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SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

thenationaldesk.com

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Re: SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

#241

Post by golergka »

MisterTea wrote: post #220
golergka wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaddrop. You get an address, sometimes a GPS spot, a couple of photos, and retrieve whatever substance you ordered yourself.

yeesh. That sounds awful. The reason why I get curb side are: 1. If he doesn't have your number in his phone ahead of time, he wont respond. I had to be recommended by a close friend of his who is in turn good friends with me. He has to trust you and any deviations from basic rules will get you banned (he ghosts you). 2. He doesn't deliver himself, he has 2-4 drivers he pays well ($400/day + all the weed you can smok…

Well, when a couple of grams of weed can easily get you a 7-10 year prison sentence, you define convenience a bit differently.

Re: SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

#242

Post by curryst »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #221
Justsignedup wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As enforcement is winding down, weed dispensaries are competing against near slave wage labor. That's the problem. Illegal weed is basically being created outside the US with labor who barely gets paid, of course the cost will be higher. Because it's being imported via illegal channels this is now a customs problem. My bet is that the way to solve this would be to create a legal weed import policy, letting it sit the…

A lot wrong with your statement. Weed isn't imported. It's grown domestically. Here was a billion dollar field in California that got caught (1). There are many more. The next part of slave labor is just false. Trimmers I met were earning $500 to $1,000 a day. $100 per lb trimmed was pretty common. If anything, creating an import model will guarantee we use slaves. Columbia exports cannabis legally to Europe already…

> Trimmers I met were earning $500 to $1,000 a day. $100 per lb trimmed was pretty common.

I don't believe this, the numbers don't line up. If it's wet, doing 5 pounds in a day is reasonable, but nobody's going to pay you $100/pound for it. 5 pounds of wet is a little over a pound dried, so $500 is around a quarter of the total sale price. I just don't believe anyone is paying that much for something a child with safety scissors could do (albeit much worse). I also don't believe that growers wouldn't simply buy automatic bud trimmers. They're not as good, but I would be willing to bet that consumers would be happy to not pay the apparent 25% trimmer markup in exchange for slightly less pretty buds.

If that's dry bud, the price is reasonable, but there's no way in hell anyone is trimming 5-10 pounds of dry bud a day. That's like a rolling curbside garbage bin full of weed.

I don't think they're using slave labor, but given the number of people I've heard wanting to do it so they can work with weed, I'd be surprised if they're paying significantly more than minimum wage. I'd wager it's very close to $15/hour + perks, where "perks" mostly means "all the free weed you can smoke".

Re: SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

#243

Post by beerandt »

boibombeiro wrote: post #90
aww_dang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people can sell pies, vegetables, dairy and sometimes cider at informal farmers markets, cannabis should be the same. Moldy cannabis is self-apparent in most cases. Toxic distilled alcohol isn't. Some claim you can use a flame test to detect poisonous liquor.

> Toxic distilled alcohol isn't. Do you realize this ideia of poison alcohol was propaganda done by the government during prohibition, right? We know how to distill from millenniums, and selling poisonous alcohol isn't a very sustainable business model... I remember reading an article about the success of this campaign (was one of the first of this kinda). I'm mobile, but I'm sure someone can find a post a link.

Not just the idea/ propaganda, but the govt mandate that methanol be added to ethanol to make denatured spirits, aka the "poison alcohol".

It was literally a government created problem, with the same government claiming to be the only layer of security protecting John Q Public from this super dangerous product.

Prohibition is a case study in so many different ways of how to badly govern with the best intentions.

Re: SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

#244

Post by beerandt »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #39
bryans wrote: post #24

In most recreational states, cannabis is taxed heavily at every step in the supply chain, so the highest quality still ends up being very expensive -- upward of $400/oz. The black market has the exact same quality at the wholesale price, typically 40-60% less than retail, with the added bonus of not having the government involved. For a daily or heavy smoker, a ~50% discount is a massive amount of money.

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 batche…

>similar to pharmaceuticals.

It is a pharmaceutical. Using any given drug without doctor or pharmacist oversight isn't a great argument for less regulation. Even if you're overall against most regulation and govt overreach.

>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.

Every scale or other measuring device involved in commerce has to be inspected and stamped yearly, in most states. That's why the scale at your grocery checkout and gas pumps have the same stickers on them.

Other than the banking issue, none of the common complaints are really specific to the cannibas market.

More likely this market has just attracted a disproportionate number of people with little or no business experience, who are oblivious to the risks, regulatory hurdles, and associated costs that all types of businesses deal with.

>Lowering the barrier to market would have the additional benefit of enabling smaller market participants...

>It's a great disgrace that our laws have prevented any reasonable path for going legit while demonizing them in the process.

Spoken like someone starting to understand some of those crazy right-winger, free-market, pro-business, small-government arguments.

Re: SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

#245

Post by mam4 »

darthrupert wrote: post #125
mam4 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if i agree to part 2 of your messagr, part 1 shows gow disconnected from people who dont have that much money

People who cannot afford recreational drugs should not be using recreational drugs. Medical use is a different thing of course.

We could probably change the world a whole lot of people who "should" or "shouldn't" do stuff were applying this principle

Re: SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

#246

Post by flashfaffe2 »

ehvatum wrote: post #201
flashfaffe2 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed surprisingly, cannabis can have bad effects on human. This has been taken I to account in a French case where murder of an old lady was declared not responsible due to its cannabis consumption. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56929040

The handful of French nationals I know regard that case as a grotesque miscarriage of justice emblematic of the double standard by which French and EU laws essentially do not apply to third-world economic migrants.

Irrespective of the judgment made, the expert mandated for that case( they were two distincts group) concluded the same. The cannabis hashad an effect on the behaviour.

I use the case as an illustrative example of the effect of the cannabis. Not judging the case here

Re: SF suspends cannabis tax to help dispensaries compete with drug dealers

#247

Post by darthrupert »

InfiniteRand wrote: post #186
darthrupert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% is worth the diminshed crime, and nobody should consume cannabis daily.

Health wise, what is the impact of the smoking aspect of marijuana (vs other delivery methods), really just idly curious about this

Smoking cannabis and tobacco have many of the same problems, I believe. It's probably a good idea to consume cannabis some other way.
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