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What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

thewalrus.ca

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Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#51

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

Closi wrote: post #40
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

> A recent survey conducted by Abacus Data for Medical Cannabis Canada found that those who access medical cannabis legally pay on average 34 percent more for their medicine than if they bought from the unregulated market. I’m unfamiliar with the weed market in general, but it seems like this problem is self-inflicted. They’re simultaneously oversupplied and overpriced. Lower prices and both problems sort themselves…

> those who access medical cannabis legally pay on average 34 percent more for their medicine than if they bought from the unregulated market. I mean, that’s true with most things isn’t it? If you buy meat from the dodgy guy in a pub then it’s cheaper. Bloke selling televisions from a van? Cheaper. Cigarettes from a corner store that have been imported from a low tax country? Cheaper. Getting the electric/gas done in…

> If you buy meat from the dodgy guy in a pub then it’s cheaper.

I don't know about that. First of all, I've never had a dodgy guy in a pub try to sell me meat. Second of all, the market for meat, at least in the U.S., is relatively unconstrained and therefore the prices are pretty reflective of the cost to produce (including the costs for the various middlemen in the chain, etc.). So with meat, if some dodgy guy is selling it for cheaper, it's probably because it's subpar product in some way or another.

Televisions from a van? Stolen. Has nothing to do with economics -- the guy didn't pay the costs of producing those televisions, so his prices don't reflect them.

Among your selection of analogies, only the cigarette one seems comparable. But even with this it's a little different. In that case, the cigs are cheaper because the tax is not being paid. That might be a factor in the black market price difference for weed in Canada, but according to this article, price manipulation by producers is a big factor, which isn't reflected in the cigarette analogy.

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#52

Post by gruez »

slapfrog wrote: post #44
SECProto wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of us are very happy to support supply management! "Cartel" has very negative connotations. The issues in this article are also entirely different. edit: you forgot to mention our nefarious healthcare cartel!

> And most of us are very happy to support supply management! "Cartel" has very negative connotations. Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important than having an economically efficient supply of food. Of all industries, the food industry in particular should not be left totally up to market whims.

>Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important than having an economically efficient supply of food.

Has there any empirical studies/evidence that supports this claim?

> Of all industries, the food industry in particular should not be left totally up to market whims.

The oil industry seems pretty important as well. After all, most of our vehicles run on it. Maybe we should be glad that OPEC is engaging in "supply management", so they're not "left totally up to market whims"!

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#53

Post by ghaff »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #42
latchkey wrote: post #37

This was easy to predict. Anyone who's been in the industry knows that there is not only not enough demand, but it is also seasonal. Other than the heaviest users, people don't consume 365 days out of the year, they go through phases. If you grow weed year round in high tech facilities that maximize production, you're going to just have massive piles of it that you cannot unload. Making it legal didn't really create…

I sort of question the framing here? Not yours, but the article's. There is exactly enough demand, because however much people want of a mostly harmless plant is how much people should want of that plant. Nobody turning a profit should be no surprise: farmers barely turn a profit either, because selling commodities is not a means of getting rich quick. Considering how low-risk buying pot was before legalization, it b…

>Considering how low-risk buying pot was before legalization, it boggles the mind why anyone thought there would be a huge growth in consumption, especially when the legal product is priced so much higher that it might as well still be illegal.

I have no idea how much consumption has changed. But for a casual/occasional user seeking out a dealer seems like a fairly high bar. And even if legal prices are higher, again for a casual user, the total incremental amount seems pretty trivial.

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#54

Post by gruez »

SECProto wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has a ton of such cartels, the egg board, the milk board, the LCBO and so on.

And most of us are very happy to support supply management! "Cartel" has very negative connotations. The issues in this article are also entirely different. edit: you forgot to mention our nefarious healthcare cartel!

>And most of us are very happy to support supply management

Is it? This poll seems to say otherwise: https://angusreid.org/supply-management-nafta-renegotiation/

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#55

Post by gruez »

dylan604 wrote: post #38
gruez wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that happens in the US as well? See all the stories about farmers dumping milk during the pandemic.

I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off. Doesn't matter if it is US, Canada or a dictator doing it in front of the people that were hoping to receive it. It's a shit move. However, let's not forget the logistics of getting the food to locations it was never thought about getting to when it…

>I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off.

But if you're against food waste, shouldn't you be supporting supply management (ie. preventing excess production)?

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#57

Post by slapfrog »

gruez wrote: post #52
slapfrog wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And most of us are very happy to support supply management! "Cartel" has very negative connotations. Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important than having an economically efficient supply of food. Of all industries, the food industry in particular should not be left totally up to market whims.

>Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important than having an economically efficient supply of food. Has there any empirical studies/evidence that supports this claim? > Of all industries, the food industry in particular should not be left totally up to market whims. The oil industry seems pretty important as well. After all, most of our vehicles run on it. Maybe we should be glad that OPEC is engaging in…

> The oil industry seems pretty important as well.

Not nearly as important as food; the only thing as important as the food supply is our supply of drinking water. Nothing else is comparably important, so you're wasting your time trying to find analogies. And the instability historically see in the oil industry is precisely what sane people want to avoid in the food supply.

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#58

Post by dylan604 »

gruez wrote: post #55
dylan604 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off. Doesn't matter if it is US, Canada or a dictator doing it in front of the people that were hoping to receive it. It's a shit move. However, let's not forget the logistics of getting the food to locations it was never thought about getting to when it…

>I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off. But if you're against food waste, shouldn't you be supporting supply management (ie. preventing excess production)?

You state this like I'm not, but this is just as complex and complicated issue. Do you pay farmers to just not grow anything in exchange for not over producinng? We kind of already do that in the US. Do you legislate that any producer must have primary buyers as well as secondary/tertiary buyers lined up to ensure never wasting the product? Do you legislate that any one farmer is only allowed to produce X amount of whatever, or state that only X amount of product can be produced annually in total, so put you bids in now for a stake? Do you take the farmer for any crop that is destroyed to discourage over production? Or you can do a startup to disrupt farming with a way to preserve food so it never spoils (a la Twinkies). Good luck selling that product.

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#59

Post by h2odragon »

treis wrote: post #22
h2odragon wrote: post #19

Many planning failures in the field. Last year lots of people planted hemp around me, as it just become legal and there was a small market opening. Very, very few of these people had any notion what it would take to harvest, process and store their crop, and no notion of how or where to market it once in. I've seen multiple Craigslist ads attempting to sell garbage bags of wet, mouldy, untrimmed hemp. I've been told…

I did the math on this a few years ago and it came out to be less than 10 farms to supply the entire US with weed. Edit:. Found my post: 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 m…

Tobacco is harder to grow and cure than good cannabis.

The tobacco industry consolidation bent the market to the point that "tobacco" as sold is the result of a large industrial process that happens to use nicotina plant matter as an input.

I think the cannabis industry is flying hellbent to that point just to have an excuse for spending all the investor money. As well as a literal distaste for burning plants as a social thing.

Re: What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?

#60

Post by gruez »

slapfrog wrote: post #57
gruez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important than having an economically efficient supply of food. Has there any empirical studies/evidence that supports this claim? > Of all industries, the food industry in particular should not be left totally up to market whims. The oil industry seems pretty important as well. After all, most of our vehicles run on it. Maybe we should be glad that OPEC is engaging in…

> The oil industry seems pretty important as well. Not nearly as important as food; the only thing as important as the food supply is our supply of drinking water. Nothing else is comparably important, so you're wasting your time trying to find analogies. And the instability historically see in the oil industry is precisely what sane people want to avoid in the food supply.

>Not nearly as important as food; the only thing as important as the food supply is our supply of drinking water. Nothing else is comparably important, so you're wasting your time trying to find analogies.

Guess what modern agriculture (tractors, fertilizers, pesticides) runs off of?

Furthermore, if food security really is important, why is only dairy and egg supply managed? Surely if you want to keep your country fed, you'd want to go after the staples like potatoes or grain? If all the milk cows and egg laying chickens vanished, people would have to change their eating habits. Some people (working in adjacent industries) might lose their jobs, but that'd be it. On the other hand, if all the wheat/soybean/corn/rice/potato crops vanished there would be a massive famine.

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