SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

I'd like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs. The surrendering party should have unconditionally surrendered, but have chosen to fight it to the grave.

>but I've come to understand that illegal growers often use toxic pesticides that further increase yield-- and thus it is important to know where your weed comes from.

A lot of illegal weed is from the same supply chain as the legal stuff, but unreported, similar to bootleg products that are sourced from the same factories as the authentic stuff.

I do agree that it's a problem not knowing where it came from, but it seems that legal weed has really raised the bar, and the street has to compete at some level. I've heard street weed is a lot higher quality now than pre-legal weed.

> Legalization was sold to politicians with the promise of high taxes. We knew that poor users would be priced out of the market, that legal weed would be a privilege enjoyed by the rich

Poor users seem to enjoy a lot of legal alcohol. Taxes on that are high too, and it's even easier to make your own alcohol than to make your own weed.

There's still an underground cigarettes market in my country. It helps that we (a EU country) have a land-border with some other non-EU countries, we have very high taxes on cigarettes (compared to our revenues, at least), they don't, it's only natural that money will find a way.

The authorities do announce "contraband cigarettes captures" every week or two but I'm pretty sure that's just scratching the surface. They've recently also managed to "capture" an An-2 (great plane) on its way back from a contraband run, pretty cool.

[1] https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/evenimente/un-avion-...

Additionally the taxes create operational overhead to stay compliant. Every product follows a chain of custody similar to pharmaceuticals. Even the scales used must be of the same spec used for gold weighing and cost roughly $1,500 each. It's not just the dispensaries but the wholesalers, processors, and cultivators need to buy these scales and register them once a year with the state for $100. Furthermore the batches sizes are too small for the cultivators and processors. In Oregon, it was 15lbs each. An outdoor harvest may bring 1,500lbs an acre. Each test costs roughly $50 plus the labor for a human measuring it. Even if it was all going to biomass processing (think isolates and distillates used for edibles and vapes), the same process applies.

Part of the reason to justify all of this regulation was to ensure that the blackmarket would update accordingly. Instead, rich investors took control of the cannabis market and the underground market thrived without enforcement pressures. Poor people who actually suffered the consequences of prohibition received none of the benefits of legalization. This issue is certainly economic and racial.

Now the legal cannabis market wants to expand but can't. Now it has to compete with a market thriving due to enforcement evaporating. One way is to reduce taxes. This would make it more profitable for the already rich existing investors in cannabis to make more money. Taxes are extreme and certainly need to be reduced but the real issue is supply chain and access to market.

It's really difficult to sell weed legally if you want to. More importantly, it's expensive. We should make it cheap to sell weed. You should be able to sell weed like alcohol. Alcohol licenses are much cheaper and with much larger quotas. Additionally alcohol is more standardized than cannabis while facing less supply chain inspections & requirements. There should be strong exceptions to small producers. Also, interstate sales should be allowed. Illicit markets serving out of state customers won't go legit if they can't ship across state lines. Especially to adjacent states with legalized cannabis. Isn't it crazy you can't ship weed from Oregon to Washington?

Lowering the barrier to market would have the additional benefit of enabling smaller market participants like the people who did it before it was legal. I actually have no problem with very high taxes on the larger companies. Maybe it'll fund building schools and hospitals in the places ravaged by the drug war. It's a great disgrace that our laws have prevented any reasonable path for going legit while demonizing them in the process.