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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

#151

Post by wpietri »

dcosson wrote: post #127
wpietri wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel like the problem with that idea is right there in the first sentence of the wikipedia article - should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level that is consistent with their resolution. Who decides what level that is? It never seems to be very straightforward, and a lot of important things end up having consequences that go way beyond what the folks arguing for the most granular level of local cont…

No principle is universally applicable or produces perfect results. So I think, "If applied naively it sometimes has problems," is not a useful criticism of a principle.

The examples you raise seem to be ones where you're saying that local control is not consistent with resolution of the issue. So it seems like you're agreeing with the principle, not contradicting it.

Climate change and transit offer pretty clear examples where people have decided local control isn't sufficient, so they're resolving it at higher levels. See, e.g., the Paris accords, BART, and the various state and federal highway systems.

Housing is clearly more complicated, but it seems like the principle is often being applied there too. Most control is local, but where that doesn't work, we see attempts to resolve it at higher levels. E.g., California's recent battle over the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and Prop 10.

Do you have an alternative principle in mind? If we don't start with the assumption that local control should be preferred, then what do you suggest instead? Historically it was the divine right of kings, which I'm not a fan of. And giving all power to the UN or the national government unless they decide otherwise also doesn't seem great.

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

#152

Post by datavirtue »

bobthepanda wrote: post #59
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.

With that attitude the black market will continue to dominate. And, no, it is not how that works. I can walk into any number of grocery stores in any state and buy a cart load of alcohol and people will smile and snicker when they see me do it.

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

#153

Post by barrow-rider »

austincheney wrote: post #136
trhway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[IANAL] if my city and all the others around prohibit such stores it is de-facto equivalent to Prohibition in that area while the state level amendment granted that right to all the people in the state, and no local government has the power to exclude it own particular local area from the amendment. The same principle as with for example right to vote with no voting place in N (for sufficiently large N) miles radius.

I went to college in a dry county. You could not purchase take home alcohol in the county, but you could still possess it and drink it there. You just had to drive a little further to get it. It was a limit on convenience only.

Helping to stimulate the economy of the next county over...

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

#154

Post by barrow-rider »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #134
ams6110 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a LOT LESS HARMFUL THAN SECOND HAND TOBACCO. Do you have a source to confirm that? I'd think it would be roughly similar: smoke of burning leaves.

Tobacco causes cancer through Tobacco-specific nitrosamines generated during curing and burning. It’s not simply a matter of burning leaves.

That is debatable; burning leaves or burning anything can mess you up with extended amounts of exposure.

Firefighters have above-average rates of cancer, including lung cancer. This suggests that inhaling lots of smoke from ANYTHING on the regular isn't good for you. Example: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/cancer-biggest-killer-...

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

#155

Post by barrow-rider »

xyhopguy wrote: post #71
code_duck wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Colorado and California had significant commercial medical cannabis industries for years and years before going recreational. Why is that not often brought up in reporting? It’s already been close enough to recreational in California for years - anyone who wanted to smoke could get a card for 100 bucks and start shopping at dispensaries, or grow their own. I wouldn’t expect any major changes from recreational in…

California's neighbors to the north both have 1500+ establishments. Oregon isn't exactly big, but due to massive overproduction and no sales tax prices in Oregon are approaching sister crops like hop. Wtf is going on in California.

> Wtf is going on in California.

Forreal. As someone in Canada watching the weed thing play out, my prediction is that Cali would legalize and then utterly dominate.

Like the medical and recreational stuff is there, the weather is great for growing stuff, including weed, and with 40 million people -- more than all of Canada -- there is a huge base of investment capital and consumers to pull from.

Why isn't California DOMINATING the global weed trade?

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

#156

Post by salawat »

masonic wrote: post #129
fjp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because California passed bills clearly delineating how, where, and in what quantities pot growing and selling can be done. The state issues licenses. In America, this is federalism at work. States can choose to do things that the federal government explicitly does not allow, and states can choose to not do things that the federal government explicitly tells it to do. When there is enough of a conflict, it gets resol…

States can choose to do things that the federal government explicitly does not allow Not true at all. Take slavery, for one obvious example.

Parent post is correct. GP is incorrect. Constitutional Federal law trumps State law. See the Supremacy Clause.

It's why actions at the Federal level normatively should be thought through and constructed extremely well. It obliges everyone to play by those rules once passed. In reality however, realpolitik tends to limit Federal reach.

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

#157

Post by stochastic_monk »

barrow-rider wrote: post #154
stochastic_monk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tobacco causes cancer through Tobacco-specific nitrosamines generated during curing and burning. It’s not simply a matter of burning leaves.

That is debatable; burning leaves or burning anything can mess you up with extended amounts of exposure. Firefighters have above-average rates of cancer, including lung cancer. This suggests that inhaling lots of smoke from ANYTHING on the regular isn't good for you. Example: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/cancer-biggest-killer-...

It’s worth discussing the risks from inhaling smoke, and thank you for the reference!

However, it is not debatable that they are the primary causative agents in tobacco-derived cancers. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco-specific_nitrosamines

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

#158

Post by namlem »

jcranmer wrote: post #83
0x4d464d48 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is nothing that stops the federal US government from throwing someone in jail for growing / transporting / using / processing payment for marijuana." I always wondered about that. Has there been any chatter about someone trying to get a federal court to nullify the law? I have no idea how that can work.

> Has there been any chatter about someone trying to get a federal court to nullify the law? I have no idea how that can work. The US has signed up to a treaty that requires us to treat marijuana as an illegal controlled substance. That requires an explicit act of Congress to abrogate, and no court is going to find otherwise.

So are Canada and Uruguay. UN treaties are meaningless, they're purely for show.

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

#159

Post by namlem »

brianwawok wrote: post #21
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…

> 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…

Technically the federal government can only impose penalties for recreational cannabis. Medicinal cannabis is also federally illegal, but congress has prohibited any resources from being allocated to enforcing prohibition against medical marijuana businesses or users who are in compliance with state law.

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

#160

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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.

Marijuana is illegal in the United States. There may not be state-level prohibition in some states, but that doesn't make it legal in those states, any more than the fact that individual states may not prohibit fraud against the US government makes such fraud legal in those states.

The federal policy against enforcing the existing federal criminal prohibition of marijuana against medical use that complies with state law is an unusual complication, but the criminal prohibition still applies even in those cases (particularly, should that policy be lifted by Congress tomorrow, all the crimes that occurred while it was in place could be prosecuted—and criminal and/or civil forfeiture associated with them pursued—because neither the crime nor it's punishments were removed, so no ex post facto issues would exist.) And it's not clear what the boundaries of that policy are, and, more importantly, it's not clear that anyone but Congress itself would have standing or an available remedy should the executive branch act in a manner that is arguably outside of the bounds of the policy.

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