Packaging for cannabis brands.

Cannabis packaging has to do two jobs that pull against each other: it has to be compliant, and it has to look like a brand rather than a pharmacy. The formats a brand usually buys are a rigid box or a folding carton for flower, a flexible pouch for pre-rolls or edibles, and a card or a label for the compliance text.

California adds its own requirements on top. Where a product requires it, the packaging has to be child-resistant, carry the required warnings, and stay inside the state's rules on what may be shown. The plant prints to those rules; the brand supplies the compliance copy.

• Child resistance — where required, the closure has to pass the standard, which usually means a push-and-turn or a two-step opening.
• Compliance copy — warnings, potency, batch and license information, at a required size and placement.
• Discretion — many customers want a package that does not announce what is inside, which pushes toward an opaque outer.
• Small runs — a license and a product line change often, so the 500-unit minimum matters more here than in most categories.

Send the product type, quantity, dimensions and artwork status. If the pack has to carry compliance copy — warnings, potency, license — send that too, because it changes the layout and sometimes the format.

Say up front whether the product needs a child-resistant closure. The closure is chosen before the artwork is set, and a box built around the wrong one has to be rebuilt. Everything is quoted at the 500-unit minimum, in 24–48 hours.