Does the cannabis industry have a monopoly problem?

On June 24, US Department of Justice whistleblower John Elias testified that attorney general William Barr ordered investigations of 10 cannabis mergers in the 2019 fiscal year based on personal dislike of the industry. According to Elias’s testimony (pdf), those reviews accounted for 29% of the antitrust division’s full merger investigations during that period. “These mergers involve companies with low market shares in a fragmented industry; they do not meet established criteria for antitrust investigations,” wrote Elias, whose job description includes prosecuting price-fixing schemes in the pharmaceutical industry.