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

thewalrus.ca

171–180 of 227 posts

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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my question. My question is how much easier can it be? I'm just not sure what you are complaining about. Give me an example of a more accessible drug than marijuana.

Sugar Edit: Didn't mean to post a one word reply While it's not classified as a drug, it's definitely addicting. Also, you question is very leading. More accessible? Depends on location. There are plenty of places where meth is much more accessible than anything else including alcohol.

>While it's not classified as a drug, it's definitely addicting.

I'm starting to realize how true this is. I didn't know my beef jerky has sugar in it until they came out with a sugar free version. I assume that's how they get people to eat otherwise garbage food and eat a lot of it. I bet if they starting taking sugar out of everything the US would get a lot healthier real fast. At least make it more obvious if something has sugar than the 15+ variants on nutrition labels.

That'll never happen, the US government is already bought, sold and paid for.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love when the inexperienced stand up like an expert. There's a huge difference between having a plant that is alive and a plant that is producing quality flower of enough quantity to make a difference. There is much better info on the web a simple search will show you compared to me describing to someone that already thinks it's super easy.

It's not called weed because it's hard to grow. If you're not a weed snob and just trying to save a few bucks anything that the plant makes will be fine.

I have a "friend" with a single solitary plant in "their" backyard right now. It's been growing from a seed since February. It is barely 10" tall. No signs of whether it will be a female or male. It has been getting watered and fertilized with all of the other veggies/herbs in the garden. This plant is not going to be keeping my "friend" in supply of flower for any kind of regular use.

You too sound like someone that has never tried growing their own plant. I can tell you from experience, of my "friend", that it takes way more effort. My "friend" is not using lights or anything to trick the plant into doing more like other places do. It's just a green thing with unique leaves in the garden.

Edit: Correction, it's barely 20" tall now.

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

#174

We've been hearing about surplus for several years now, and yet the price of weed is going up, not down. I regularly see $400 retail ounces in Oregon for top shelf. Supply/demand should push the price to the floor with this Surplus gargantus, and yet prices continue to climb. It's like ECON 101 doesn't apply to pot. What are they going to do? Dump it in ocean? What I want to know is how retail is maintaining these ob…

Several reasons prices stay high: The dispensaries are limited regionally by law, so it's not truly a free market. There are often taxes on the weed as well. Gray and black market prices are significantly cheaper. A lot of the excess stuff is sold to regions where it's still illegal, although those hold outs are dwindling. Production cost per pound is expensive, and going up across the board: labor, electricity, wate…

Can you explain to me then why there is such a surplus?

All of above sound rational to me, and yet, massive and growing surplus while retail prices are increasing. There is bullshit somewhere. Is this what you mean by not quite a free market, that these surpluses are a function of market barriers? They have no one to sell it too?

That might explain why concentrates are dropping in price. If you can't sell it, make something with it you can sell. Conjecture, that.

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

#175
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I regularly see $400 retail ounces in Oregon for top shelf. I think because this article refers to Canada, not the US, we can't infer things about the market in the US due to the low likelihood of smuggling occurring. What has the quality and the cost of 'low-grade' weed done? I suspect the quality of the bottom shelf has increased drastically at the same cost.

Yes, but the same is true in Oregon. Massive surplus. It was some silly number like enough weed to make 1 billion joints. I'll find the number.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

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

#176
post #67

A bit off topic, but for the smokers here what are your thoughts on lung cancer and other negatives associated with smoking? I bought a vaporizer but not sure it is actually healthier than smoking joints. Tried edibles but can’t stand the lack of uniformity and time to kick in.

> A bit off topic, but for the smokers here what are your thoughts on lung cancer and other negatives associated with smoking? No one knows if smoking weed causes lung cancer, but if it did, you'd think someone would have noticed sometime in the last 10K years. However, everyone knows that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer. But this notion is technically not true. Smoking national brand cigarettes definitely causes…

I am a bit skeptical of that studies findings. However, it is quite absurd that the US anti-smoking legislation (taxes, advertising bans, etc.) completely ignore the different forms of tobacco. Pure tobacco is probably better, and chewing tobacco is considerably better, and vaping is not even tobacco. Yet the US treats most the same way and many states are even adding tobacco taxes on vaping.

The reasons I can come up with: 1. The anti-smoking movement became very classist. 2. Big tobacco certainly prefers that cigerettes remain the most common form of tobacco since they are more profitable. 3. States like collecting taxes and don't care about the actual effect on public health.

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

#177
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>Uk is over 18, but ask for id if you have any doubt less than 21, 3yr margin, common sense People are much worse at estimating ages then they think. If the policy is "ID anyone that looks <21" many 16/17 year olds will look 23 and not get asked. I worked for a chain of liquor stores that had an "ID 25 and under" policy - and to check it, they would send in 25 year olds. Lots of time staff would fail those checks.…

>to check it, they would send in 25 year olds Well, not sure if typo, but the margin of error is the point surely? It's fine that 23 year olds who look 26 slip through as long as 17 year olds who look 23 don't. Otherwise the store is effectively saying "we expect your judgement to be up to 7 years too high and account for that" but also "you're in trouble if your judgement is 1 year too high"

Two things - first, no typo, but in my jurisdiction legal alcohol age is 19, so +6 years is the margin of error (at that particular set of stores, anyway). Second, it's more about changing how the question is framed in the mind of the clerk. Instead of "is this person definitely over 19?" it's "is this person definitely over 25?" - which has a much safer error rate if there's a big penalty for selling liquor to minors and a small penalty for asking for ID when you don't need to.

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

#178

We've been hearing about surplus for several years now, and yet the price of weed is going up, not down. I regularly see $400 retail ounces in Oregon for top shelf. Supply/demand should push the price to the floor with this Surplus gargantus, and yet prices continue to climb. It's like ECON 101 doesn't apply to pot. What are they going to do? Dump it in ocean? What I want to know is how retail is maintaining these ob…

if demand is inelastic, then there's actually no reason for dispensaries to lower the price. They might even be buying the weed for less and taking the profit for themselves.

It could be collusion, but maybe dispensaries have tried sales and found themselves making less.

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

#179

Weed being legal is cool (and a huge deal and way overdue) but, until I moved to SF, I still bought from a dealer. It was cheaper and I got really high quality stuff, got to give feedback to the guy on the strains, chocolates, etc. Plus my guy would smoke me up for free a good amount of the time and we'd just chill and chat for a bit. Legal weed is wayyyy more expensive in my experience and I dislike the experience.…

The regulators were way too aggressive. They overburdened farms and dispensaries to such a degree that legal sources are having a hard time competing with the black market even though dispensaries were considered essential businesses (able to stay open) through the pandemic. Now California is bailing out the industry to the tune of $100M. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-14/californ...

I’ll admit, the rapid turnaround from black market to corporate welfare within such a short timeframe is kind of shocking.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several reasons prices stay high: The dispensaries are limited regionally by law, so it's not truly a free market. There are often taxes on the weed as well. Gray and black market prices are significantly cheaper. A lot of the excess stuff is sold to regions where it's still illegal, although those hold outs are dwindling. Production cost per pound is expensive, and going up across the board: labor, electricity, wate…

Can you explain to me then why there is such a surplus? All of above sound rational to me, and yet, massive and growing surplus while retail prices are increasing. There is bullshit somewhere. Is this what you mean by not quite a free market, that these surpluses are a function of market barriers? They have no one to sell it too? That might explain why concentrates are dropping in price. If you can't sell it, make so…

Good question. I wish I had a good answer. You updated your post while I was writing my reply haha

Indeed, I believe you nailed it on the update

A friend had a situation where he grew a few thousand pounds too much in Oregon before his dispensaries had opened. However, the regulators knew he had produced it all and forced him to sit on the inventory...

He decided to send excess trim (waste leaf trimming) from his operations in California up and bring the quality flower back to Cali to sell on the black market here.

This was illegal, obviously! Later, he happily destroyed the "excess" in Oregon!

Same guy, a year later had facilium wilt and powdery mildew infect his 1000 light operation in LA. He had to destroy thousands of pounds there.. but he really moved it to the black market. I feel sorry for the people that smoked those flowers.

It's a shady industry! There is bullshit and fraud everywhere.

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