State of the Weed: West Virginia • Q3 2025 — Sally the Coal Miner’s Daughter

**Sitting on the porch of a cabin that has seen better days, mason jar of sweet tea in hand, shotgun within reach**

Well, I reckon you want to know about West Virginia’s weed situation. Pull up that rickety chair, but don’t get too comfortable now …

Market Snapshot

Lord, have mercy. They finally got their medical pass, but it is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. There might be 10 dispensaries in the whole state, and they are all in cities where folks have more money than sense.

Meanwhile, every holler from Boone County to Braxton’s got somebody’s cousin growing in the same spots their granddaddies ran shine. The government wants $50 for an eighth? Hon, my neighbor Betty Sue’s boy grows better in an old chicken coop for a third of that.

These corporate types coming in here thinking they know something about growing—we have been growing everything from corn to cannabis in these hills since before their companies existed. The only difference between moonshine and marijuana is that one takes copper, and the other takes sunshine.

Strain Leaderboard

Staples

Risers

Terp Lanes Trending

• Pine and earth — Smells like home, not that fancy fruit nonsense from California

• Diesel and gas — Reminds folks of better times when the coal trucks still ran regularly

• Skunk funk — If it does not stink up the whole holler, we do not want it

Price Bands (Observational)

• Value: Trade for canned goods, ammo, or fix your truck

• Mid: $150 an ounce — Cash only, and I’d better know your mama

• Top-shelf: $250 an ounce — That is city prices; nobody here is that foolish

City Taste Map

• Charleston: Politicians and lawyers pretending they do not smoke while buying the priciest

• Huntington: College kids wanting whatever is cheapest — bless their broke hearts

• Morgantown: WVU students growing in dorms, thinking they invented the wheel

Forward Look

• More out-of-state companies coming to “save” us, like coal companies saved our mountains

• Federal legalization will not change anything here. We do not trust the feds since Blair Mountain

• Best growers will keep to the hollers — some things are not meant for outsiders

**Spits tobacco juice into a Folgers can**

Let me tell you something, honey—these corporate dispensaries are coming here like they are doing us some favor. Same story as always. Coal companies came, took everything worth taking, and left us with poisoned water and black lung. Now weed companies want to do the same thing, except with cannabis.

My daddy died at 47 from the mines. My brother is on disability from a roof fall. You think we are going to trust some suit from Charlotte telling us how to grow medicine? Hell no. We have been healing ourselves with what grows in these hills long before they made it legal for rich folks.

The real growers here, we are like the old moonshiners—you have to be family, or damn near it, to find us. We do not advertise, do not have fancy packages, and sure as hell do not take credit cards. But when Meemaw’s cancer pain gets bad, or Uncle Jerry’s back goes out again from 30 years underground, we take care of our own.

**Looks at you suspiciously**

You are not wearing a wire, are you? Because I am just talking about what I heard. Do not know anything personal, you understand. But if you need something for pain, and you are good people, well … everybody knows somebody who knows somebody.

Just do not come around here with that California attitude, thinking you are going to change things. These hills have secrets older than your whole state, and we aim to keep them that way.

**Stands up, indicating conversation’s over**

Now, you’d best get on before dark. Roads get tricky, and folks get nervous about strangers after sunset. Nothing personal—just how it is.

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