounded in physics, not just impressive on paper.

Pennsylvania's adult-use framework remains stalled, but when it moves, it'll need operational reality injected before the rules get written.

Across all of it, I'm pushing the same message in committee rooms, legislative hearings, and operator consultations: Markets that ignore operational integrity don't just underperform—they collapse, and they take independent operators with them.

If You're Still Reading

The craziest thing I heard this year came during a presentation to a veterans organization about cannabis use. First question from the room: "So, what part of the plant do you smoke—the leaf?"

That crystallized where we are. People with decision-making authority often have zero operational understanding of the plant, the process, or the business they're regulating.

The best thing I heard came from the person who invited me to the NJCBA Cultivation Committee. We were talking through facility timelines and infrastructure bottlenecks. He paused and said: "What I like to tell people is—did you ask the plant?"

That's the shorthand for everything I do. Someone proposes a harvest timeline, a buildout schedule, a tax structure—did you ask the plant? Did you check if the biology, the square footage, the labor model actually supports what's in the spreadsheet?

This philosophy—operational reality over spreadsheet fantasy—is the core thesis of the book I’m writing, First, The Plant.

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The East Coast doesn't have to repeat the West Coast's mistakes. But only if we're willing to learn from them.

If you're building a facility, deploying capital, or drafting policy and want to know whether the math actually works—let's talk.