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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?

#21

Post by WhyNotHugo »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
mandmandam wrote: post #4

So wait, they're holding (and destroying!) massive quantities to keep the price of medical marijuana "34% higher" than the black market price, then acting surprised that their product isn't moving? > Forced, in most cases, to sell to a provincial wholesaler along with everyone else in the sector Okay I know nothing about Canada's cannabis market, but who thought that could possibly be a good idea?

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

This is really the worst kind of shit. Destroy food so they can charge more, while so many starving people could use that food.

I've heard it a million times, but it'll never stop shocking me to here about this idea: Keeping market value up is more important than reducing starvation.

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

#22

Post by treis »

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 much pot.

Say that there's 260 million adults in the US and they all smoke 1 joint per day. Assuming:

1 joint = 1 g of marijuana

1 lb = 454g

1 acre can yield 600 lbs of marijuana

1 farm is 1000 acres

If you do the math, that means we need roughly 350 farms worth of marijuana. Or in terms of acreage, roughly 0.04% of all the acreage in the U.S. under cultivation. In other words, even if we assume a ridiculous level of smoking there's simply not a huge demand for pot. Using more realistic amounts, a handful of large farms could produce all the marijuana consumed in the country.

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

#23

Post by PragmaticPulp »

> 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 out, plus they can slowly out-compete the illegal sellers by undercutting their pricing.

It seems the real problem is that they are afraid to cut their margins because it would break their financial models and risk the stock price. It’s strange that they’d rather destroy excess product than try to move it at a steep discount.

I’m also afraid this could create other problems by giving them a huge incentive to try to push more and more weed consumption among the public. Whatever your thoughts about weed, I hope we can all agree that over-consumption is not good and that it could be a problem if multi-billion dollar companies are stuck in a situation where they need to greatly increase the public’s consumption of weed to become profitable.

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

#24

Post by gruez »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #21
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.

This is really the worst kind of shit. Destroy food so they can charge more, while so many starving people could use that food. I've heard it a million times, but it'll never stop shocking me to here about this idea: Keeping market value up is more important than reducing starvation.

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

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

#25

Post by SECProto »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
mandmandam wrote: post #4

So wait, they're holding (and destroying!) massive quantities to keep the price of medical marijuana "34% higher" than the black market price, then acting surprised that their product isn't moving? > Forced, in most cases, to sell to a provincial wholesaler along with everyone else in the sector Okay I know nothing about Canada's cannabis market, but who thought that could possibly be a good idea?

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!

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

#26

Post by reidjs »

staticassertion wrote: post #7

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.…

Not everyone was lucky enough to have a chill dealer. It reminds me of joe Rogans bit about how in order to buy this harmless plant you have to interact with a criminal. Oh, and commit a crime. Legalization is 100% the right thing.

You can grow it yourself or get it delivered if you hate the dispensary so much.

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

#27

Post by somehnacct3757 »

staticassertion wrote: post #7

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 shops on the main roads in SF have a certain aesthetic to appeal to a new audience of smokers. If the new age guru / apple store thing isn't your vibe, look for shops off main roads, they tend to be somewhere btwn the LA medicinal alleyway shop and the apple shop. Bloom Room comes to mind. Small, focused on quality, had (? pre covid) a volcano you could use on premise. It's still a store, they aren't gonna smoke you out and be your friend. But SF weed scene is not yet a techy monoculture

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

#28

Post by mandmandam »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #12
mandmandam wrote: post #4

So wait, they're holding (and destroying!) massive quantities to keep the price of medical marijuana "34% higher" than the black market price, then acting surprised that their product isn't moving? > Forced, in most cases, to sell to a provincial wholesaler along with everyone else in the sector Okay I know nothing about Canada's cannabis market, but who thought that could possibly be a good idea?

You're misreading. They're not being ordered to destroy crops in order to support the medical marijuana price. They're destroying crops because there was a bubble and they've created way too much supply. Cannabis stocks were a fad for a while, and I know lots of people who invested in them blindly. The number of legal cannabis retailers is exploding. I live in a mid sized town and there are three more opening this mo…

> they're not being ordered to destroy crops in order to support the medical marijuana price.

I didn't say, or suggest, that anyone was ordered to destroy crops?

They created too much supply, yes. Follow the logic chain out a step. If they wanted to sell it, they could lower the price...

Instead they _choose_ to keep the price above the black market price. The black market price which is already inflated far above production cost, by virtue of it being illegal.

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

#29

Post by dylan604 »

reidjs wrote: post #26
staticassertion wrote: post #7

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.…

Not everyone was lucky enough to have a chill dealer. It reminds me of joe Rogans bit about how in order to buy this harmless plant you have to interact with a criminal. Oh, and commit a crime. Legalization is 100% the right thing. You can grow it yourself or get it delivered if you hate the dispensary so much.

>You can grow it yourself

Yes, you can legally do this where it is allowed, but other than that, it is pretty much a copout. Not everyone can grow things well. Not everyone has a green thumb. Also, weed is not the easiest plants to grow and takes a lot of time and effort to get quality flower. It's also not like you can just walk over to plant(s) whenever you want to smoke up. The plant has cycles of when it is making flower and when it's not. Now, you can trick it out with grow tents, lights, hydroponics, etc, but now you're a freaking grow house and most people definitely don't want that.

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