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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

#111
post #94

One of the most hilariously stupid arguments against legalisation of drugs is that it makes everyone into a junkie. Fact is most people don't do drugs, even if you can buy it in the supermarket.

I suppose you’re excluding alcohol from that pronouncement?

Your question really made me curious so I looked it up, the NIH keeps extensive records about this sort of thing. This is America only of course, which looks to be in the top third or so worldwide based on the WHO lists ("Western" countries or those with colonization history there and Russia seem to be higher then southern Asian and African countries in general). But in America while a majority use it, it's still lower then I actually expected digging into the definitions. In the surveys apparently 56% of Americans reported consuming alcohol, any whatsoever, in the previous month, 70% in the previous year, and 86% tried it at some point in their lifetimes.

But it's hard to see "tried once in their life" or even "a few times a year" as really falling in an equivalent "junkie" category, so I looked for "heavy drinking" which they defined as "4-5 or more drinks in 2 hours" a few days in a month, where a "drink" is a standardized measurement of ~14 grams of pure alcohol, equivalent to a single 12 oz 5% beer = 5 oz of 12% wine = 1.5 oz of 40% spirits (etc, whatever the percentage is). Just 7% of Americans reported heavy drinking in the previous month.

Alcohol is regulated and taxed, but even so beer & wine at least is pretty trivial for adults to legally acquire in most of the country and relatively cheap spirits (like very low quality vodka) as well. I don't at all want to understate the harm of alcohol abuse, it's very real (and of course can extend beyond drinkers themselves due to their actions). Even so it seems like "make everyone into a junkie" would not be borne out by legalized alcohol. Based on popular culture it's easy to assume drinking is more prevalent to a higher degree then it is, at least personally I would not have guessed that heavy drinking was only single digit percentages here.

It looks like, as in other areas, there is a strongly non-linear curve function in the population where relatively small percentages form an inordinate part of consumption. If that's the case for marijuana as well then it'd suggest we could get far more efficient harm reduction by general legalization focusing limited resources on that smaller slice?

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

#112

For perspective Colorado has 549 retail establishments and 574 medical establishments (although many overlap) while having ~3/20 the population of California. While obviously Colorado has had retail cannabis since 2012/13, both states have areas strongly for and strongly against legalization. Considering that the cities that do allow rec cannabis include Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco and San Diego, the number o…

Reporter from CO here. I think this is the crux of the matter. If the points about a strong underground market in the article are true, it's (IMO) due to a weakened attempt at decriminalization. Very much like bittorrents before netflix/prime were widely available with large catalogs. Here in Sunny CO, the prop was a Constitutional Amendment , guaranteeing the right of each state citizen to grow and possess their own…

That brings up a good possible solution...

Limit any/all state subsidies for cities/counties that ban pot.

If you want money for roads/schools/etc... you can get it out of the pot fund, but you have to allow retails sales in your county to benefit.

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

#113
post #73

> Retailers and growers say they’ve been stunted by complex regulations, high taxes I can't say I'm surprised. As someone who grew up on the Oregon border of California on i5, locals here complain about California's influence on the local economy and politics. (E.g. buying expensive land, driving taxes up) However in Oregon, I believe our problem is with oversaturation of the market. From what I understand (not rehea…

For comparison, you can easily pay $500/oz on the east coast.

Dear my. Have you considered smoking saffron, truffles, beluga caviar, or Hewlett-Packard color inkjet cartridges? You're paying 2 to 10 times as much.

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

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which treaty is that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_... This was the first result for both “drugs treaty” and “Narcotics treaty”.

That page doesn't mention marijuana. I don't think marijuana is classified as a narcotic, despite the vagueness of the definition.

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

#115
post #19

Probably because it's been "legal" in CA for years. The "medical" cannabis was a joke. There were people on the beaches holding signs "$50 medical cannabis card". Being legal recreationally didn't really make it any more accessible. Anyone that wanted a medical card could get one in a few minutes.

Except that you had to have a California drivers license. Marijuana tourism seems to be a big thing in CO.

You didn't need a CA license, just an address. I actually got my card the day after I moved in to my apartment. (In my defense, I have scoliosis.)

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

#116

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…

IIRC Colorado Springs had some other... interesting policy choices unrelated to marijuana:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-...

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

#117

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…

tell me about it.

I openly smoke marijuana in public places. Why?

It's a LOT LESS HARMFUL THAN SECOND HAND TOBACCO.

I see uninformed parents scowling at me for blowing marijuana smoke away from them while they are smoking cigarettes infront of their kids.

Anyways, if you see a guy smoking weed around Robson square, that's me.

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

#118
post #23

The other factor not talked about is that in general the prices seem to be going down due to a lot of supply (both on the retail/licensed market, and the grey/black market). About ten years ago, a really good pound (in bulk) could go for $3k-$4k to a dispensary. Now the high end seems to have fallen out and you're maybe lucky to get half of that. I think a lot of people ran their business plan numbers where they were…

>could go for $3k-$4k to a dispensary. Now the high end seems to have fallen out and you're maybe lucky to get half of that.

For comparison, bulk price of tobacco is a few bucks a pound. Admittedly I am not an expert in marijuana vs tobacco cultivation, but I doubt it's 1,000 times more expensive. Ultimately, the problem with profiting in a legal marijuana industry is that people simply don't smoke that much pot.

Say that there's 260 million adults in the US and they all smoke 1 joint per day. Assuming:

1 joint = 1 g of marijuana 1 lb = 454g 1 acre can yield 600 lbs of marijuana 1 farm is 1000 acres

If you do the math, that means we need roughly 350 farms worth of marijuana. Or in terms of acreage, roughly 0.04% of all the acreage in the U.S. under cultivation. In other words, even if we assume a ridiculous level of smoking there's simply not a huge demand for pot. Using more realistic amounts, a handful of large farms could produce all the marijuana consumed in the country.

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

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_... This was the first result for both “drugs treaty” and “Narcotics treaty”.

That page doesn't mention marijuana. I don't think marijuana is classified as a narcotic, despite the vagueness of the definition.

Cannabis is explicitly listed as a Schedule I drug on that page.
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