Too Much Weed, Not Enough Brain Cells: Michigan’s Cannabis Crash

It’s not just oversupply — it’s collapse. And the rats are clawing through the drywall to escape.

Michigan's cannabis market is circling the drain and everyone’s selling joints like it’s a fucking fire sale at Spirit Halloween. Retail sales dipped to $234.8 million in June, down nearly $20 million from May, and wholesale prices are in freefall. Flower dropped to $1,010/lb, the lowest in state history. And don’t worry — it smells like it too.

This isn’t just a summer slump. It’s the byproduct of two years of unhinged license issuances, unchecked canopy growth, and MSOs blowing investor cash on branding agencies while letting inventory rot. Now that consumers are tapped out and price-per-gram is worth less than gas station coffee, the real reckoning begins.

A System Built to Overgrow and Undersell

At its core, Michigan’s oversupply crisis was never a surprise. When the state handed out cultivation licenses like they were fucking baseball cards, every trust-funded vertical operation from Kalamazoo to Keego Harbor ramped production with zero insight into sustainable demand.

Companies like TerrAscend, Lume, Skymint (RIP), and Red White & Bloom ballooned output under the assumption that Michigan was going to become some magical weed wonderland where every family in Dearborn would buy a pound a month.

Instead, consumers kept buying the same eighths, the same carts, and the same $12 shake pre-rolls from the same three stores, and now warehouses are packed, margins are fucked, and desperate execs are funneling 2023 harvests into 2025 promos to keep the ship afloat.

Marketing Meets Mania

You want to know how bad it’s gotten?

• The Fire Station in Marquette is throwing “BOGO Bowl Night” promos where every ounce comes with a coupon to the bowling alley across the street. No one knows if the weed’s any good, but the shoes are still sticky.

• Pure Options in Lansing reportedly told staff they’d get bonuses if they cleared inventory fast enough. One manager caught a budtender stuffing eighths into the ceiling tiles to juice the sales report. When confronted, the guy said, “I’m optimizing shelf space.” He was fired. The weed stayed in the ceiling.

• Joyology is offering “Early Bird Deals” at 7AM. Because nothing says dignity like showing up before sunrise to buy unsellable popcorn nugs in a strip mall parking lot.

• TerrAscend—once the market’s self-declared grown-ups—quietly dipped out of Michigan like a dad going out for smokes. Their exit strategy? Dump inventory, torch brand equity, and call it “focusing on core markets.”
  

It’s Quotas, Not Culture

Sources inside multiple shops say sales quotas are back, with managers pushing ounces like used cars and punishing anyone who doesn’t “move product.”

One former employee at Nature’s ReLeaf told us, “If you didn’t sell two zips per shift, they’d threaten to pull your hours. One dude sold an ounce to a 72-year-old with arthritis and no lighter. They called it a win.”

And no, these aren’t isolated cases. This is what happens when leadership has no fucking idea how to navigate a real business cycle.

They built these models for infinite growth with no brakes. Now they’re watching their warehouses turn into moldy tombs while pretending this is just “market correction.”

It’s not a correction. It’s a reckoning. And the ones who overbuilt, under-planned, and overpaid their own delusions should be forced to smoke their backstock one blunt at a time.

What's Next?

You think the layoffs are done? You think the price has bottomed? You think “volume discounts” are gonna save your favorite MSO?

Think again.

Michigan's cannabis economy is now the equivalent of a liquidation warehouse with a dab bar. No one’s buying, everyone’s discounting, and the only thing rising is the stench of panic.