If Anthony Darby had to do it all over again, he couldn’t — at least not in today’s cannabis industry.
Newly laid off and living off a severance package in 2015, Darby was looking for something more meaningful to do with his life.
He considered becoming a lacrosse coach. But he knew the state of Maryland was poised to launch a medical cannabis industry. Knowing firsthand the benefits of using cannabis, Darby got together with a couple of college friends and a doctor he’d recently met and they filled out a hundred-plus pages of forms, detailing their plans for a cannabis dispensary on the Eastern Shore.
More than 700 applicants vied for 94 dispensary licenses. Some had hired pricey consultants or made deals with out-of-state management firms to help with their application, but Darby and his friends won a license on their own. As relative novices, they bootstrapped their Salisbury business — Peninsula Alternative Health — into one of Maryland’s bigger dispensaries.
That was when Maryland’s cannabis market was still in its infancy.
In just a few years, the state’s cannabis industry has gone from crawling on the floor to hitting its head on the ceiling. The number of new patients is tapering off. Companies are consolidating. Deep-pocketed, out-of-state firms have gobbled up market share. Competition is fiercer than ever.
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