Along a flat road in rural Cecil County, where the sky is big and the towns are small, stands a long, nondescript building. Inside is one of the most important cultivation and processing operations for Maryland’s new cash crop — cannabis.

SunMed Growers and its 150 employees are harvesting, testing and packaging as many products as they can in preparation for Saturday. That’s when any individual 21 or older will be able to buy vapes, gummies, pre-rolled joints, edibles and more from about 100 dispensaries statewide.

Long lines at dispensaries are expected, and SunMed owner Jake Van Wingerden wants to make sure no stores run out of product. That means stockpiling flower, adding a shift for packaging, buying more delivery vehicles, and building a $16 million, 25,000-square-foot facility to make edible products.

“We cranked it up,” Van Wingerden said of production. “We believe that demand will skyrocket for those first couple months.”

Maryland is setting up its recreational marijuana industry in just a matter of months. Voters approved it in a referendum in November and lawmakers settled on a framework for the business in April. The state is doing do so partly by piggybacking on the existing medical cannabis industry, which was legalized in 2014 but didn’t see its first sales until 2017. [Read More @ The Baltimore Sun]