On Dec. 20, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit Humboldt County, Calif., part of the Emerald Triangle region that is arguably the heart of the U.S. cannabis industry, well-known for its legacy operators, ideal growing conditions and top-notch genetics.

It felt like yet another blow to California, which has struggled considerably in 2022, a year where the persistent challenges of competition from the illicit market, high taxes, price compression, compliance standards and local cannabis business opt-outs have pushed the world’s largest cannabis market to the brink.

“It’s just a recipe for disaster,” Jocelyn Sheltraw, who serves on the Board of Directors of the California Cannabis Industry Association, told Cannabis Business Times Senior Digital Editor Melissa Schiller in March. “It’s just created turmoil on the cultivation side.”

In July, California implemented a policy change growers had long pushed for—eliminating the weight-based cannabis cultivation tax, a rate that had been $10.08 per dry-weight ounce for flower and $3 per dry-weight ounce for leaves, bringing much relief to licensed growers.

Although removing the cultivation tax burden was perhaps the most impactful for cannabis growers, Gov. Gavin Newsom also signed 10 bills in September meant to offset other industry challenges, remove employer penalties for cannabis use and improve access for patients and consumers.

However, it remains to be seen how much these and other efforts will mitigate stagnant sales in the state, and when these changes will start to impact markets.

A roundup of our most-read stories from the past year.

A region of California known for some of the world’s best cannabis continues to experience drought and high heat. Wildlife in parts of Oregon is, for now, less vibrant than it once was. And East Coast hurricanes are decimating crops in a pinch.

These are realities for cannabis and hemp growers growing outdoors in 2022. The few sources Cannabis Business Times spoke with for this story say weather catastrophes are becoming more frequent and severe than has been the norm for decades, and that climate change is the culprit for many of those shifts.

Humboldt County comprises part of a temperate rainforest that stretches from near Prince William Sound, Alaska, to south of California’s San Francisco Bay, according to Radford University. 

RELATED: 6.4-Magnitude Earthquake Reported in Humboldt County, California

Lindsey Renner, owner of Native Humboldt Farms, says that when she grew up in Humboldt, it used to rain all fall and winter, often downpouring. That’s no longer the case.

“Almost every year for the past seven years, we have had these extreme heat waves during the summer, and those have been producing lightning storms that have been the cause of [wildfires] up here,” Renner says, adding that weather conditions are becoming more abnormal and are on track to become more extreme.

It's the most wonderful time of the year! As we get ready for another year in cannabis (hopefully one that is at least a little easier on our collective spirits and budgets), we wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2022. At Cannabis Business Times world headquarters, we really had a fun time this year. 

From January through today, we've hit the ground running with each of our print issues and each of our newsletters. The team has held steady with a commitment to delivering the most important news of the day and the most insightful features from around the industry. We have several mottos at CBT, and one of them is that "We're here to serve the market." We bring that sentiment to each story we publish.

The editorial team has highlighted some of their favorites from 2022, and we hope you enjoy revisiting them with us.

Check out the full list below.

Laurie Parfitt, CEO of LKP Impact Consulting, dives into top cannabis trends that emerged this year and what opportunities they provide for businesses.

Severe weather events, such as drought, wildfires, heat waves and hurricanes have impacted cannabis production and motivated employee health and safety protocols.

A recent timeline of states that have legalized, those on the verge of legalization, and what’s ahead for the U.S. cannabis industry in 2023.

We're looking back on some of our favorite stories from the past year.

Five of the oldest cannabis markets in the U.S. are facing declining year-over-year sales figures for the first time since launching their respective commercial retail programs for adult use.

After pandemic peaks equated to record growth across much of the industry in 2021, Colorado and Oregon dispensaries are now facing the brunt of 2022’s correction, while Nevada and Washington retailers also are on track to report double-digit downturns in terms of percent decreases to their sales totals this year. And California, which began adult-use retail more recently, on Jan. 1, 2018, also is amidst a shrinking regulated market (as far as sales go).

With the exception of Alaska, which does not tax sales to end users and therefore does not keep records pertaining to those transactions, according to its Department of Revenue, those five states represent the most mature adult-use markets in the U.S. They also represent some of the oldest medical markets, too, with California pioneering that reform front in 1996.

And age has something to do with the trends of 2022, according to Cooper Ashley, analytics manager, and Mitchell Laferla, data analyst, at cannabis data and research company Headset.

“The biggest contributing factor to whether a market is growing this year is where it’s at in its market maturity,” the analysts said via email. “The separation is not actually geographical in nature, rather it’s about legacy markets (California, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Washington) versus new markets (Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois).”

Specifically for states that track adult-use sales separately from medical sales, Maine, which launched its adult-use retail program in October 2020, Michigan (December 2019) and Arizona (January 2021) experienced the largest percent increases for adult-use sales through the first three quarters of 2022 compared to the same time period in 2021, according to data collected by CBT.

California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington faced unprecedented cannabis retail trends in 2022; Michigan is now the nation’s second largest market.

California, the tastemaker of the U.S. cannabis landscape, has once again given us a robust top-10 list of best-selling flower cultivars.

According to Headset data, the largest cannabis market in the world leaned heavily on sweet flavor profiles and recognizable genetics. Wedding Cake, Blue Dream, Gelato, Runtz, Durban Poison, GG4 found comfortable spots among the top 10 best-selling strains this year. One could argue as 2022 ticks into 2023, that these cultivars have become household names.

At the top of the list, based on sales from January through November, was Wedding Cake. California consumers purchased more than $35 million of this strain.

In the final 90 days of the year, Pacific Stone's Wedding Cake (at $18.85 an eighth) was among the best-selling by brand.

Wedding Cake’s genetic lineage remains a matter of debate, but the most cited cross is one between Cherry Pie and GSC (with GSC itself being a cross between OG Kush and Durban Poison).

Not for nothing, Wedding Cake earned Leafly’s prized Strain of the Year award in 2019. 

Can you guess which sweet flavor profile is taking home the No. 1 spot this year?

If you’ve been around the cannabis industry long enough, you’ve likely heard the saying that the cannabis industry ages in dog years. This is to say that one year in cannabis feels like seven (or more) in any other industry, due to the constant change and normalization of a newly legal industry.

The cannabis landscape across the U.S. has changed dramatically over the past 10 years since Washington and Colorado first legalized adult-use cannabis in 2012. More states have legalized both adult-use (21 states) and medical cannabis (38), creating a new, multi-billion-dollar industry in just a few short years.

But with so much change in cannabis across varying state markets, it can often be hard to keep track of what is happening when and where. Below is a roadmap explaining where we’ve been and what’s ahead for the cannabis industry, as well as key dates and information to keep in mind in the New Year.

Dec. 1, 2022: Rhode Island Launches Adult-Use Sales

The Ocean State launched adult-use cannabis sales in the final month of 2022, becoming the 16th state to expand commercial access to cannabis for adults 21 and older. The opening of adult-use sales comes just over six months after Gov. Dan McKee signed the Rhode Island Cannabis Act on May 25.

When adult-use sales launched Dec. 1, five existing compassion centers were given the green light to commence sales with hybrid (medical/adult-use) retail licenses: Aura of Rhode Island (Central Falls), Thomas C. Slater Center (Providence), Mother Earth Wellness (Pawtucket), Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center (Portsmouth), RISE Warwick (Warwick).

“This milestone is the result of a carefully executed process to ensure that our state’s entry into this emerging market was done in a safe, controlled and equitable manner,” McKee said in a Nov. 22 announcement. “It is also a win for our statewide economy and our strong, locally based cannabis supply chain, which consists of nearly 70 licensed cultivators, processors and manufacturers in addition to our licensed compassion centers. Finally, I thank the leadership of the General Assembly for passing this practical implementation framework in the Rhode Island Cannabis Act, and I look forward to continuing our work together on this issue.”

A group of 29 lawmakers are urging President Biden to understand the necessity of federally descheduling cannabis after Biden announced plans in October to direct Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to launch a review of how cannabis is scheduled under the Controlled Substances Act.

Reps. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Brian Mast, R-Fla., as well as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., led 24 of their colleagues in submitting a letter calling on Biden’s administration to deschedule cannabis.

“The instruction for the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice to review the scheduling of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act was necessary and welcome,” the lawmakers wrote in the Dec. 22 letter. “However, it is time to deschedule marijuana. While Congress works to send you a comprehensive legalization bill, the administration should recognize the merits of full descheduling.”

RELATED: To Reschedule or Deschedule? Plant-Touching Businesses Weigh In

“Marijuana does not belong in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a classification intended for exceptionally dangerous substances with high potential for abuse and no medical use,” the lawmakers continued. “The decision to schedule marijuana was rooted in stigma rather than an evidence-based process, and it is time to fully remedy this wrong. Descheduling marijuana can uphold federal and state authority to regulate cannabis, while also authorizing states that wish to continue to prohibit cannabis production and sales the right to do so.”

Detroit officials announced the winners of the city’s first 33 adult-use cannabis dispensary licenses Dec. 22 after legal challenges delayed the process.

The city’s Office of Marijuana Ventures & Entrepreneurship announced Thursday that it awarded licenses to 13 non-equity applicants and 20 equity applicants under Detroit’s revised adult-use cannabis ordinance, which city officials adopted in April.

The Office of Marijuana Ventures & Entrepreneurship awarded the non-equity licenses to the following applicants:

The following equity applicants were issued licenses:

The Office of Marijuana Ventures & Entrepreneurship published a full listing of the applicants in all categories, as well as their scores, here.

Regulators, lawmakers and industry members have spent the past year laying the groundwork for an adult-use cannabis industry that was legalized in March of last year.

In that time, they’ve built a unique plan that attempts to prioritize equity by offering additional opportunities to those disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs; minority, women and small business owners; and hemp growers.

But despite their efforts, the state has yet to begin retail sales, as regulators had planned do by the end of this year. With just days left in 2022, is a launch by the year’s end still attainable?

Now that all the regulatory pieces are in place along the supply chain, some operators are still holding on to hope. Housing Works, a nonprofit organization that operates other businesses, recently announced its plans to open its dispensary doors by Dec. 29, kicking off sales that have been nearly two years in the making.

New York has tried to position its adult-use program as “a model for the rest of the nation,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul in October. Regulators and lawmakers have hefty goals for the program–and in a state expected to do $1 billion in legal cannabis sales “relatively quickly,” according to Cannabis NYC Director Dasheeda Dawson, all eyes are sure to be on New York when adult-use sales do commence.

Eyeing Equity

Cannabis data and research company BDSA projects U.S. cannabis sales to grow from $25 billion in 2021 to $42 billion by 2026, with the new and emerging markets driving the majority of that growth, according to the company’s fall 2022 global cannabis market forecast. 

The letter follows President Joe Biden’s October announcement that directed the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to review how cannabis is scheduled.

As the cannabis industry continues to emerge, brand differentiation is critical for new and existing operators.

And this year, the cannabis industry saw differentiation in products and how they are marketed, as well as a focus on consumer education.

Cannabis Business Times spoke with Laurie Parfitt, CEO of LKP Impact Consulting, a fractional CMO firm, to discuss the top cannabis marketing trends that emerged in 2022 and the opportunities they provide businesses.

1. Increased emphasis on product differentiation.

Parfitt says the industry is starting to see companies focus on how they can differentiate themselves in the edibles space by creating different forms of delivery methods.

“So instead of just doing the traditional gummy, now they’re looking at other methods of delivery that are still discrete and along the lines of an edible, but really create a differentiating point for them in the marketplace,” she says.

For example, while chewables have become a classic form of edibles within the industry, companies are starting to segue into other delivery methods, such as cooking and baking oils, savory snacks, beverages, mints and hard candies, sublinguals (listerine strips) and more. 

The retail licenses were awarded Dec. 22 under Detroit’s revised adult-use cannabis ordinance.