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One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

latimes.com

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Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#51

Post by fetus8 »

Noos wrote: post #49
0x4d464d48 wrote: post #18

Maybe this article overstated things and someone will clear it up in the comments but that was painful to read. I live in Vancouver and weed's been officially legal throughout the Canada for several weeks now. It's still relatively new but nothing noticeable has changed aside from fewer people discussing such a frivilous and previously mishandled issue. It's not perfect but far, far, far better than strict prohibitio…

Some people don't want a shop next to them. The stench is horrid, and the kind of people that loiter around them are the last people you want near your house. Legalizing a stupid and shitty practice because society doesn't want to enforce it doesn't make it any less stupid or shitty.

The shops don't create horrid stenches. The grow ops and processing facilities do create noxious odors, but the stores hardly produce an odor that can be smelled from the street, or even in the stores.

What kind of people do you suppose loiter at these shops? From my experiences here in CO, no one loiters at these shops. The stores often have pretty tight security and attentive guards. You go in, do your business, and leave with product in hand. I would be willing to bet that the kind of people who visit these establishments is far more varied than you are able to comprehend.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#52

Post by DigiMortality »

The government of California is extremely inefficient, no surprises. Glad I left CA

I'm in Colorado now (I'm from NY originally)

CO did it right, but like someone said above - CO Springs was against it (pretty conservative, military area)and are now suffering the consequences of not doing so, worse roads, worse everything...

And hey, I'm pretty conservative myself and I live in Boulder. Boulder is wrong about other things though, like thinking they can ban AR-15's

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#54

Post by pdshrader »

Scoundreller wrote: post #6
justizin wrote: post #2

California has had the world's leading cannabis industry for decades, we're just now paying 38% tax.

38% tax when sold legally in the local market. Black-market local sales and exports still don’t raise much tax revenue.

I was curious about the details of this, so I looked it up.

There's a 15% excise tax statewide in CA. It used to be a straight 15% on top of the sale price, but now it's calculated based on the average market price for an arm's length transaction.[1][2] This is usually calculated based on the wholesale price plus a markup of 60%.[3]

On top of that, there's (normal) sales tax applied to the whole purchase, including the excise tax amount.[2] In California, that means a statewide sales tax of 7.25%, plus county and sometimes city sales taxes that can add on an extra 0-3.25%.[4]

In places with very little additional county and city sales taxes, e.g. Newport Beach[5], that means paying 15% excise plus 7.75% sales tax, for an effective total retail tax rate of 23.9125%.

In places with higher county and city sales taxes, e.g. Santa Monica [6] that means paying 15% excise plus 10.25% sales tax, for an effective total retail tax rate of 26.7875%.

San Francisco is on the lower end of the middle of the pack with a sales tax of 8.5% [7], so that means the effective total retail tax rate is 24.775%.

Of course, there are other cultivation taxes, use taxes, special local marijuana excise taxes and other permitting costs that apply to cultivators and distributors and retailers that may get passed along to customers[8][9][10], so you could say that "total taxes" are closer to 40%. But most retail buyers are paying about 24-28% on top of retail list price in sales + excise taxes.

Note: Prop 64 made it so most medical cannabis sales aren't subject to sales tax, so medical users only have to pay the 15% excise tax. [8]

[1] https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/l537.pdf

[2] http://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/cannabis.htm#Retailers

[3] http://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/cannabis.htm#Facts

[4] https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-sales-tax

[5] https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates/california/c...

[6] https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates/california/c...

[7] https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates/california/c...

[8] http://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/cannabis.htm#Started

[9] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-weed-101-tax-location...

[10] http://blog.margolinlawrence.com/all-about-california-cannab...

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#55

Post by fetus8 »

DigiMortality wrote: post #52

The government of California is extremely inefficient, no surprises. Glad I left CA I'm in Colorado now (I'm from NY originally) CO did it right, but like someone said above - CO Springs was against it (pretty conservative, military area)and are now suffering the consequences of not doing so, worse roads, worse everything... And hey, I'm pretty conservative myself and I live in Boulder. Boulder is wrong about other t…

I hate to break it to you, but Colorado Springs has been worse in most ways, roads and otherwise, long before recreational/medical weed was legalized. They've had issues with crime and meth, for a very long time as well.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#56

Post by greenleafjacob »

Nasrudith wrote: post #45
brianwawok wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What bothers me the most about this story is how marijuana is supposedly 'legal' yet some locals seem Hell-bent on treating it like an illegal and necessarily dangerous. It is still illegal at the federal level. There is nothing that stops the federal US government from throwing someone in jail for growing / transporting / using / processing payment for marijuana. I cannot think of anything else that is illegal at…

You are right it is an outlier and some would say not ideal. It is transparently a breakdown of rule of law into realpolitik given constraints and the redundant levels of powers - from what is fundamentally bad law and consistent failure to respond to facts on the ground. It brings to mind the old bit of legal philosophy about unenforceable laws breeding contempt for the law in general. The Federal government can tec…

While I don't disagree with much of what you said, your characterization of schedule 1 generally is factually incorrect. There is still testing of schedule 1 substances; as of 2017 there were more than 590 researchers registered to study schedule 1 substances. Both THC and CBD have been approved for medicinal uses (Marinol and Epidiolex respectively).

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#57

Post by jngreenlee »

fetus8 wrote: post #55
DigiMortality wrote: post #52

The government of California is extremely inefficient, no surprises. Glad I left CA I'm in Colorado now (I'm from NY originally) CO did it right, but like someone said above - CO Springs was against it (pretty conservative, military area)and are now suffering the consequences of not doing so, worse roads, worse everything... And hey, I'm pretty conservative myself and I live in Boulder. Boulder is wrong about other t…

I hate to break it to you, but Colorado Springs has been worse in most ways, roads and otherwise, long before recreational/medical weed was legalized. They've had issues with crime and meth, for a very long time as well.

Yeah but it sucks to sit there and watch Manitou Springs get rich fast. CS city council is trying now to undo that choice.

CS is weird and beautiful in its own ways, and I would only live there now for the mountain access (far better than 95% of Denver metro).

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#58

Post by dantheman »

wpietri wrote: post #17
aphextron wrote: post #4

It all comes down to local control of licensing. To even operate a 100% mobile business, you have to be licensed out of a specific city. This involves all the associated cronyism, NIMBYism, and the like which goes along with local politics, and grinds the whole system to a halt. We need to adopt a statewide system like Oregon or there will be no room for smaller distributors left and we will be stuck with monopolized…

I'm personally fine with local control, and despite the negative tone of this article, it all sounds pretty normal to me. I live in SF, where there are a variety of shops. The ones I walk by all seem clean, orderly, and well run. Certainly more so than some liquor stores I can think of. So I'm happy to have them as neighbors. That said, I understand why other cities would have been more reluctant to license. Not ever…

Another way to have the same principle is to have the state lay some very basic ground rules or none at all (just a normal store), and allow localities to create restrictions as they see fit. This is how almost everything else is done.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#59

Post by bobthepanda »

aphextron wrote: post #4

It all comes down to local control of licensing. To even operate a 100% mobile business, you have to be licensed out of a specific city. This involves all the associated cronyism, NIMBYism, and the like which goes along with local politics, and grinds the whole system to a halt. We need to adopt a statewide system like Oregon or there will be no room for smaller distributors left and we will be stuck with monopolized…

I mean, is that not similar to how liquor and bar licensing works? A dispensary is not all that different from the other vices.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#60

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

Honest question: Why do newspapers, NPR, etc. often refer to pot possession / sales as being legal in California and some other states, when they're clearly illegal under federal law?

There are numerous other behaviors that IIUC are illegal under U.S. federal law but are not proscribed by California law, including: aircraft hijacking, carjacking, credit card fraud, and possession of destructive devices such as missiles and poison-gas weapons.

And yet I don't hear those same news sources referring to carjacking, etc. as being legal in California.

The cynic in my suspects that those news organizations are intentionally choosing language to push their own agendas, but maybe I'm totally missing something here.

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