A Few Things to Consider Before Starting Your Marijuana Collective

1. A space to grow your marijuana

The main source of income for your collective or dispensary is through your distribution of excess marijuana provided by your members.  So, you want to make sure before you start that either 1) you have your own place to grow, or 2) one or several of your members will have space to grow for the rest of the members of the collective.

A few of the things you will want to consider in finding places to grow plants for your collective are:

a.       Preferably you will want to grow in a space/s that is directly owned by you or your members.  At the very least you will want the approval of your landlord.  The last thing you want is unexpected visits.

b.      The security of the space.  How’s the neighborhood?  Is there a fence?  Is there a big yard?

c.       Preferably it should be more then 1,000 feet away from a school or church.  Some localities will be less lenient to growers operating in these areas.

d.      Is the house equipped to handle the size of the grow your planning?  Is there adequate electricity?  Is there adequate access to water near the grow room?  Is there adequate ventilation?

e.       You may want to keep your amount of plants, including, immature clones, flowering, vegetating and mothers to a 99 plant maximum, to prevent your grow being taken to federal court and possible 5 year minimum sentences for grows over 99 plants.  So, keep this in mind when deciding whether or not it is worth it to start a big grow.  Staying under 99 plants may affect the size of the plants you plan to grow in order to reach your target harvest weight.  It may also effect the amount of money you plan to take in.

I  won’t go into all the details of how to set up a grow here, as there are hundred of books (much longer then this one) that talk specifically on just that subject.  If you are a beginner or a novice and looking for some good resources here are a few I recommend:

Jorge Cervantes’ Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/ Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible

AND

SeeMoreBuds Vol. 1(Good for grow room ideas)

2. There will always be risk

Marijuana is still illegal according to federal law, so there will always be the risk of getting raided by the feds, having your product confiscated, and/or having to go to trial.  In later posts I will show you how to minimize the risk of going to jail and/or losing the assets of your business.  Keep in mind that is also technically legal to “sell” marijuana almost anywhere, so you will need a good back up plan, which we will go over later.

3. Laws will change

Laws change frequently, especially in this fairly young industry.  You will have to keep up with the news nationally and locally in order to make sure you are in compliance and to minimize the risk of raids or going to trial.  Once you are well established it is vital that you get a good accountant and lawyer for you and your collective.

4. It isn’t completely free to start a medical marijuana business

This blog was written in order to help you minimize your startup costs, taxes, and other fees.  But, there will still be fees and taxes to pay in order to run a collective, just like in any other business. 

5. Distribution

Will you be able to sell everything that you grow?  You don’t want to end up sitting on several pounds of marijuana after each grow.  Not only is this a security risk, it will probably cause you to go over the legal limit of dry marijuana per patient.  If your running a small collective with a few friends and your producing far more then your smoking it would be pretty hard to convince a judge that it was all for personal medicinal use.  If you don’t have enough patients to distribute your marijuana I will explain in a future post how to find someone to legally distribute to.

Tomorrow I will provide an explanation of what exactly a Marijuana Collective is.