The cannabis industry did something remarkable. It turned a black market into a boardroom story, built brands that compete with legacy consumer packaged goods companies, and generated $33.8 billion in U.S. retail sales in 2025 across dozens of legal markets, all while operating in an environment that would make most manufacturers quit. What never quite kept pace was the operational infrastructure underneath it all: the manufacturing discipline, process rigor, and systems thinking that typically develop alongside an industry, not years after it.
Cannabis, The Billion-Dollar Industry Learning To Manufacture Like One
