What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed? • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by tenfourwookie » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

emteycz wrote: post #201

effingwewt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very much is from dispensaries, which is what is being discussed. And this does happen everywhere, where prices in dispensaries 'miraculously align' right down to the daily/weekly specials etc. What should be happening is the price going down as shops compete with each other for business- which, incidentally, they all did ~10 years ago. That also miraculously stopped at all shops simultaneously. So it's definitely…

Why doesn't a phone/web delivery service outcompete them?

They do in Southern California. It's a brisk business.

Friend says the bulk of his orders were early AM or after dinner PM. He wouldn't really work during the day. Essentially a split shift. He didn't like it much, but the tips were ludicrous.

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

#212

Post by atatatat » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

ohyeshedid wrote: post #164

josefresco wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Collusion It's either straight up illegal collusion or a "natural" side effect of allowing only "big business" to enter the market. Combined with sky high taxes and "community impact" fees and there's not much room for price differentiation,. I live in a state that is just now seeing recreational shops open and miraculously all their pricing is exactly aligned.

Collusion doesn't need to happen at the point of sale, it could be wholesalers or the growers setting a price structure.

Or new entrants just pricing everything the same as previous entrants to grow the industry, and avoid competition on anything besides quality and specific needs/desires from the plant,

but it's not surprising that an industry still maintaining some semblance of customer service is a weird sight to behold for folks.

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

#213

Post by atatatat » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #84

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #23

> 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…

>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. First, this is semantics, "over-comsumption" is bad no matter the substance, but who is able to define it generally? But this is an experiemnt I would love to see, big companies pu…

I know two dozen pain patients under consuming right now, and for decades.

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

#214

Post by tenfourwookie » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #186

tenfourwookie wrote: post #134

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…

Because these aren't really competitive systems. In the US, since cannabis/CBD/marijuana/etc. are still nominally illegal at the federal level, none of the "legal" operators can avail themselves of the financial system. This prevents things like shuffling product between states, for example, or taking out big loans for expansions that would allow flattening of the market. And, if I remember correctly, Canada's "legal…

Would like to read something on the cannibalization phenomena re: your last paragraph. Link me if you can.

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

#215

Post by effingwewt » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

tenfourwookie wrote: post #208

effingwewt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very much is from dispensaries, which is what is being discussed. And this does happen everywhere, where prices in dispensaries 'miraculously align' right down to the daily/weekly specials etc. What should be happening is the price going down as shops compete with each other for business- which, incidentally, they all did ~10 years ago. That also miraculously stopped at all shops simultaneously. So it's definitely…

I didn't want to respond to the $100 ounce comment because I haven't hit Portland or other larger cities, but I have to agree with you. I can't find even 1/2 ounces for $100. There are shops in Bend selling $75 eighths. It's greed. It's collusion. I don't believe the “No one's making any money” nonsense in the media. We're not making any money, but look at that $156,000 Mercedes SUV parked outside in the reserved spo…

Want to know something more messed up?

In Oregon/Washington the workers, even in the grow ops, are making minimum wage. I could not believe it, even the extract runners.

In Cali, at least where I'm at, most pay with weed only.

None of the workers on the west coast are classified as real workers and as such don't qualify for benefits, and they also enjoy the prospect of being raided at any given time as it's still federally illegal.

I spent a lot of time in the weed business traveling up and down the west coast last 2 years. It was disgusting. I'd ask about jobs everywhere while looking for decent vendors, I was shocked.

Back in the day when it was regulated, I did POS installations, custom POS software, alarms, and set up CCTV with remote viewing for a lot of the local shops, etc. They were supposed to use California weights and measures certified scales but they all used cheap re-calibratable ones. And remember, this is when shops at least pretended to follow the rules. Almost all of them tried to pay me- an actual business, with costs and a brick and mortar location, with weed. And not at their costs- which was nothing initially they operated on consignment but they paid out $2/gram for top shelf weed they sold for $20/g. They tried to pay me at $20/g. I had to step away from all dispensaries completely. I would even go to LA just to buy after that.

Also I would see these people making more money than they could count, and still being unbelievably shady. One place was lying to vendors they were out of town so they didn't have to pay them while counting out stacks of $5k to put in shoe boxes to stack in their home as their storage unit was full. They then tried this exact technique on me when I served them their bill.

When I reminded them I installed their entire network they had me come by to collect cash.

Greed doesn't begin to describe what is going on.

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

#216

Post by OJFord » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:28 AM UTC

R0b0t1 wrote: post #187

OJFord wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tonne is the more common form for (but exactly equivalent to, assuming metric tonnes) the SI megagram (Mg). Anyone that would use the hypothetical 'kilotonne' would use 'Gg' instead. Agriculture works in tonnes though, not SI prefixed grams, so it would just be 1000t. (Source: from writing a lot of code for doing conversions and display and things with differently denominated quantities for ag users!)

There's no reason not to use kiloton.

Sure, it's just as fine as tonne in the first place (I assume you do mean (metric) tonnes, kilo with Imperial or US customary tons would seem to me as weird as calling thou 'milli-inches'). But does anyone actually use it?

We use plain t everywhere because, afaik, that's what the users want, how they think about it even if it's thousands or more of them.

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

#217

Post by bsder » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

tenfourwookie wrote: post #214

bsder wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because these aren't really competitive systems. In the US, since cannabis/CBD/marijuana/etc. are still nominally illegal at the federal level, none of the "legal" operators can avail themselves of the financial system. This prevents things like shuffling product between states, for example, or taking out big loans for expansions that would allow flattening of the market. And, if I remember correctly, Canada's "legal…

Would like to read something on the cannibalization phenomena re: your last paragraph. Link me if you can.

There was a bunch of it at the beginning of legalization in Canada I remember reading about.

It took forever to get supply. Then you had to be an "established" medical marijuana provider to get pre-approved which locked out the "little people" to start. Then there weren't enough approvals of the supply because the procedures were so involved. Then there weren't enough people to approve the paperwork even when it was finished. Then there were local vs federal issues.

In all, it was the standard gigantic bureaucratic clusterfuck, with the added problem of large incumbents dragging their feet and throwing grit into the gears of anyone trying to fix it.

Someone better versed with Canadian politics would probably be better at pinpointing it all because it wasn't just one single thing. It was a slow-motion train wreck.

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

#218

Post by tenfourwookie » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

effingwewt wrote: post #215

tenfourwookie wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't want to respond to the $100 ounce comment because I haven't hit Portland or other larger cities, but I have to agree with you. I can't find even 1/2 ounces for $100. There are shops in Bend selling $75 eighths. It's greed. It's collusion. I don't believe the “No one's making any money” nonsense in the media. We're not making any money, but look at that $156,000 Mercedes SUV parked outside in the reserved spo…

Want to know something more messed up? In Oregon/Washington the workers, even in the grow ops, are making minimum wage. I could not believe it, even the extract runners. In Cali, at least where I'm at, most pay with weed only . None of the workers on the west coast are classified as real workers and as such don't qualify for benefits, and they also enjoy the prospect of being raided at any given time as it's still fe…

You see it even at the retail level. I’m tempted to record every budtender conversation I have and then parse it for verifiability. 33% true? Maybe.

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

#219

Post by xyhopguy » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

tenfourwookie wrote: post #210

xyhopguy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its not hard to get top shelf ounces for $100-140 in oregon...

Retail? No way. Unless you're talking about those 1 oz vacuum bags of burnt yellow-green bud that appears to have been grown in a hydroponic stew for $100/ (hoboweed; spray-painted hemp :D), I haven't seen prices remotely close to that. Not even quality halves at that price. Not even in Colorado, and Colorado is the best bang for your $ in the USA. *Fall harvest prices might dip that low.

i mean this is verifiably wrong:

try this place in salem, really nice stuff and great prices. "Reserve" is their top-of-the-plant pickings that go for $160 oz. Not a big difference between their bulk (75-100) and reserve.

https://www.greencrosscanna.com/commercial-street

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

#220

Post by xyhopguy » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

tenfourwookie wrote: post #208

effingwewt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very much is from dispensaries, which is what is being discussed. And this does happen everywhere, where prices in dispensaries 'miraculously align' right down to the daily/weekly specials etc. What should be happening is the price going down as shops compete with each other for business- which, incidentally, they all did ~10 years ago. That also miraculously stopped at all shops simultaneously. So it's definitely…

I didn't want to respond to the $100 ounce comment because I haven't hit Portland or other larger cities, but I have to agree with you. I can't find even 1/2 ounces for $100. There are shops in Bend selling $75 eighths. It's greed. It's collusion. I don't believe the “No one's making any money” nonsense in the media. We're not making any money, but look at that $156,000 Mercedes SUV parked outside in the reserved spo…

go to greencross in bend, they have the exact prices i'm referring to. Dont go to the stores that purchase from bulk retailers, shops that have their own farms typically have higher quality and lower prices.