Editor’s note: The names in this story have been changed to protect confidentiality.
For most of his adult life, Marcus slung bags of high-quality marijuana to a discreet clientele in Detroit.
The money was good, and the job was easy.
The 31-year-old says he made more than $1,000 a week, enough to pay the bills and stay out of the corporate grind that burned out his friends and family.
Then in November 2018, voters approved the legalization of cannabis for adult use in Michigan. A year later, dispensaries began cropping up in cities across the state.
At first, Marcus could compete with the dispensaries by offering lower prices for his hydroponic flower and cannabis concentrates.
The average cost of an ounce of flower was more than $500 at dispensaries in early 2020, while Marcus charged between $250 and $300 an ounce.
But as the legal market became more saturated, the prices began to plummet, and by April 2021, dispensaries were charging less for cannabis than Marcus could afford to sell his.
“I eventually had to give it up,” Marcus tells Metro Times. “Most of my customers ended up going to dispensaries. There was nothing I could do.”
By the summer of 2022, Marcus was out of business and looking for a job. He now works at a vape shop in metro Detroit, a more laborious job that pays less but still has its perks.
“At least I don’t have to look over my shoulder all the time,” Marcus says.
As the legal cannabis industry expands, illicit marijuana dealers are having a tough time maintaining their customer base. With lower prices and thousands of new products, underground dealers are finding it challenging to compete against the regulated market.
Licensed dispensaries and online retailers continue to open across the state, giving consumers legal avenues to purchase cannabis and reduce their reliance on illicit sources.
The legal market also has numerous regulations that ensure safety and accountability, giving buyers faith that the products they are purchasing are free from harmful contaminants and accurately labeled with information on potency and strains.
Staying competitive
Underneath large grow lights in his basement, Nick is competing with a billion-dollar industry. He has nowhere near the resources that corporate growers have, but he has something most of them don’t — more than 20 years of experience growing high-quality flower.
Nick’s marijuana is dense, pungent, and covered in what are colloquially called crystals, or trichomes. He primarily grows three strains — an indica, sativa, and hybrid, and his customers know they are getting consistently high-quality marijuana.
Nick has grown a loyal customer base that values his knowledge, reliability, and discretion. He began selling marijuana because he has a genuine passion for cannabis and its potential to heal and provide relief and relaxation.
He primarily sells by the ounce, but some of his customers only want a fraction of that — eighths and quarters.
Nick says he has cut his prices by as much as a third to compete with the regulated industry, but he doesn’t rely on the money to survive.
“I’d be lying if I said corporate weed hasn’t hurt me,” Nick says. “It has. But people know they can trust me. They know my stuff is better than 95% of what they find in a store.”
Nick says he still has roughly the same number of customers he had before adult-use cannabis became legal, and he doesn’t expect that to change anytime soon.
“People like what they like,” he says. “If you like going to a store to get your weed, go to the store. You aren’t hurting my feelings.”
Joining the legal market
For some underground marijuana dealers, the prospect of operating a legal cannabis dispensary is alluring because selling weed illegally can be risky and dangerous.
When Michigan voters approved the sale of medicinal cannabis in 2008, Randy saw a way out of the shadows. Since graduating from college, he had grown high quality marijuana in his garage in the Detroit suburbs. But he became worried that the pungent smell wafting from his garage would get him busted.
After medical marijuana became legal, Randy became a caregiver, which gave him the opportunity to grow up to 12 plants per patient. He also sold some of his flower to medical cannabis dispensaries, but the sales were unpredictable and often left him with a surplus.
While not technically legal, Randy sold much of his marijuana to other medical cannabis cardholders, and he had a license to grow in case police came knocking.
When recreational marijuana became legal in Michigan, Randy began exploring ways to become a legal cannabis entrepreneur. He had a modest amount of money saved from his weed sales and certainly had the expertise.
But he quickly learned that the journey to becoming legal was laborious and expensive. Since marijuana remains illegal on the federal level, banks are prohibited from issuing loans for cannabis businesses.
Randy says it would cost tens of thousands of dollars for a marijuana license, a building for a dispensary, and an attorney to help navigate local ordinances and zoning laws.
“I really wanted to become legal, but there’s no way I could afford it,” Randy says. “You have to have a lot of money upfront.”
For the foreseeable future, Randy plans to stay underground, selling marijuana to his shrinking customer base.
He has another job and doesn’t depend on selling weed to survive.
“I’m lucky this isn’t my only source of revenue,” Randy says.
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