"These growers are trying undercut the legal market by about 50 percent and of course a lot of the product that they're growing is filled with these poisons," McIntryre says, "and it's likely finding its way into the market in various forms - flower, oils and vape pens."
The legal market in California is too expensive (due to taxation) and this is a symptom.
California’s illegal market prices are equivalent to legal prices in Colorado.
If the overhead of keeping an entire real-world manufacture & sales operation secret over the long-term is less than the overhead of simply paying taxes, then something is seriously wrong with the taxes.
Remember that it's still federally illegal, which has all sorts of awkward consequences for structuring the business. It may be difficult or impossible to get a bank account, for example.
'Most places take debit cards. In Colorado, there is a chain that takes actual credit cards.'
Again... not true, at least not in a legal sense. What Industry do you work in? Yes, they accept debit cards, but they function on a whack-a-mole model. There are only a handful of Startups, one actually a YC backed company, operating out of CA that do so, but other than its done under the guise of other businesses.
Most have several bank accounts setup in different entities to keep that alive, all of which are subject to confiscation and withholding of funds which compound the cost of doing business.
What's even more skewed is how some players in this space get access to banking but most do not; case in point, Helping Hands in Boulder, CO. The owner, colloquially known as Crypto Mom in our circles, has access to banking but still explores other options by accepting Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies. Her situation is VERY unique, but her son became a LN developer in the process, too, which was a funny caveat.
If by "real-world manufacture & sales operation" you mean an operation where there can be no guarantees of the quality of ingredients and processing/storage, you would be right.
Like some pesticides or mold with your bud? How about some vitamin e in your vape juice? Those taxes pay for something, and as a consumer I want to know I'm getting what I paid for and nothing more.
We will see a lot these articles ranting against California taxes in the lead up to the elections by the conservative media because they are beginning to hate how much better the state does towards its residents with funding to provide services. Don't forget that almost all the social progress we're seeing in this country is from that state.
No really, some people actually think Californian government institutions and politicians are doing a good job, but being undermined by forces outside their control.
It is ludicrous, but you can tell if somebody has remained in California, they like the taste of boot, and in many parts of California, boot covered in human faeces.
>No really, some people actually think Californian government institutions and politicians are doing a good job, but being undermined by forces outside their control.
The truth is probably somewhere in between. There are just as many good people working in government institutions as there are people who're there on the corporate merry-go-round. And ignoring the fact that yes, the good people are being undermined (whether deliberately or through inaction/inattention) is not conducive to finding solutions to these problems. See this for instance:
That doesn’t make any sense. Lots of people could make OTC medicines in their basements at much lower costs than regulated pharma. Doesn’t mean regulation and taxation of pharma is overbearing.
I mean that’s the whole proposition of black markets, to subvert the state.
As a counterpoint, lots of high school / college students do a chemistry lab where they produce acetaminophin. I'll bet that is a way cheaper unit price than if it were produced in a regulatory compliant factory.
Not all of the costs in manufacture/sales are taxes and almost all of the regulatory costs are build on the backs of death or harm to people.
I believe the taxes are functioning as intended. The entire reason California legalized marijunana wasn't some high minded criminal justice reform, and they certainly did not want to remove a tool for social control from the use of law enforcement.
Legalized marijuana was to pacify white, rich pot smokers. It was never the intent of California to encorage the use of marijuana, to make it avaliable at a lower price than the illegal market, or to allow non-white, non-rich people to benefit from its sale and use.
Sadly this is truer than anything else I've seen in this thread, as CA had a really good program in place. Medical MJ cards were easy to acquire, dispensaries were plentiful, quality was always rather good due to the decades of good genetics and breeding etc...
But, they saw the obvious cash grab and decided to move forward with it all costs to pacify their main voting constituency. Some good intentioned people may have played a part in trying to get to where it is, but I think it was mainly to consolidate Market Share for a mega corp to take it over.
Forget about overhead because this is a cheap product to produce, about as cheap as growing tomatoes. The illegal market doesn't really respond with lower cost, but higher profit. Good weed at a steep steep discount (ie gray market) is going to be $150. That's not because of overhead, but market price. Overhead is very low.
You can grow six plants yourself in CA legally outside all year round in socal. A single good harvest of six autoflowering plants will yield you 6-24oz in 3-4 months for probably $100 on your end if you didn't have any supplies, maybe another $50 for good seeds. So you yourself can grow pot for ~$6-25$ an ounce.
Imagine what the wholesale price can fall down to if you take advantage of economies of scale. But it doesn't, because in the legal market taxation and licensing add huge costs to what otherwise should be the business of selling tomatoes, and the illegal market rides the profit off of the established market rate that customers are used to paying.
They undercut to compete, it's not paying a premium due to taxes. CA's legal market, while not the cheapest in the country, is still VERY reasonable.
Just to state the obvious, the real problem is the fact that it's not more widely available, so you still have high illegal demand in surrounding states.
Paying north of $50 for 1/8oz might be reasonable if your last purchase was being ripped off in high school, but compared to the market in Portland or other legal areas and it's over double the price.
'California’s illegal market prices are equivalent to legal prices in Colorado.'
That's absurd!
What basis are you supporting this on? I just went back home to SoCal in the Summer and I bought 2 pre-rolled joints of high end CBD dominant strains for $6/each in Downtown LA before a show. Which is a really good price.
I live in Boulder and a single pre-roll of whatever will cost you about the same if not more as CBD has been put on everything to make it more expensive here. So anything that has a higher number than 0% of CBD will command a higher price.
The truth is, once you're in the Industry paying for weed itself becomes absurd as you get to know too many growers (pros and amateurs alike) who just want you to experience their harvest and are too happy to just give it to you, in addition to growing your own you may exchange for fun.
Your statement is an outright lie, though; yes, CO MJ Industry already went through its saturation period, and prices have adjusted, but the taxes are upwards of 50% for the Dispensary owners and that is reflected in the price.
Personally speaking: I honestly thought more people would have gotten their hands dirty and grown with the advent of legal recreational in both states, but most who do use seldom do. Its odd dilemma, I was never a stoner so growing it was always the most fun of the entire process.
Source: I live and work in Colorado, and I was in Fintech within the Industrial Hemp Industry for the past 4 years. But I grew up in SoCal all of my Life, where weed was always more accessible than alcohol or cigarettes.
Oh, I forgot, last time I was in the hot springs in Idaho Springs I paid $22 for 2 joints and a lighter.
I pretended I didn't work in the Industry and asked about the credit card and debit card POS and all the bud-tender could say is that it works for now.
Not emphasised in this article: US corporations are making these poisons that cannot be sold in the USA or EU and exporting them to poor countries. From which they are returning in the hands of criminal gangs.
More generally: If X is too poisonous, carcinogenic, environmentally ruining, etc to sell in your own developed country, manufacturing it to sell in poorer countries is evil and unacceptable.
The fact that karma came and blew it back into the origin country is just a bit of poetic self-own here.
Your average American probably is completely unaware of this (I know I was unaware) and would most likely not approve of such business practices (except for the few employed by FMC in PA).
Your average American also has no real voice or power in the US anymore. Blame massive private wealth interests and their interwoven government corruption.
Carbofuran is not technically banned in the US. Its use on foods is banned, making it a de facto ban for large scale agriculture.
>Traces of the pesticide carbofuran can no longer remain on food sold in the United States, whether domestic or imported, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.
This article is a good argument that it should be banned.
Also, the US has a lot of influence. They could get chemicals outlawed in other countries if they really wanted to. I mean, they got the whole world to adopt biometric passports, and they managed to get banks worldwide to agree to their reporting requirements.
But when it's about dangerous chemicals, they throw their hands in the air. Presumably because the industry needs some place to buy their poisons.
It's banned in the EU and Canada because of concerns over mammalian toxicity. The stuff is not safe for the worker that applies it unless serious precautions are taken, and we all know what agricultural labour looks like.
California now has the biggest legal marijuana market in the world. Its black market is even bigger
>“The illegal market is competitive because legal marijuana is so expensive to produce under Prop. 64,” said Dale Gieringer, director of Cal NORML, which supported the initiative though it preferred other regulations.
According to the article some hippies are doing this. Maybe they have more regards for nature than the guys in the "main story", but it isn't really clarified.
Could well be those poison the environment with organic poison or fertilizer.
I grew up in the heart of the Emerald Triangle. I can assure you that no 'hippy' is doing this. Their relationship with this plant is far different than everyone else's.
50-60 for an eighth is what I've paid my entire life living in NY, Philadelphia, and Orlando. I moved to Texas a few years ago and now have a regular guy who sells eighths for 40. It's the lowest I've ever paid for high grade bud. I thought I was getting a deal but apparently this is normal?
That's pretty normal for black-market prices. But at least in Colorado, you can get an ounce of top shelf for $120-$140 after taxes (which are 25%). Eighths go for $20-$30. Street prices are even cheaper, but unless you know the grower personally, you obviously don't really know what you're getting.
It is normal. It's actually much cheaper in some legal states, but not all, and i'm not terribly sure why outside the fact that I can assume some states put higher restrictions on growers/shops.
California is more expensive than it needs to be, but by no means is it way above normal market for the non-legal states. Never mind the array of products and the (near) guarantee you aren't paying for trash.
One of the big selling points of legal weed was the ability to tax it. Now tax is bad and messing up everything so we shouldn't tax it at all? Its interesting it happened like this.
To a first approximation, probably no one promoting legalization because of the tax revenue actually cared about the additional tax revenue. It was just an argument to get voters who were ambivalent about legalization and wouldn't personally be buying on board. Taxes that only hit other people are quite popular.
Yes. That's pretty much what I said. A lot of those using it as a selling point didn't actually care that much about the benefits to the state of a new taxation stream.
That said, I'm willing to believe that a lot of people assumed that people were willing to pay a lot more to go with a vetted legal source (or would only go with a vetted legal source) than has, in fact turned out to be the case.
There's at least some evidence I've read that suggests legalization hasn't led to a lot of increased use. If that's the case, it's reasonable to assume a lot of users already knew how to acquire pot in the black market and don't see a lot of reason to start spending more to go legal.
That is interesting if legalization has not increased use by much, I would have thought there would be an increase. Any trend on underage use? Kids no longer think it's cool due to parents?
I hope that the effort for federal legalization succeeds but I think there are people looking at this and seeing that the negatives are not being negated but instead amplified.
There's conflicting data out there and it's a relatively short time since a lot of states legalized.
Uncoolness has been suggested with medical marijuana possibly even further accentuating a shift.
I guess, to the degree that usage hasn't gone up all that much, one can imagine a number of explanations. Regular users already had their sources. Sure, there are older, probably wealthier, people who don't mind a sometimes smoke or edible but also weren't willing to risk buying it illegally. But I imagine this group are mostly pretty light users.
The ability to tax marijuana was never a big selling point to me. Marijuana should be legal because freedom and not because politicians hope to milk another revenue source. It should be taxed no differently than daisies, petunias, or tomato plants.
A normal sales tax should be the only tax on any legal product. Essentially equality in taxation. Sales taxes should only be used to raise money to run the government — it shouldn’t be used to manipulate markets or purchases habits. That isn’t what freedom is.
The tax is bad because the tax is eggregious. What else is taxed 30% in CA. Cigarettes? Gas? Things people can't avoid paying for if they tried, because if they could avoid paying cig or gas tax they would (and do).
But when you open a legal market with 30% tax in competition with an existing, much more expansive market with an automatic 30% discount, of course it is going to fail.
I don't think it's fair to say the tax _created_ the illegal market. Perhaps the taxes are too high to eliminate it, but the black market was always there, and it never had any real assurances of safety. Now, you have a safe(r) option, even if it may be more expensive than some people are willing to pay for.
Right. can't say taxation created something that existed before taxation. If I had to guess, most marijuana users simply dont want to pay club prices, and don't want to support the government.
Most people do not want a 30% upcharge for the same product in more restrictive packaging. Buy an ounce at a perfectly legal club and you will be handed 8 sealed ornate cardboard boxes housing opaque plastic bags in child proof packaging, each containing 3.5g of product packaged anytime in the last two years, for around $30-50 each 3.5g with state sales tax, local mj tax, and state excise tax all adding up to another 30% to your final price. And they will charge an ATM fee if you use debit instead of cash as a final fuck you.
Buy an ounce at the illegal dispensary across the street from the legal club, and it will come in one bag, you get to inspect the product before you buy to see how fresh it is and its quality, and it will be cheaper and sold tax free.
> California now has the biggest legal marijuana market in the world.
No, it doesn't; there is no legal marijuana market in California, just as there is no legal market in California for products violating the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. Everyone involved in the marijuana trade (including investors) in California is breaking federal criminal law, and if they are successful enough potentially the drug kingpin law. This is actually, from what I gather, aquire important factor in the business dynamics of what is frequently mislabeled as the “legal” marijuana trade in California.
These chemicals are still used in the countries they're shipped to. If there was no revenue in cannabis, it would only change the fact that people are clandestinely growing it in American forests—tons of agriculture worldwide would still be impacted.
No, it is exclusively the illegal pot farms doing this. Some farmer isn’t growing corn in the national forests — these are illegal drug dealers and generally nasty people that would be more than happy to shoot anyone that stumbled upon their crop. These pot farmers are evil, using land effectively stolen from the public and polluted with no regard for the environment.
The “non clickbait” headline obscures the truth: illegal drug producers have no qualms about illegally using land and illegally using pesticides. The key part of the story is that these are illegal pot growers — this is key to the story because if pot were less regulated, like sorghum for instance, costs would drop to commodity levels and take the profitability out of illegal operations.
> carbofuran, an insecticide banned by the E.P.A for all legal purposes. Carbofuran is produced in the U.S. by Pennsylvania-based FMC Corp, which exports the product to Mexico, India and other nations. The EU, Canada and Brazil have full bans on carbofuran
The fact that the epa doesn't have the authority to shut down production of this stuff is insane. Most things that are banned multinationally also face production bans for obvious reasons.
> The fact that the epa doesn't have the authority to shut down production of this stuff is insane.
How? It's not even anywhere near in their purview.
> Most things that are banned multinationally also face production bans for obvious reasons.
The chemical is also produced in Mexico (AFAIK by Viakem and Pyosa) and Brazil (by FMC Quimica do Brasil), and elsewhere. It is imported illegally from outside the country for these ops as far as I'm aware, so whether FMC Corp is producing it or not is immaterial to its availability in the U.S. for these ops.
I mean, world is full of nonsense like this - UK is the world's largest producer of medical marijuana even though medical marijuana isn't really a thing here(it has been moved from schedule 1 to schedule 2 last year but it's nearly impossible to a) get it prescribed b) actually buy it)
ah , here its legal to buy weed in stores, but stores aren't allowed to buy it from 'vendors' and 'vendors' aren't allowed to produce it :D wonderful world :D full of magic
Ehh, I think that is a dangerous view. It could be used for other purposes, like as an intermediate reactant or for research. Similar thinking is why it is so hard to conduct chemistry or microbiology research as a normal person. Obviously dangerous things can't be sold to plebs and everything with a chemical formula is dangerous.
Consider that many people wish to ban animal cruelty -- sounds fine, except these laws tend to boil down to "every animal must be treated as a pet" even though that is not an economical proposition for the vast majority of animals that exist. Even if you just ban "killing puppies" now dog breeding is essentially illegal as the most effective way is to kill the young you don't want.
> Even if you just ban "killing puppies" now dog breeding is essentially illegal as the most effective way is to kill the young you don't want.
That really wouldn't be such a bad thing, IMO. Dog (and cat) breeders, by and large, exist to produce animals to maximize certain aesthetic norms, often to the detriment of their health. Given how many unwanted animals are killed in shelters each year, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to limit their production a bit
I agree that a lot of show breeds are not humane endeavors but there are lots of working breeds as well. Making it illegal to "kill puppies" with no exception means the breeds we have will be more or less the breeds we will have for thousands of years to come.
I write these posts because there is a lot of sentiment here and elsewhere that is frankly anti-science. In direct relation to the example, anti-GMO advocates and the FDA have strongly resisted the DNA modification of dog breeds and other nonconsumable organisms so frequent litters and culling is all that is left. Looking further back you see the same thing with chemistry and biology kits, with electronics kits, etc; the end result being if you do anything more than go home to watch TV or play golf you are assumed to have some fantastically dangerous hobby that gives babies cancer.
And asbestos is a very generic term. There are certain particle sizes that are absolutely harmful and others that pose little to no effect. There should be a name for the dangerous particles regardless of meterial. Silicosis agents?
Does this mean that "Ecologically Ethical Cannabis" could be a premium offering and that pot lacking such certification could become despised like "blood diamonds?"
Any respectable retail will not buy from some guy who grows in a national forest. Never mind the legality, from what I've experienced, many buy from professional warehouse-like grow ops.
I suppose a sophisticated illegal op could make that offering, but that would be a level up.
I mean, sure, but the grow is already illegal and lots of this is sold on the black market. So at most you're eliminating some of this illegal pot from the legal market, but it's difficult to prove that it makes up a significant percentage of what people are buying legally.
What do you think I'm buying now? WA tags that stuff from grower to retail, and I'm pretty confident that the local growers aren't doing it out in the North Cascades someplace. I would think, and maybe I'm wrong, that if some well-known brand were found buying weed from someone dowsing it in pesticides in the forest, they'd lose a lot of customers and the state would be swooping in.
Joe Rogan interviewed John Nores, the ranger that first discovered these grows in the Bay Area and developed a lot of the detection and remediation efforts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avZpWVEpiV8
Steve Rinella also talks to him in an episode of his MeatEater podcast. Its a good listen if you have some time to kill. Episode #179 if anyone is interested.
California really needs to get a grip on the Legal Market of Marijuana. The State Governments effort to extract as much money as it can from legitimate businesses (growers/dispensaries) has made the cost of buying and selling so costly that the illegal market is 3 times the size of the legal one. These legitimate businesses are going broke, do to the high cost of regulation and taxes. Until the state government can control their appetite for gouging the industry and creating as much red tape as they can, they encourage the illegal operation of these cartel grow ops.
The issue goes far beyond the taxes. Last I read, even without taxes/overhead California produces far more cannabis than it's domestic market can consume. The only long term solutions seem to be; crack down on illegal growers or wait out until it's legal at the federal level and interstate commerce is allowed. Cracking down on illegal growers seems unsavory since the government was looking the other way for decades while it was completely illegal plus (my theory at least) the tax revenues on (one day) being the largest producer of cannabis in the US are too appetizing to warrant constricting the industry.
As long as legal is taxed 30%, unlicensed dispensaries that sell the same exact product for 30% cheaper or more will continue to flourish and thrive, and the legal market will never grow. Cracking down is playing expensive whack a mole with how trivial it is to set up a grow anywhere and everywhere.
If most businesses had to deal with the myriad of weekly/monthly legal changes and expenses that those grower/dispensary owners do most would just pack it up and exit, add to that they have no real choice in banking and remain largely a cash based business.
The thing is, as we have seen with Canada, even if it is legalized at the Federal Level access to banking will still not be a sure thing. Most dispensaries still cannot have normal bank accounts to pay vendors/staff/bills etc... this kills their productivity.
Honestly, their is no cure-all to it, unless you see a massive resurgence in community based gardens specifically for cannabis, which would be my personal ideal situation.
But, Career politicians backed it despite having a very good Medical system in place, in order to get as much tax revenue from what was otherwise an illegally sourced substance.
If anything, I think they'll continue to tax more as they will have to pay for 'task forces' to monitor and stomp out these 'illegal' grows. Businesses will have to continue to add Value Added services to compensate for the added expenses and you'll have am eventual race to the bottom and consolidation (like in Colorado) of Market Share from a handful of players/cartel which may fall into the hands of a Phillip Morris type conglomerate--think juul vape.
CA had proposed a novel system in place that would, on paper anyhow, protect the Mom and Pop shops; but the taxes and regulatory framework and legal landscape is not hospitable to a small business venture unless you have substantial financial backing anymore.
I was against recreational being legalized for that reason in CA, and I preferred it stay Medical only. It wasn't a perfect system, but it allowed for competition with existing and mature legal framework enabled by the Compassion Act in 1996. The only thing it seemed to offer was some degree of protection from the DEA raiding a legal and compliant business, but I'm doubting this may be the case anymore as these task forces will need something to do to justify their existence.
this article is placed in the public view right AFTER well-publicized, large-scale enforcement efforts. The cynical view is that this article names a long-term problem in the public venue as a pre-cursor to yet another budget "ask".. and the budgets are already very, very large.. a working tech person would be shocked at the stability of money flowing to a small'ish group of uniformed people and their contractors.
I downvoted you because that's not how the US Forest Service works. Their enforcement budgets are far too small. Their police force is internal, not contracted out. They definitely need more money for enforcement.
It seems like the taxes on marijuana are too high. Legal marijuana has taken over about a quarter of the market, which is great because it means a quarter less illegal operations like these. But the legal producers could just put these guys out of business if they were allowed to.
Anecdotally, taxes approximately double the cost of marijuana in California. There's some benefit in taxing things that are bad for people, because you discourage the behavior, but it seems like wiping out organized crime by lowering taxes on the legal market here would be a bigger benefit.
Sounds like a good reason to give more power to EPA to act on these polluters, and to properly legalize the stuff and get rid of another reason to hide the production.
As opposed to, say, the centuries of poisoning of US forests by legal mining and logging operations? 'Illegal pot grows' isn't the problem, the Earth's being doing 'pot grows' for millions of years. OTOH,'illegal pot grows' are now a primary worry for a new 'industry' of legal pot-growers.
Now that NPR's gotten so commercial (listened to Science Friday lately?) should we expect more of this kind of spin? Sad, NPR, sad.
106 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadThe legal market in California is too expensive (due to taxation) and this is a symptom.
California’s illegal market prices are equivalent to legal prices in Colorado.
Most places take debit cards. In Colorado, there is a chain that takes actual credit cards.
Again... not true, at least not in a legal sense. What Industry do you work in? Yes, they accept debit cards, but they function on a whack-a-mole model. There are only a handful of Startups, one actually a YC backed company, operating out of CA that do so, but other than its done under the guise of other businesses.
Most have several bank accounts setup in different entities to keep that alive, all of which are subject to confiscation and withholding of funds which compound the cost of doing business.
What's even more skewed is how some players in this space get access to banking but most do not; case in point, Helping Hands in Boulder, CO. The owner, colloquially known as Crypto Mom in our circles, has access to banking but still explores other options by accepting Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies. Her situation is VERY unique, but her son became a LN developer in the process, too, which was a funny caveat.
Like some pesticides or mold with your bud? How about some vitamin e in your vape juice? Those taxes pay for something, and as a consumer I want to know I'm getting what I paid for and nothing more.
We will see a lot these articles ranting against California taxes in the lead up to the elections by the conservative media because they are beginning to hate how much better the state does towards its residents with funding to provide services. Don't forget that almost all the social progress we're seeing in this country is from that state.
> how much better the state does towards its residents with funding to provide service
This is surely a joke, however, right?
It is ludicrous, but you can tell if somebody has remained in California, they like the taste of boot, and in many parts of California, boot covered in human faeces.
The truth is probably somewhere in between. There are just as many good people working in government institutions as there are people who're there on the corporate merry-go-round. And ignoring the fact that yes, the good people are being undermined (whether deliberately or through inaction/inattention) is not conducive to finding solutions to these problems. See this for instance:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Homeless-patients-bus...
Sadly here in Ontario, the legal weed sold directly to consumers by the government arrives moldy often enough that it's well known.
I mean that’s the whole proposition of black markets, to subvert the state.
Not all of the costs in manufacture/sales are taxes and almost all of the regulatory costs are build on the backs of death or harm to people.
Legalized marijuana was to pacify white, rich pot smokers. It was never the intent of California to encorage the use of marijuana, to make it avaliable at a lower price than the illegal market, or to allow non-white, non-rich people to benefit from its sale and use.
But, they saw the obvious cash grab and decided to move forward with it all costs to pacify their main voting constituency. Some good intentioned people may have played a part in trying to get to where it is, but I think it was mainly to consolidate Market Share for a mega corp to take it over.
abusing pesticides + free land - potency tests - health tests = lower cost.
You can grow six plants yourself in CA legally outside all year round in socal. A single good harvest of six autoflowering plants will yield you 6-24oz in 3-4 months for probably $100 on your end if you didn't have any supplies, maybe another $50 for good seeds. So you yourself can grow pot for ~$6-25$ an ounce.
Imagine what the wholesale price can fall down to if you take advantage of economies of scale. But it doesn't, because in the legal market taxation and licensing add huge costs to what otherwise should be the business of selling tomatoes, and the illegal market rides the profit off of the established market rate that customers are used to paying.
Just to state the obvious, the real problem is the fact that it's not more widely available, so you still have high illegal demand in surrounding states.
California black market?
Colorado recreational market?
That's absurd!
What basis are you supporting this on? I just went back home to SoCal in the Summer and I bought 2 pre-rolled joints of high end CBD dominant strains for $6/each in Downtown LA before a show. Which is a really good price.
I live in Boulder and a single pre-roll of whatever will cost you about the same if not more as CBD has been put on everything to make it more expensive here. So anything that has a higher number than 0% of CBD will command a higher price.
The truth is, once you're in the Industry paying for weed itself becomes absurd as you get to know too many growers (pros and amateurs alike) who just want you to experience their harvest and are too happy to just give it to you, in addition to growing your own you may exchange for fun.
Your statement is an outright lie, though; yes, CO MJ Industry already went through its saturation period, and prices have adjusted, but the taxes are upwards of 50% for the Dispensary owners and that is reflected in the price.
Personally speaking: I honestly thought more people would have gotten their hands dirty and grown with the advent of legal recreational in both states, but most who do use seldom do. Its odd dilemma, I was never a stoner so growing it was always the most fun of the entire process.
Source: I live and work in Colorado, and I was in Fintech within the Industrial Hemp Industry for the past 4 years. But I grew up in SoCal all of my Life, where weed was always more accessible than alcohol or cigarettes.
I pretended I didn't work in the Industry and asked about the credit card and debit card POS and all the bud-tender could say is that it works for now.
Have you considered banning this shit, America?
The fact that karma came and blew it back into the origin country is just a bit of poetic self-own here.
Your average American also has no real voice or power in the US anymore. Blame massive private wealth interests and their interwoven government corruption.
>Traces of the pesticide carbofuran can no longer remain on food sold in the United States, whether domestic or imported, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2009/2009-05-11-093.asp
You can actually buy it right here:
https://www.chemservice.com/carbofuran-n-11405-250mg.html
Also, the US has a lot of influence. They could get chemicals outlawed in other countries if they really wanted to. I mean, they got the whole world to adopt biometric passports, and they managed to get banks worldwide to agree to their reporting requirements.
But when it's about dangerous chemicals, they throw their hands in the air. Presumably because the industry needs some place to buy their poisons.
>“The illegal market is competitive because legal marijuana is so expensive to produce under Prop. 64,” said Dale Gieringer, director of Cal NORML, which supported the initiative though it preferred other regulations.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-14/californ...
Could well be those poison the environment with organic poison or fertilizer.
California is more expensive than it needs to be, but by no means is it way above normal market for the non-legal states. Never mind the array of products and the (near) guarantee you aren't paying for trash.
Seems like another lie, cartels can now launder product and expand reach.
I say all this as someone who does not care what people inhale or ingest. But look at it from the point of view of the teetotalers and bureaucracy.
It looks like a fucking mess and now we are being told that we should do the same for heroin to reduce fentenal deaths...
I don't have a solution but I am not sure more of the same is gonna help at all.
Yes. That's pretty much what I said. A lot of those using it as a selling point didn't actually care that much about the benefits to the state of a new taxation stream.
That said, I'm willing to believe that a lot of people assumed that people were willing to pay a lot more to go with a vetted legal source (or would only go with a vetted legal source) than has, in fact turned out to be the case.
There's at least some evidence I've read that suggests legalization hasn't led to a lot of increased use. If that's the case, it's reasonable to assume a lot of users already knew how to acquire pot in the black market and don't see a lot of reason to start spending more to go legal.
That is interesting if legalization has not increased use by much, I would have thought there would be an increase. Any trend on underage use? Kids no longer think it's cool due to parents?
I hope that the effort for federal legalization succeeds but I think there are people looking at this and seeing that the negatives are not being negated but instead amplified.
Uncoolness has been suggested with medical marijuana possibly even further accentuating a shift.
I guess, to the degree that usage hasn't gone up all that much, one can imagine a number of explanations. Regular users already had their sources. Sure, there are older, probably wealthier, people who don't mind a sometimes smoke or edible but also weren't willing to risk buying it illegally. But I imagine this group are mostly pretty light users.
A normal sales tax should be the only tax on any legal product. Essentially equality in taxation. Sales taxes should only be used to raise money to run the government — it shouldn’t be used to manipulate markets or purchases habits. That isn’t what freedom is.
But when you open a legal market with 30% tax in competition with an existing, much more expansive market with an automatic 30% discount, of course it is going to fail.
Buy an ounce at the illegal dispensary across the street from the legal club, and it will come in one bag, you get to inspect the product before you buy to see how fresh it is and its quality, and it will be cheaper and sold tax free.
No, it doesn't; there is no legal marijuana market in California, just as there is no legal market in California for products violating the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. Everyone involved in the marijuana trade (including investors) in California is breaking federal criminal law, and if they are successful enough potentially the drug kingpin law. This is actually, from what I gather, aquire important factor in the business dynamics of what is frequently mislabeled as the “legal” marijuana trade in California.
The “non clickbait” headline obscures the truth: illegal drug producers have no qualms about illegally using land and illegally using pesticides. The key part of the story is that these are illegal pot growers — this is key to the story because if pot were less regulated, like sorghum for instance, costs would drop to commodity levels and take the profitability out of illegal operations.
The fact that the epa doesn't have the authority to shut down production of this stuff is insane. Most things that are banned multinationally also face production bans for obvious reasons.
How? It's not even anywhere near in their purview.
> Most things that are banned multinationally also face production bans for obvious reasons.
The chemical is also produced in Mexico (AFAIK by Viakem and Pyosa) and Brazil (by FMC Quimica do Brasil), and elsewhere. It is imported illegally from outside the country for these ops as far as I'm aware, so whether FMC Corp is producing it or not is immaterial to its availability in the U.S. for these ops.
[0]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cannabis-leg...
Consider that many people wish to ban animal cruelty -- sounds fine, except these laws tend to boil down to "every animal must be treated as a pet" even though that is not an economical proposition for the vast majority of animals that exist. Even if you just ban "killing puppies" now dog breeding is essentially illegal as the most effective way is to kill the young you don't want.
That really wouldn't be such a bad thing, IMO. Dog (and cat) breeders, by and large, exist to produce animals to maximize certain aesthetic norms, often to the detriment of their health. Given how many unwanted animals are killed in shelters each year, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to limit their production a bit
I write these posts because there is a lot of sentiment here and elsewhere that is frankly anti-science. In direct relation to the example, anti-GMO advocates and the FDA have strongly resisted the DNA modification of dog breeds and other nonconsumable organisms so frequent litters and culling is all that is left. Looking further back you see the same thing with chemistry and biology kits, with electronics kits, etc; the end result being if you do anything more than go home to watch TV or play golf you are assumed to have some fantastically dangerous hobby that gives babies cancer.
I have no idea what sorts of dog breeders you're familiar with, but the culling of puppies is not by any means a standard practice among breeders.
Not really. Canada exported asbestos until 2012.
I suppose a sophisticated illegal op could make that offering, but that would be a level up.
If most businesses had to deal with the myriad of weekly/monthly legal changes and expenses that those grower/dispensary owners do most would just pack it up and exit, add to that they have no real choice in banking and remain largely a cash based business.
The thing is, as we have seen with Canada, even if it is legalized at the Federal Level access to banking will still not be a sure thing. Most dispensaries still cannot have normal bank accounts to pay vendors/staff/bills etc... this kills their productivity.
Honestly, their is no cure-all to it, unless you see a massive resurgence in community based gardens specifically for cannabis, which would be my personal ideal situation.
But, Career politicians backed it despite having a very good Medical system in place, in order to get as much tax revenue from what was otherwise an illegally sourced substance.
If anything, I think they'll continue to tax more as they will have to pay for 'task forces' to monitor and stomp out these 'illegal' grows. Businesses will have to continue to add Value Added services to compensate for the added expenses and you'll have am eventual race to the bottom and consolidation (like in Colorado) of Market Share from a handful of players/cartel which may fall into the hands of a Phillip Morris type conglomerate--think juul vape.
CA had proposed a novel system in place that would, on paper anyhow, protect the Mom and Pop shops; but the taxes and regulatory framework and legal landscape is not hospitable to a small business venture unless you have substantial financial backing anymore.
I was against recreational being legalized for that reason in CA, and I preferred it stay Medical only. It wasn't a perfect system, but it allowed for competition with existing and mature legal framework enabled by the Compassion Act in 1996. The only thing it seemed to offer was some degree of protection from the DEA raiding a legal and compliant business, but I'm doubting this may be the case anymore as these task forces will need something to do to justify their existence.
Anecdotally, taxes approximately double the cost of marijuana in California. There's some benefit in taxing things that are bad for people, because you discourage the behavior, but it seems like wiping out organized crime by lowering taxes on the legal market here would be a bigger benefit.
Now that NPR's gotten so commercial (listened to Science Friday lately?) should we expect more of this kind of spin? Sad, NPR, sad.