In MD the dispensaries now also sell for rec. use (to anyone >21 years old), with this just starting in July. Their buds are no better than what I or others grow. I only use the dispensaries for concentrates and oil cartridges (which I consume infrequently, much preferring buds).
The concentrates are often outright cheap (compared to every other product they sell) in terms of THC per dollar, with frequent sales and discounting. Shatters, sugars, budders, rosins, distillates, etc., all reported as >70% THC, often cost ≤$20/gram, in the range of ≤2.5 cents/mg ($25/gram pure THC). At that rate, an oz. of 20% THC buds would cost in the $125 range, which is less than dispensary bud prices. There is essentially no mark up for all the work put in to purify the concentrates. I guess the licensed growers have a lot of trim, shake, leaves, etc. they can process and at least get some additional revenue. Is this much the same where you are - cheap, likely surpluses of legal concentrates?
It's going to be like that in most markets IMO (and if not now, eventually.) The
majority of concentrates are made from low quality and potentially failed cannabis, because it doesn't require high quality flower to produce a relatively "clean" product at the end.
That's where the phrase "if it's moldy, send it to blast" came from. I'm assuming it varies from market to market, but flower that doesn't pass testing can be "remediated" into concentrates. When I worked for Magnolia Road, I came on after they harvested their outdoor crop, and the entire crop failed for arsenic on heavy metal testing. They held on to the weed (which was stored in "super sacks" in an outdoor tent, exposed to huge temperature swings, wind, critters, etc, but hey they were in a sack that held the weed together,) and because of a law change they were hoping, praying, and preying on, what would have otherwise been a total loss of a crop was now allowed to be turned into distillate (you'll learn that distillate is probably the dirtiest word in concentrates.)
Outdoor grown cannabis, market-wise, generally fetches a much lower price per pound at market than indoor grown. It's dirty weed. But you can grow literally metric tons of it compared to indoor growing; which is where a lot of grow owners (read grow owners as "the piggy banks that don't know their heads from their assholes,) think "hey we don't have to grow great pot, we just have to grow a lot of it." And they did. And because they didn't limit the amount of licenses issued, really big farms came in and grew not great pot, but a lot of it, and flooded the market with it lol. That dropped the price per pound down CONSIDERABLY, which forced a lot of grows to completely shut down or sell/transfer their licenses.
Worse, it caused a lot of farms to liquidate their inventory at ridiculously low prices, which gave a lot of spending options to the dispensaries, but also made it harder to get quality flower INTO DISPENARIES, because if farm A is selling you pounds of weed for $200, it's tough to justify spending $400 on that better quality, when consumers traditionally want that cheapest ounce possible.
And so indoor growers are competing for shelf space with outdoor growers, and there's an arguable price point that comes into play. So it leaves the outdoor farms with a lot of quantity sitting around (which eventually decisions are made to sell for concentrates.)
And yes, there's ridiculous amount of trim and shake regardless of indoor/outdoor grown. Some of the trim machine are practically weed lawn mowers, they will take large buds and turn them into shredded buds (the Twister T4 for example. fucking clown shoes of a product.)
