Vertical Bliss, a state-owned cannabis products company in the United States, was fined US$128 million (approximately NT$3.88 billion) by the court for illegally producing millions of marijuana gummies.

(AFP)

[Instant News/Comprehensive Report] A cannabis company in California, USA, was fined US$128 million (approximately NT$3.88 billion) by the court this month for illegally producing millions of marijuana gummies.

The company used an illegal marijuana factory near Los Angeles to mass-produce marijuana gummies, which are popular in the market, and violated marijuana production regulations, according to a judgment handed down by a Los Angeles judge.

According to comprehensive foreign media reports, the manufacturer of the popular and well-known marijuana gummies "Kushy Punch" is Vertical Bliss, a California marijuana product company. Relevant authorities have been investigating the company since 2019 for illegally manufacturing marijuana products in private.

The California Marijuana Authority pointed out that although the company has a state license to manufacture cannabis products at its Chatsworth (Chatsworth) plant in Los Angeles County, according to court documents, someone tipped the company to secretly produce at the Canoga Park plant in the neighboring city. Cannabis products.

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Because the state government did not issue a license to produce cannabis products at the Canoga Park factory, investigators from the California Bureau of Consumer Affairs raided the factory in October 2019 and found a total value of approximately US$21 million (approximately NT$630 million) ) of cannabis products.

In addition, officials also found that the illegal factory had produced 3.3 million tons of illegal marijuana gummies, with a total value of approximately US$64 million (approximately NT$1.94 billion).

According to the State Commissioner of Investigations, when investigators raided Vertical Bliss’s legal factory in Chatsworth, they found that the legal factory received marijuana gummies from an illegal factory in Canoga Park, proving that the company used deception. Therefore, the state government revoked the manufacturer's business license in November 2019, and filed a civil complaint against the company's executive management in September 2020.

According to reports, the total value of illegally produced marijuana gummies is as high as tens of millions of dollars. According to the final judgment of the judge, this illegal company must pay a fine of 128 million US dollars to the California state government.

A spokesman for the California Marijuana Authority said that they have not received any fines exceeding 100 million yuan.

Jennifer Fisher, a San Francisco-based attorney specializing in marijuana cases, said this is likely to be the largest fine in California history related to the marijuana industry.

In this regard, Nicole Elliot, director of the California Marijuana Administration, was pleased with the verdict and said that it shows that the California authorities will never tolerate the existence of an illegal marijuana market. In the cannabis market, all of us on the staff are very pleased that the courts are strictly enforcing the law to protect the California cannabis industry."

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