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How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

washingtonpost.com

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Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#211

Post by gwbas1c »

elif wrote: post #183
gwbas1c wrote: post #180

One of the things I've noticed living in both CA and MA is that a lot of retail marijuana shops appear to be run by first-time business owners. In many cases, these businesses just don't appear to have the kind of discipline to be sustainable. They have weird marketing, oddball names, and unprofessional customer service. I once went to a cannibas "church" in San Jose, CA, where they told me I could smoke up in their…

that analogy is no more applicable than saying my barista enjoys coffee. alcohol and weed are not directly comparable. (i would also posit that many servers and bartenders do in fact enjoy the devil's juice on the clock)

> I've never been to a liquor store where the help is visibly drunk or encourages drinking on their property.

Note the emphasis. A lot of people can moderate their drinking to not appear drunk at first glance, or slur their speech when they answer the phone. The same can be said for pot, too.

There's a pretty clear line between too drunk to run a store / bar / whatever, versus sneaking a shot or two on the clock.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#212

Post by stcroixx »

inDigiNeous wrote: post #134
extr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great observation. I think people without a ton of experience with weed fail to appreciate just how different it is compared to alcohol. Back when weed was illegal I used to have a joke I would make with dealers. I would ask them what the strain of the weed I was buying, and usually they would tell me it was some Sour Diesel Purple Hurple Haze Hybrid or whatever (they were making it up on the spot most of the time, I…

Maybe it takes some time to get to know the different strains and how they feel. I mean, I cannot tell the difference between different wines because I am not experienced in that, I can mostly say that this is shit wine and this is good wine. But with this plant, the different strains definitely have different effects, and if you compare a strong indica vs sativa, the effects are very clearly different. I mean, it is…

I've smoked almost daily for over 30 years. Can't tell any difference whatsoever between sativa and indica. It's routine now going into one of these fancy weed places and having them ask me this first and I have to find some way to politely say 'yeah, they're no different for me, sorry'. The junk science around weed is so cringey.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#213

Post by mind-blight »

jefftk wrote: post #150
mind-blight wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Ashland (visiting there right now, in fact) and have family who funded one of the first marijuana companies in the state. Some problems were bad behavior from legal growers, but I'd argue the bigger problems were caused by regulatory and oversight failures from OLCC and enforcement of existing laws on illegal grow operations. 1) OLCC allowed for way too many grow license at first. For a state of 4.3 mill…

On (1) I'm don't see how limiting the number of growers was, or should have been, within OLCC's role. When governments try to match supply to demand this way it generally goes very poorly in the best case (ex: certificate of need requirements for opening hospitals, federal marketing orders limiting production) and runs into regulatory capture in the worst case (ex: increasing the entry requirements for professions to…

Whether you agree with it or not, OLCCs role is to regulate the entire market - including supply and demand. They do the same thing with liquor. Oregon is a controlled liquor state where everything sold has to move through the government. I think they're draconian and heavy handed, but it's absolutely part their job.

Philosophically, I agree with limiting the supply via regulation and licensing for at least the first few years. Everything else was already highly regulated: it's a schedule 1 substance that can't be sold out of state and can only be sold to 21+ in state. Some of the biggest players in the existing black market were the Mexican cartels, and they absolutely were trying to take advantage of the legal status to hide illegal activity.

Nothing about that market says it will go well with an immediate free-for-all. Long-term that may be ok, but short term that was just unrealistic

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#214

Post by kybernetyk »

lelanthran wrote: post #188
kybernetyk wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a pedo is not a sexual orientation. It’s something went really wrong with you territory.

> Being a pedo is not a sexual orientation. It’s something went really wrong with you territory. Regardless of what you think, society has already decided that one can't help who they are attracted to. We, collectively, have already decided that a person cannot choose who they are attracted to.

Yeah, I'd like to see what happens when you go out and tell society that pedophilia is completely normal and fine...

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#215

Post by lelanthran »

kybernetyk wrote: post #214
lelanthran wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being a pedo is not a sexual orientation. It’s something went really wrong with you territory. Regardless of what you think, society has already decided that one can't help who they are attracted to. We, collectively, have already decided that a person cannot choose who they are attracted to.

Yeah, I'd like to see what happens when you go out and tell society that pedophilia is completely normal and fine...

> Yeah, I'd like to see what happens when you go out and tell society that pedophilia is completely normal and fine...

I didn't say it is. I said that society has already decided that who a person feels sexually attracted to is not under that person's control.

Are you seriously arguing that a person's sexual attraction to another is under the control of that person?

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#216

Post by latchkey »

calibas wrote: post #102

Fact #1: It's so easy to produce large quantities of good quality cannabis if you know what you're doing. Just need sunshine, water, soil, and fertilizer, no need to spend much money at all. Fact #2: The thing that made cannabis expensive was it's illegality. The difficulty in growing cannabis was that it had to be done in secret, and you could go to jail if you got caught. Now if you put these facts together, you re…

"so easy" is proportional to "if you know what you're doing"

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#217

Post by latchkey »

flybrand wrote: post #4

Crops have a shelf life and a consumption window - they are perishable. There’s enormous investment going on in technologies to enhance the storage of downstream products. That will pay off, in the same way that the excess crops of the Ohio valley were profitable once they could be converted to alcohol. Today’s glut is an abundance of raw material that indicates demand for some method to store the product longer.

I stored a pounds of weed in air tight 5 gallon homedepot buckets for many years (forgot about them actually when I shut down my operation). After pulling it out and sampling it, still smelled fresh and smoked well. I could have easily sold it.

As long as it is stored well, I don't think this is as major of a concern as you're making it out to be.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#218

Post by latchkey »

loeg wrote: post #85

Weed is incredibly easy to grow and consumers simply cannot consume all that much of it. Half of all weed users like the idea of investing in weed industries. Too much investor money chasing a small TAM.

It really isn't easy to grow at scale. There is a huge amount of work involved.

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#219

Post by mind-blight »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #206
mind-blight wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true until the market is saturated. Most consumers aren't going to double their consumption if price falls by half - unless you're basically an addict, there are diminishing returns to consumption. Oregon grew way more than the state would ever consume, regardless of price for multiple years.

Saturated at what price point though? Until you can get high as cheaply as you can get your hands on a six pack of beer I don't thing we'll see demand plateau.

Some years, I'd argue you would struggle to move all of the product if it was even free. I don't think you understand just how much weed was produced in Oregon. You're speaking generally, so don't know if you're taking into consideration the specifics of the Oregon market. Total US demand has very little impact on the legal Oregon market, except to encourage more legal growers to sell part of their crop black market in other states. Oregon produced so much that even releasing the pressure valve that way didn't stop the market from cratering.

And, at the very least, the market was saturated below the break even point for production. The retail price didn't completely crater because dispensaries limited the supply based on their location, but a lot of producers could not move their product in the legal market and were left twiddling they're thumbs

Re: How the marijuana ‘green rush’ fell apart

#220

Post by alexose »

bogomipz wrote: post #101
alexose wrote: post #11

I live on the Oregon/California border, where a lot of growers spilled over from Humboldt County and elsewhere. I've seen a few ups and downs in the market, but nothing like what happened over the last two years. There was a moment in 2020 when more acres of weed were being grown than alfalfa . Neighbors were signing multi-year contracts to rent out their water rights. And oh, all of the terrible behavior that the ru…

>"Whereas my plant takes half a decade to establish, then produces $10 of fruit in a good year." I would be interested in hearing more detail about the economics of the $10. Is this price you get from selling your grapes to someone else or is the net from selling the wine that you produce from your plants?

Well, I don't make my living off of growing grapes. I just do that part for fun. So my napkin math is basically $1.50 per pound, which is on the low end of what I pay when I buy them from a vineyard.

Real grape growers are looking to maximize dollar per acre. There's a lot that goes into it if you're trying to turn a profit. But at the end of the day it's about keeping the yield high and the input costs (especially labor) low.

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