SALT LAKE CITY — In a nondescript building in an industrial section of South Salt Lake, there's a big bag of weed labeled Blue Dream — several bags, actually — stored in large Igloo coolers in a chilly room called the vault.
A ladybug, used for natural pest control, walks on a cannabis plant at the Dragonfly Wellness Grow Facility in Moroni on April 28. Proposition 2 managed to pass but Republican legislative leaders had signaled their intent to rewrite the law. In the months prior to the election, the Utah Patients Coalition and the Libertas Institute, both of which backed Prop 2, began conversations with GOP legislative leaders, the medical association and church representatives, among others. They negotiated a bill the Legislature passed in special session soon after the public vote.
"Every year, we're running into issues and we're trying to fix them," said Desiree Hennessy, executive director of the Utah Patients Coalition, which helped drive the ballot initiative. Colorado is one of four bordering states, along with Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, where recreational marijuana is legal — and where medicinal cannabis has become lost because dispensaries cater to that crowd, something Utah is trying to avoid.
By comparison, medical cannabis sales in neighboring Colorado topped $230 million last year, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue. But it's a drop in the bucket in a state where the combined legal medical and recreational marijuana retail sales reached nearly $1.8 billion in 2022.Utah is among 38 states where medical marijuana is legal. Twenty-two states also allow recreational use. Roughly three-quarters of the U.S. population lives near a medical marijuana program.
All the plants, which under state law must be individually tagged, are clones from mother plants to maintain genetics unique to the various strains of cannabis. Hundreds of ladybugs alight on the supple petals to control pests on the pesticide-free farm. It takes about 15 weeks for plants to flower. There are 15 licensed cannabis pharmacies in the state, mostly along the Wasatch Front. Each has a different vibe, sort of a mix between an Apple store and Starbucks. Several have armed security guards inside. Some like Dragonfly are locally owned, while others operate in several states, including the multibillion-dollar Curaleaf, which recently announced a $20 million deal to buy Deseret Wellness' three pharmacies in Utah, giving it four in the state.