Dear Canada:

You’re in for a wild ride.

It’s been 10 months since recreational marijuana became legal in California, and my email inbox here in San Francisco fills up every week with companies offering new products.

There’s cannabis roll-on pain reliever, sparkling water infused with marijuana, cannabis for pets. I get invited to cannabis lounges and a marijuana history tour of San Francisco. Cannabis is infused — that seems to be industry’s word of choice — into a huge variety of foods and candies. Chefs are concocting gourmet dinners that pair marijuana with another drug, the liquid one that California is famous for.

How about some marijuana-leaf pesto with a glass of Napa chardonnay?

Yet despite all of the innovation and energy in the legalized market, the black market is still dominant. Only around 3 percent of marijuana farmers in the state have obtained licenses, said Hezekiah Allen, the executive director of the California Growers Association, a marijuana advocacy group.

It’s hard to persuade pot farmers who have been producing in the shadows for decades to fill out voluminous paperwork, pay taxes and comply with reams of environmental regulations, Mr. Allen said. And he believes there are parallels between Canada and California, especially in British Columbia, where growers have operated in the wilds for decades just as they have in Humboldt County in California.