It is highly regulated with every plant is accounted for from start to finish.

Jake Van Wingerden's family has been in the plant business in Cecil County for three generations, growing petunias, marigolds and geraniums.

Now, they cultivate a different kind of flower: Cannabis.

"We give it fertilizer, we give it light, we give it water, we give it optimal environments and it does its thing. We don't do anything special to it, other than treat it very, very kindly," Wingerden said.

Wingerden's company, SunMed Growers, earned one of the original 15 grower licenses in Maryland, and his operation is vast with 500,000 square feet of buildings and about 400,000 square feet of growing space. It's the largest growing operation in Maryland. It takes about 20 weeks from planting a cutting from the mother plant to packaging a product ready for sale.

"The bud is what's the fruit, the good stuff," Wingerden said.

SunMed produces vape pens, edibles, flowers, pre-rolls and joints. The process is pristine and meticulous, and the state requires a "seed-to-sale" system.

"(There's a) little metric tag -- that's the yellow tag -- and that goes into the state tracking system. We've been tracking it all along. We know what plant that plant came from in the mother room, where those buds go to, all the way to the end consumer," Wingerden said. "So, we have the ability, if there's a problem with products in the marketplace, there is complete seed-to-sale tracking. If there's a recall, we can go all the way back to the source plant."

Every plant that grows at SunMed is accounted for -- it can't disappear out the back door.

SunMed Growers employs 120 people, some of whom nurture the plants, some flash freeze buds that will be used for oils and edibles, or hand trim flowers. Others run a computerized machine that makes pre-rolls or work an assembly line packaging vape pens. A product doesn't leave the facility unless the potency is verified.

"We test every gram of cannabis that comes out of here," Wingerden said.

He knows how to grow cannabis economically and efficiently but has never tried marijuana himself.

"No, I'm a grower. I'm a businessman," Wingerden said.

Wingerden said he has much confidence in the safety of his products, but he worries what might happen if the legalization of recreational marijuana is passed but not acted on quickly by the state Legislature.

"If it gets decriminalized in July, people are going to assume they can walk into a dispensary and buy it. And if they can't, I think the public will be disappointed and they may turn to alternate means of procuring this product that they voted for," Wingerden said.

Many business owners who are already established in the industry, like Wingerden, hope if Question 4 passes, the regulations and process remain exactly the same. The only difference would be what happens at the checkout at dispensaries, some suggest those with medical cards don't pay sales tax while recreational users do. State legislators would have to figure that out when they reconvene in January.

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