Inside the $32 billion industry processing marijuana

An email obtained by the Times shows that a leader of the committee, Rep. Sharon Wylie, an industry advocate, shared a draft of the bill with a cannabis lobbyist. “Thank you for being open to the compromise approach,” he wrote.

In an interview, Ms. Wylie said “the jury is still out” on the potential harms of cannabis and that regulated businesses bring in revenue for the state.

Mrs. Davis doesn’t give up. He plans to introduce legislation to another committee this month that would ban all concentrates above 35 percent THC, with exemptions for medical use.

“The industry needs limits,” he said.


METHODOLOGY

The New York Times examined sales data from two cannabis industry data companies, BDSA and Aurico brands in total.

Journalists then located each brand’s page on Weedmaps, where available. Four were excluded, because they did not have a weed presence, their listings lacked specific product descriptions, or they had very few products listed.

In November 2024, the Times downloaded the entire WeedMaps product catalog for each of the remaining 20 brands — a dataset containing nearly 18,000 products. Times identified dozens of health and health-related keywords that appeared in the descriptions. For each brand, journalists confirmed that keywords were used to suggest that the products could help treat specific health problems.

After reaching out to the brands for comment, the Times again reviewed the weed descriptions for all products in the initial analysis, to identify whether any of the health-related language had been removed.

Weed listings do not necessarily include all products sold under a particular brand and may reflect some items no longer sold.

The Times conducted a separate analysis of the health claims on Stiiizy’s website, focusing on its guides to individual cannabis strains. Each guide included the flavors of the warp, the supposed effects, and the conditions it “helps” with. The Times programmatically identified 82 of these guides in December and January, based on the website’s sitemap and the extracted conditions listed in each.


Carson Kessler contributed reports e Julie Tate Contributed research.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *