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The one thing missing from most comments I see here is price parity and equality. I've lived in Ontario (government liquor stores) and now live in Alberta (pri

by giarc 9y ago

The one thing missing from most comments I see here is price parity and equality. I've lived in Ontario (government liquor stores) and now live in Alberta (private liquor stores). The big perk about Ontario liquor is that it's the same price no matter what store you walk into. Doesn't matter if you are in a small town of 1000 people with one liquor store or in Toronto with 500 stores. In Alberta, if you are in a small town and your only option is Joe's Liquor Store, you're going to pay $55 for 24 bottles of Canadian that go for $20 less at the Safeway liquor store in a city. And in actuality, you can pay $55 for that case in the middle of Calgary if it's a mom and pop shop. I suspect the same will be true for marijuana. Same prices regardless of what LCBO you walk into.

aphextron 9y ago
>I suspect the same will be true for marijuana. Same prices regardless of what LCBO you walk into. You'd be surprised how self regulating the market is for marijuana though. People always want to make the alcohol analogy, but it's a totally different thing. Marijuana has a long tradition of home cultivation and use, as well as a thriving well established black market which will always pick up the slack. Prices tend to be very stable across the board in California at least. Without any government run outlets the price is the same across the entire state.
- giarc 9y ago
  Here's the government run liquor store in Moosonee, Ontario [0] Moosonee is a town of 2000 people in northern Ontario. It is an 8 hour train ride away from Timmins Ontario (train or plane access only). Timmins is an 8 hour drive away from Toronto. I can't imagine a situation where the marijuana prices in this town would be comparable to downtown Toronto given the amount of labour needed to transport the marijuana to this remote location. And I'm not really speculating, we see this all the time. Citizens of our northern territories (YK, NWT, NT) are used to paying $25/L of milk and so on. Sure this is a bit of hyperbole, but it points to one of the perks of government run/controlled distribution, namely those in the cities can help to subsidize the price for those in smaller towns across Ontario. Is this government controlled model the best? Probably not but let's remember this is unchartered territory. We can look to the individual states for learnings (ie. Colorado, Washington) but Ontario is 1 million km^2 and California is half that with a much greater population density. They are different in many ways. 0 - https://goo.gl/iFNkaC https://goo.gl/iFNkaC

by giarc 9y ago

aphextron 9y ago

>I suspect the same will be true for marijuana. Same prices regardless of what LCBO you walk into. You'd be surprised how self regulating the market is for marijuana though. People always want to make the alcohol analogy, but it's a totally different thing. Marijuana has a long tradition of home cultivation and use, as well as a thriving well established black market which will always pick up the slack. Prices tend to be very stable across the board in California at least. Without any government run outlets the price is the same across the entire state.

giarc 9y ago
Here's the government run liquor store in Moosonee, Ontario [0] Moosonee is a town of 2000 people in northern Ontario. It is an 8 hour train ride away from Timmins Ontario (train or plane access only). Timmins is an 8 hour drive away from Toronto. I can't imagine a situation where the marijuana prices in this town would be comparable to downtown Toronto given the amount of labour needed to transport the marijuana to this remote location. And I'm not really speculating, we see this all the time. Citizens of our northern territories (YK, NWT, NT) are used to paying $25/L of milk and so on. Sure this is a bit of hyperbole, but it points to one of the perks of government run/controlled distribution, namely those in the cities can help to subsidize the price for those in smaller towns across Ontario. Is this government controlled model the best? Probably not but let's remember this is unchartered territory. We can look to the individual states for learnings (ie. Colorado, Washington) but Ontario is 1 million km^2 and California is half that with a much greater population density. They are different in many ways. 0 - https://goo.gl/iFNkaC https://goo.gl/iFNkaC