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Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

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Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#51

Post by rbobby »

criddell wrote: post #13
JPKab wrote: post #7

I live in Colorado. I think they are really blowing it by making the stores government owned. In Colorado, the stores are privately owned but very, very strictly regulated. Plants are tracked with an RFID all the way to the products derived from them, with a full chain of custody all the way to purchase. Only adults 21 and up can enter them, with a strict dual-check of identification (once to enter, and again when pa…

You're making a lot of assumptions about how they will run the stores. Other people have already mentioned how the government runs the alcohol stores and (IMHO) they do a pretty good job of it. I live in Texas now and when I go back to Ontario to visit my family, it does seem weird that I can't buy beer in a 7-11 or a grocery store or in a drive through shop (not sure these are a good idea). Being the sole seller als…

> they can negotiate ruthlessly and drive prices down to maximize profit for the people of Ontario

They do. However there's an odd situation that has arisen at least once. The underlying strategy of the gov't is one of social responsibility... essentially not pricing booze cheap enough that you end up with a lot of public drunkenness. This means that the gov't sets a minimum retail price and the LCBO ensures they don't sell below that. The gov't also sets a maximum retail markup (which is odd, one can only assume that at some point this was an olive branch to folks upset about how expensive booze is... sort of a 'we will not charge more than x% markup' promise implemented as regulation/legislation).

Faced with a minimum retail price and a maximum markup the LCBO had to ask a wine seller to raise their prices because even after applying the maximum markup the retail price was below the minimum. Sounds crazy for cheap plonk... but that's exactly what what they're trying to avoid... winos drunk on the street from cheap Thunderbird.

Note I think this only happened the once. It made the news at the time... but I haven't heard of it happening again.

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#52

Post by JPKab »

criddell wrote: post #30
macspoofing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Other people have already mentioned how the government runs the alcohol stores and (IMHO) they do a pretty good job of it. No. They don't. I was recently at an Ontario beach on a long weekend - all the stores on the strip leading up to the beach were open because of the tourists and cottagers flocking into the area...except for the LCBO. The LCBO was closed because it was a stat holiday. No business would close on t…

On non-holiday weekends, the stores are open Sunday. If you aren't happy about the stores closing for holiday weekends, blame the union. That's something they protect for their members. > The liquor is marked-up and expensive too. That's just taxes. Anybody else selling alcohol would have to add their profit on top of that. It might seem expensive, but don't forget that you are helping to pay for government provided…

"Blame the union"

Hmmmmm. If only there was a way for stores to not all be owned by a single entity that is forced to have all of their employees be part of a union. We could call it privatization.

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#53

Post by cortesoft »

thinkharder wrote: post #46
criddell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of assumptions about how they will run the stores. Other people have already mentioned how the government runs the alcohol stores and (IMHO) they do a pretty good job of it. I live in Texas now and when I go back to Ontario to visit my family, it does seem weird that I can't buy beer in a 7-11 or a grocery store or in a drive through shop (not sure these are a good idea). Being the sole seller als…

As someone who lives in a state with state-run liquor, this is the exact opposite of how it actually plays out. Prices are anywhere from 30-100+% more than across the border in a state without a state-run liquor policy. Because the government has a monopoly there is no competition to drive prices lower and since the government monopoly gets to keep the profit there is no incentive for them to lower prices. Furthermor…

I think costing more and making the government more money are intended features of this system, not side-effects.

'vice' dispensaries are not meant to provide the best service to their customers. They are meant to fill a need well enough to prevent black market competitors, while at the same time making the vice inconvenient enough to discourage its use as much as possible. At the same time, they want to maximize revenue for the government.

Whether this is good or bad is up for debate, but it isn't something they are accidentally doing. When it comes to vices like alcohol or drugs, 'advocating for the people' is not a simple 'provide people what they want' equation - people are wanting something that is bad for them, so do we give it to them as cheaply as possible, satisfying their want, or do we make it more difficult, to satisfy what society wants as a whole?

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#54

Post by cortesoft »

plantel wrote: post #6

Toronto is currently full of dispensaries on every corner. Some are open late and you're always close to one, independent local businesses with people in the community making money and spending it locally. It will be sad to see a government monopoly turn weed distribution into the LCBO style. Expect prices to go up to $15-20g, cut down the number of locations and closes at 9pm.

At some point we have to compromise - a lot of people want drugs like marijuana illegal because they DON'T want dispensaries on every corner, open at all hours of the night, selling cheap drugs.

Maybe a good starting compromise is, ok, marijuana will be legal and people won't get arrested anymmore, but it will only be sold at a limited number of places for a limited amount of time, for an amount that will keep it from being too prevalent.

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#55

Post by noarchy »

sgift wrote: post #41
jstanley wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being the sole seller also means that they can negotiate ruthlessly and drive prices down to maximize profit for the people of Ontario. Being the sole seller also means they have a monopoly. It's much easier to run a monopoly profitably by charging high prices than by negotiating low prices. Even if they do negotiate low prices, what incentive is there to pass the savings on to the customer?

Governments are beholden to people, not markets. Profit is not their main incentive.

You can tell yourself that, but the purpose of LCBO at this stage is the money it makes for government. Liquor prohibition is a distant memory. If you don't realize that, you risk buying into their rhetoric about "protecting children" that they're peddling for weed monopolies.

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#56

Post by noarchy »

criddell wrote: post #13
JPKab wrote: post #7

I live in Colorado. I think they are really blowing it by making the stores government owned. In Colorado, the stores are privately owned but very, very strictly regulated. Plants are tracked with an RFID all the way to the products derived from them, with a full chain of custody all the way to purchase. Only adults 21 and up can enter them, with a strict dual-check of identification (once to enter, and again when pa…

You're making a lot of assumptions about how they will run the stores. Other people have already mentioned how the government runs the alcohol stores and (IMHO) they do a pretty good job of it. I live in Texas now and when I go back to Ontario to visit my family, it does seem weird that I can't buy beer in a 7-11 or a grocery store or in a drive through shop (not sure these are a good idea). Being the sole seller als…

>Being the sole seller also means that they can negotiate ruthlessly and drive prices down to maximize profit for the people of Ontario. I don't know if they will do that, but it sure helps.

Except they're maximizing profits for LCBO, while the benefits to the "people of Ontario" are arguable. For that money to truly benefit Ontarians, it requires a certain level of faith in the provincial governments to be good shepherds with said funds.

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#57

Post by lpaone »

vkou wrote: post #10
JPKab wrote: post #7

I live in Colorado. I think they are really blowing it by making the stores government owned. In Colorado, the stores are privately owned but very, very strictly regulated. Plants are tracked with an RFID all the way to the products derived from them, with a full chain of custody all the way to purchase. Only adults 21 and up can enter them, with a strict dual-check of identification (once to enter, and again when pa…

> I think they are really blowing it by making the stores government owned. Why? The largest chain of BC liquor stores is government-owned and operated. They do a pretty decent job of it.

The BC Liquor stores are not well run. In my experience, the service is slow, the people are not knowledgeable, and you will often have a huge lineup of people waiting at the only cashier that is open. The employees have 0 incentive to change this because they are protected by a powerful union.

On top of this, as mentioned in other posts, we have some of the most expensive alcohol in the world. I have travelled to several countries and have yet to find a place that has more expensive alcohol than BC.

I used to work beside a major liquor importer and after speaking with some of their employees, the general consensus in the industry is that the only people that benefit from this are the union employees that work at the government liquor stores and distribution centres. For everyone else: restaurants, consumers, independent store owners, etc. it is a negative.

edit: grammar

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#59

Post by ericzawo »

Lifelong Ontarian. I always thought our logic of having a provincially run liquor store was limited in practice. Like, why aren't LCBO stores open 24 hours? Generally, most are open from 10 am to 9 pm. Making them 24 hours could nearly double their workforce.

I've been watching closely the way government will carry this out, and its unfortunate they aren't choosing to franchise dispensary permits out to small business. But I suppose Ontario's government would botch that, too. Hell, they're attempting to roll out the opportunity to purchase beer and wine (woo!) at grocery stores — but so far, only the franchise chains are able.

Finally, Liquor in Ontario is dumb expensive. I expect them to milk the price of marijuana for all its worth when this finally comes out.

Re: Ontario unveils plan for government chain of marijuana stores

#60

Post by noarchy »

mfoy_ wrote: post #2

A step in the right direction, I guess. Ontario can be surprisingly conservative about these things... they only recently started allowing alcohol to be sold in grocery stores. Seems the initial round of legislation will legalize it, but with heavy restrictions.

Here's the thing, though. If you refer to an "initial round" of legislation, you're probably assuming another round isn't far away.

You have a real-life experiment with which to compare, in the LCBO, to see that progress will extremely slow, and limited. How long did it take to get beer into grocery stores (and even then with some restrictions)? That's beer. How long will it take with weed?

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