"I am not interested in operating in a gray market environment," he said. Nonetheless, Huron said his decision to expand into California would be determinant on what rules the state and local jurisdictions put in place to regulate the sale of marijuana for recreational use. appeals court has ruled that the federal government may no longer spend money to pursue medical marijuana cases in states that have laws allowing medical use of cannabis.
The legal landscape has drastically changed since then, and as the B.A.R. "They shredded all our patient records, the plants, even the electrical outlets for no reason and just left," recalled Huron. The police twice raided his co-op in 2008.
He hasn't forgotten what it was like when he first began growing cannabis in the Bay Area nearly two decades ago. I love San Francisco," Huron told the B.A.R., though he cautioned it would be dependent on what rules and regulations are imposed on the marijuana industry. Depending how the California vote goes, and the regulatory environment the state creates, Huron could one day open a branch of his Good Chemistry in the state. Huron now employs more than 100 people throughout his company, up from the 10 staffers he had six years ago. Since then it has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the state." "It has been two years since the first store opened. "The experience, I think, overall has been very beneficial to the state of Colorado," said Huron. "We do support allowing consumption in clubs or tasting rooms," said Huron, noting one of his dispensaries has space next door to expand into for such a purpose if the law allowed for it.īackers of the California measure have pointed to how Colorado officials have overseen the state's budding marijuana sector as a roadmap for implementing it here should Prop 64 be approved. Right now it can only be consumed in private homes. It has largely been seen as a success, though the state is still trying to figure out where to allow consumption of marijuana in public. "California is late to this," Huron told the Bay Area Reporter during an interview in June, when he was back in the Bay Area to attend the National Cannabis Industry Association's annual summit, which was held in Oakland.Ĭolorado voters legalized marijuana for adult use in November of 2012, and the policy went into effect in January of 2014. With his business footprint now just over the border from Lake Tahoe in California's Sierra Nevada, Huron is closely following this fall's ballot measure fight over Proposition 64, which would legalize marijuana for adult recreational use in the Golden State. "We can produce as much as our customers can consume," said Huron. The company is now expanding into Nevada, opening a 5,000 square foot cultivation site this summer in Reno in a building capable of expanding to 12,000 square feet. Today, he owns a growing marijuana dispensary and cultivation company that includes two dispensaries and several cultivation sites in the Mile High State.
In 2010 Huron, 42, opened his first Good Chemistry marijuana dispensary in the shadow of the state Capitol, an area of town that reminded him of San Francisco's Mission District. Lins passed away in 2008, and after his father died the following year, Huron relocated his business to Denver, Colorado. "My dad found therapeutic benefit through cannabis," said Huron. Sixteen years ago he started the Elmar Lins Compassion Co-Op, named after his father's partner, to provide medical marijuana to hospices and assisted living facilities in the Bay Area. In the 1990s Huron, who is straight, turned to cultivating cannabis as his dad and his dad's partner both suffered from symptoms of HIV/AIDS. Matthew Huron grew up in San Francisco's gay Castro district, four doors down from neighborhood gay bar the Men's Room (now called the Last Call Bar) on 18th Street.