B.J. Olson had opened his medical cannabis dispensary, called "Unity Rd.," in the summer of 2022, less than a month after medical pot sales became legal in South Dakota. That first month or two, things were fine. Olson's revenue lined up nicely with his projections.
Then came the competition. Dispensaries were popping up all over the Sioux Falls metro area, which Olson serviced from his location in Hartford.
"Every time a new dispensary opened, it would be a little less and a little less," Olson told South Dakota Searchlight in a recent interview. "Then it was a race to the bottom on pricing."
Unity Rd. is one of at least eight dispensary businesses that had a license from the state Department of Health last winter but no longer does. An archived version of the state's medical pot website from February listed 78 dispensaries on its licensing page. The December figure, listed on the current version of that same page, lists 70.
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