In Colorado, seed-to-sale tracking is a radio frequency identifier tag on every marijuana plant in the regulated market once it's over six inches tall, the primary purpose being that it gives regulators a way to ensure you're not shipping it out of state. That's why it exists. It's so that at every point in the process you have to tell an internal database how many plants are there. If you're lying or if it doesn't match at any point, you're in violation of your licence agreement.
The system went up. It actually has done.... I mean, we've found people violating it, but we have found them, and that means we are finding good compliance rates and that it is preventing massive out-of-state diversion operations. I would say also the part that we could use it better for is that we should be lining it up with public health and public safety information. If we could have quickly seen that edibles were being sold more in tourist towns than they were in other towns, we could have gotten out a point-of-sale education system in a much shorter period of time, which could have prevented hospitalization increases.
Not only do I think it's an effective law enforcement tool, but I think it's giving us amazing data. If we can figure out how to use it better, it will help us govern marijuana better.