After getting his start in California, Baker spent a decade honing his cannabis chops in Colorado\u2019s medical and, later, recreational scenes.<\/p>\n
In Denver, he formed his Cultivate Colorado brand that supplies growers with the soil, lights, shovels and anything else they might need to raise plants into mature products.<\/p>\n
But soon after Oklahomans in June 2018 voted to legalize medical marijuana, Baker noticed transportation costs for his hydroponic supplies were five times higher than normal.<\/p>\n
All of it, Baker realized, was going down to Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t even know they legalized medical,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It only took three months for Baker and his wife to sell their Denver home, buy 110 acres outside Oklahoma City and move their operations east.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe follow the green rush,\u201d he said. \u201cAlways have.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to operating his own farm, Baker also manages the 90-acre grow in Okemah whose owners converted an old hay farm into what Baker claims is one of the largest cannabis plots in the nation.<\/p>\n
The Tribe Collective owners are Oklahomans from a variety of backgrounds: oil and gas, tech and even Hollywood. They ditched the old industries and went all-in on growing bud.<\/p>\n
The sprawling farm sits on a 900-acre property, replete with multiple greenhouses, a state-of-the-art extraction lab, walk-in freezer \u2014 and that\u2019s before you get to the outdoor grows. Driving down the dusty dirt road, it looks like it could be any rural swath of American heartland.<\/p>\n
But then you see the plants \u2013 more than 40,000 of them swaying gently in neat rows of fields with names like \u201cSkinny Marie\u201d and \u201cLucky Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything changed for marijuana entrepreneurs and the state of Oklahoma on June 26, 2018, when 57% of voters checked the \u201cyes\u201d box on legalizing medical marijuana.<\/p>\n
In the months leading up to the vote, a frenzied coalition of state medical and hospital associations, district attorneys, sheriffs, the State Chamber of Oklahoma and the state\u2019s Republican governor lined up to oppose the measure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a bad public health policy that does not resemble a legitimate medical treatment program,\u201d Dr. Kevin Taubman, former president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association and chairman of the opposition group, told the Associated Press after the vote passed.<\/p>\n
Then-Gov. Mary Fallin feared the proposal was essentially legalizing recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n
Many Oklahomans, including those in the cannabis industry, wouldn\u2019t argue. Up and down the board, there were very few restrictions put in place on who could operate a grow, how many there could be and how easy it would be to obtain a medical card.<\/p>\n
Unlike in many states, including Colorado, patients don\u2019t need qualifying medical conditions in order to get a card. Doctors sometimes would set up outside dispensaries, offering their services. Websites with names like NuggMD and<\/p>\n
PrestoDoctor promised customers a medical marijuana card online in 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
Business licenses cost just $2,500, a fraction of the price in other states, making it possible for nearly anyone with a bit of cash to start a grow or dispensary.<\/p>\n
In Arkansas, on the other hand, a licensing fee runs $100,000 \u2013 plus a $500,000 performance bond. In New York, an application costs $10,000, with a $200,000 registration fee.<\/p>\n
Colorado charges roughly $7,500 for initial recreational and medical shop licenses, and renewing that license annually will run an operator thousands more each time, depending on how many plants they want to grow.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the \u201cfinding of suitability\u201d fee \u2013 a state check to make sure someone is allowed to actually run a business. That\u2019s another $800 per person, or $5,000 for a publicly traded company. Not to mention, of course, the local fees that come on top of the state\u2019s, which can run thousands more per year.<\/p>\n
The costs quickly add up.<\/p>\n
Cities and counties in Oklahoma, meanwhile, aren\u2019t allowed to outlaw dispensaries or grow operations \u2013 another major break from states like Colorado, where despite legalization, the drug is still barred from being sold recreationally in many local jurisdictions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are unprecedentedly low barriers to entry\u201d in Oklahoma, said John Hudack, a cannabis expert at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C., think tank.<\/p>\n
With typical roadblocks and red tape shoved to the side, the industry has exploded.<\/p>\n
Nearly 376,000 Oklahomans \u2013 roughly 10% of the state\u2019s population \u2013 have medical marijuana cards, by far the highest share in the country, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.<\/p>\n
New Mexico, by contrast, has the second-highest number at 5.35%, with Colorado at 1.5%.<\/p>\n
Even at the height of Colorado\u2019s medical marijuana boom in 2011, however, the state topped out at 128,698 patients, a third of Oklahoma\u2019s total, and just 2.5% of the state population.<\/p>\n
The cost difference between getting in the game in Colorado versus Oklahoma is stark.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo even think about opening a (marijuana) business in Colorado, you have to have a million dollars liquid to get the ball rolling,\u201d said McDonald, the Apothecary Farms executive.<\/p>\n
In Oklahoma? You can be fully vertically integrated for $7,500, Henderson said.<\/p>\n
Cheaper land prices, building costs and license fees mean \u201cit\u2019s easily 10 times cheaper here than in Denver,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Those factors, combined with the state\u2019s hands-off approach, means it\u2019s getting awfully crowded in Oklahoma\u2019s cannabis space.<\/p>\n
Some states that legalized marijuana created a small, set number of licenses. Arkansas, for example, allows for only 40 dispensaries in the state. Connecticut has just four cannabis producers and 18 dispensaries nearly a decade after legalizing medical marijuana.<\/p>\n
But Oklahoma decided to let the free market run unencumbered. As a result, the state is now home to nearly 12,600 marijuana business licenses, including more than 8,600 growers and upwards of 2,300 dispensaries.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s more than double Colorado\u2019s combined recreational and medical stores \u2014 despite the fact that Oklahoma has some 1.8 million fewer people. The Centennial State has more than 1,200 cultivation operations, per state data, nearly seven times fewer than Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople see this as an opportunity to enter a market that\u2019s costly elsewhere and so there\u2019s this rush of people who think they\u2019re going to make it rich,\u201d Hudack said. \u201cWe know how this story plays out. We saw a less permissive system operate in Oregon and they ended up with hundreds of thousands of pounds of excess inventory.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDonald called it the \u201cArmageddon stage\u201d for Oklahoma cannabis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are serious windfalls that come with barriers being so low,\u201d he said. \u201cThe market is so oversaturated in Oklahoma. What this has done is make it a true buyer\u2019s market. Things are so competitive, it\u2019s a race to the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019re not going to tolerate it\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n That lack of regulation is also frustrating state and local law enforcement officials, who say the drug\u2019s hasty legalization ushered in an alarming rise in illicit grows and other criminal activity.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s difficult to put a number on a market that lives in the shadows, officials say anecdotal evidence points to out-of-staters, including people from Colorado, coming into Oklahoma to operate unregulated operations.<\/p>\n Nearly every week brings another news story about large raids conducted across Oklahoma, where, authorities allege, people are growing and shipping vast quantities of marijuana for sales out of state.<\/p>\n The illicit grows also bring in other ancillary crime, including prostitution, harder drugs like ketamine and labor trafficking, said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.<\/p>\n When the agency saw how the new marijuana law was written three years ago, they knew people would come to the state to take advantage, he said.<\/p>\n But law enforcement didn\u2019t realize just how many people it would be \u2013 and how quickly they would set up shop.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a Trojan horse,\u201d Woodward said. \u201cWe let this into our village because it looked really good on the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bureau of Narcotics simply can\u2019t keep up with the number of illicit grows, he said. In response, Oklahoma has asked for $4 million in federal funding to battle the unregulated marijuana market, with the state legislature promising additional money to fund a unit dedicated to the issue.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we will be concentrating on is drug trafficking organizations that are transnational and national drug organizations that have infiltrated Oklahoma,\u201d Donnie Anderson, the agency\u2019s director, told local reporters in July as he announced the federal aid request. \u201cThey\u2019re here in Oklahoma and they\u2019re not going away anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n For some Oklahomans, legal marijuana has upset their rural slice of life.<\/p>\n \u201cThe price of our land has gone up, and citizens can\u2019t swim in their pools because they have to smell marijuana growing every day,\u201d Turner said, the Haskell County sheriff. \u201cFolks here growing are not even residents of Oklahoma. They come here because it\u2019s the Wild West \u2013 well, we\u2019re not going to tolerate it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Oklahomans are outlaws\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n But despite the wishes of some Oklahomans, marijuana is here to stay. And the people it\u2019s attracting would surprise even themselves.<\/p>\n Ten years ago, Billy Moon would have thought you were crazy if you told him he\u2019d one day be operating a professional cannabis business.<\/p>\n The former Oklahoma City police detective spent his career dealing in the dark world of cartels and narcotics, his nights occupied taking down meth houses.<\/p>\n But after being diagnosed with a form of blood cancer, the doctor told him to try cannabis. The cancer caused Moon to feel burning sensations in his hands and feet, but he realized that smoking and taking edibles would make the pain disappear.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was it,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought, \u2018We\u2019re missing (out) on something.\u2019 There\u2019s some obvious benefits to this plant.\u201d<\/p>\n Moon partnered with Rich Cardinal, a Colorado cannabis lifer, to set up a grow operation called Canna Culture on a family-owned piece of property in Chickasha, a small town 45 minutes southwest of Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n The former police detective is selling Cardinal on the Oklahoma way of doing business.<\/p>\n \u201cOklahomans don\u2019t want that lazy, hippie vibe,\u201d Moon said next to an outdoor field full of cannabis. \u201cOklahomans are outlaws. It\u2019s a \u2018(expletive)-the-government\u2019 kind of attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n But the fact that a state as red as Oklahoma is leaning into legal cannabis should no longer be surprising, said Ricardo Baca, a former Denver Post journalist who was the country\u2019s first cannabis editor and founder of the Denver-based Grasslands marketing agency.<\/p>\n The turning point, he said, came in 2016. When most of the country had its eyes peeled on the presidential upset, eight states \u2013 including deeply conservative ones like Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota \u2013 were quietly legalizing some form of marijuana, a precursor to places like Oklahoma turning from red to green.<\/p>\n \u201cCannabis is no longer a partisan issue,\u201d Baca said. \u201cAnd we need to stop treating it as such.\u201d<\/p>\n Comments are not available on this story.<\/p>\n
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