The State of New Jersey promoted on its YouTube channel a video of Governor Phil Murphy (D) recently visiting the newly opened Prolific Grow House cannabis growing operations.
Prolific Grow House Operations Featured
The company is majority-owned by David Nicholas. He is a young African American businessman from Trenton who is a certified Social Equity candidate. That means that Nicholas was arrested for marijuana while in the underground legacy cannabis market.
He gave Governor Phil Murphy a tour of the place. Their indoor cannabis cultivation or growing operation is an environment they were seeking to keep as sterile as possible to control factors that hurt plants.
Mold, for example, is a severe issue in the New Jersey cannabis market in general.
So, the place looks like a combination of a science lab with an industrial operation.
Nicholas showed Murphy a strain or cultivar of cannabis flower they were growing he said he was arrested with.
“My journey in this industry did not start out as smooth as I wanted to. I started out on the legacy side. Our company’s mission is to push the initiative of legacy to legal,” he explained.
“Legacy to legal means not having to hide what we were once doing a few years ago that is now legal in New Jersey, taking all those risks off our backs. I’m not getting arrested no more. I am able to walk down the block without having to look behind my back,” Nicholas explained.
New Legal Cannabis Flower Strain Named After Murphy
Nicholas said they named a strain after Murphy called “Murphy’s Sourz”.
“I’m honored,” Murphy said.
“I was able to bring in other staff members who are also veterans of the War on Drugs,” Nicholas noted.
“You’re a role model for exactly what we want this industry to look like. Somebody’s who’s been crushed sadly on the one hand by the War on Drugs and has re-emerged as a bright star, which is the way it should be,” Murphy explained. “The first part shouldn’t have happened… but the second part is redemption.”
It actually is not the first cannabis flower strain named after Governor Murphy.
The radical activists of Sativa Cross medical cannabis patient advocacy group planted a strain they joking named “Murph OG” after Murphy at a protest they held last spring 2023. The underground cannabis market promoter NJ Smoker’s Club led a sizable group of local underground legacy operators to support the cause. The protest was held to push for legalizing cannabis home gardening, which remains a felony.
Small MSO Partner Buoyant Bob Helps
Prolific Grow House has been one of the first licensed independent cannabis companies to get to market. They were able to do so by getting a loan and a Management Service Agreement (MSA) with Buoyant Bob of Missouri. Buoyant Bob themselves have since entered the adult-use New Jersey cannabis market. That makes them a small cannabis corporation or Multi-State Operator (MSO).
Without such a partner, many minority-owned, local, independent New Jersey cannabis companies are struggling to open and might ultimately fail.
Prolific Grow House is based in Mount Laurel in Burlington County. However, their initial packaging said the flower was grown in Vineland.
