12 ms·

In most recreational states, cannabis is taxed heavily at every step in the supply chain, so the highest quality still ends up being very expensive -- upward of

by bryans 5y ago

In most recreational states, cannabis is taxed heavily at every step in the supply chain, so the highest quality still ends up being very expensive -- upward of $400/oz. The black market has the exact same quality at the wholesale price, typically 40-60% less than retail, with the added bonus of not having the government involved. For a daily or heavy smoker, a ~50% discount is a massive amount of money.

dumbfoundded 5y ago
Additionally the taxes create operational overhead to stay compliant. Every product follows a chain of custody similar to pharmaceuticals. Even the scales used must be of the same spec used for gold weighing and cost roughly $1,500 each. It's not just the dispensaries but the wholesalers, processors, and cultivators need to buy these scales and register them once a year with the state for $100. Furthermore the batches sizes are too small for the cultivators and processors. In Oregon, it was 15lbs each. An outdoor harvest may bring 1,500lbs an acre. Each test costs roughly $50 plus the labor for a human measuring it. Even if it was all going to biomass processing (think isolates and distillates used for edibles and vapes), the same process applies. Part of the reason to justify all of this regulation was to ensure that the blackmarket would update accordingly. Instead, rich investors took control of the cannabis market and the underground market thrived without enforcement pressures. Poor people who actually suffered the consequences of prohibition received none of the benefits of legalization. This issue is certainly economic and racial. Now the legal cannabis market wants to expand but can't. Now it has to compete with a market thriving due to enforcement evaporating. One way is to reduce taxes. This would make it more profitable for the already rich existing investors in cannabis to make more money. Taxes are extreme and certainly need to be reduced but the real issue is supply chain and access to market. It's really difficult to sell weed legally if you want to. More importantly, it's expensive. We should make it cheap to sell weed. You should be able to sell weed like alcohol. Alcohol licenses are much cheaper and with much larger quotas. Additionally alcohol is more standardized than cannabis while facing less supply chain inspections & requirements. There should be strong exceptions to small producers. Also, interstate sales should be allowed. Illicit markets serving out of state customers won't go legit if they can't ship across state lines. Especially to adjacent states with legalized cannabis. Isn't it crazy you can't ship weed from Oregon to Washington? Lowering the barrier to market would have the additional benefit of enabling smaller market participants like the people who did it before it was legal. I actually have no problem with very high taxes on the larger companies. Maybe it'll fund building schools and hospitals in the places ravaged by the drug war. It's a great disgrace that our laws have prevented any reasonable path for going legit while demonizing them in the process.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  If people can sell pies, vegetables, dairy and sometimes cider at informal farmers markets, cannabis should be the same. Moldy cannabis is self-apparent in most cases. Toxic distilled alcohol isn't. Some claim you can use a flame test to detect poisonous liquor.
  - namibj 5y ago
    Well, a flame test is suitable (at least against liquor that isn't deliberately trying to kill you), but the naked eye isn't sophisticated enough to analyze the spectrum.
    - OneTimePetes 5y ago
      sodium dichromate ?
  - bryans 5y ago
    Some states did initially allow co-op markets where farmers got to sell directly to consumers, and only needed to test large batches to meet requirements. The prices were very low because there were no extra middlemen to get taxed, and because each farmer was its own vendor, you could buy very large quantities in one location -- and I think the concept eventually got shut down for that reason.
    - OneTimePetes 5y ago
      The middle-man feared to be cut out and replaced by new humbler middle-man and lobbied for safety regulations to kill the emerging competition?
      - pibechorro 5y ago
        Ding ding ding.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        And the regulators obliged because they got to take a cut and control how it gets spent and they get to pick winners by exerting influence over the myriad of licensing and compliance stuff that legitimate business in this day and age. Win-win, so long as you don't care about the outcome for the peasants.
darthrupert 5y ago
50% is worth the diminshed crime, and nobody should consume cannabis daily.
- lordfoom 5y ago
  That's, like, just your opinion, man.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  > nobody should consume cannabis daily. Only a sith etc.. You do know there are low THC strains available? And that there are people who self medicate with cannabis for scores of reasons? What exactly are you scared is going to happen to these people? An increased risk of bronchitis? Some people would consider that a great trade for reduction of chronic pain, nausea, or seizures.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Medical use notwithstanding, people who use cannabis on a daily basis will probably tend to produce and pursue bad ideas. I've been there when I was younger. That state of mind is like turning the temperature up on the generative function in the mind. Lots of exciting, weird shit reveals itself to your conscious perception. On the other hand, our brains probably evolved to favor adaptive ideation. If that system's filters are always tweaked or turned off, then eventually the ideation will be misaligned with the "sober" environment.
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      > people who use cannabis on a daily basis will probably tend to produce and pursue bad ideas I'm convinced people just produce and pursue bad ideas in general. That's why our society functions best by rewarding people with good ideas, and making damn sure everybody knows the core ones, from language to mathematics. Every idea starts out bad, anyway. That's what design, engineering, and craft are for: Making ideas better until they're useful, beautiful, or good enough to experiment further with.
    - 5y ago
staticassertion 5y ago
I'd expect Eaze to have a bigger impact than anything else. It's hard to beat a curated experience plus delivery.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dkdk8283 5y ago
Great example that taxes and government involvement aren’t always positive.
pibechorro 5y ago
They demonize it for a decade, create a sophisticated black market, and now via pen on paper they want a pound of flesh? Pfff.. let them compete in the open market. What value do they provide? None. They are owed nothing, if anything they need to pay restitution to the thousands who rotted in jail for non violent pocession of a flower.
MisterTea 5y ago
> For a daily or heavy smoker, a ~50% discount is a massive amount of money. Its more than that. I have a few dispensarys in CA and the experience is shit. The places are loaded with cash because they cant legally accept credit or debit cards. So you have to bring cash or use their ATM and get charged a withdrawal fee. This also means they are targets for robbery so security at these places is crazy with guards, waiting rooms and check points. This meeans you have to wait upwards of 20 minutes just to get inside to wait on a counter line for another 10 minutes. The experience is miserable. My NYC dealer has been in the game for ages and moves volume. You can buy plates (pounds) from him if you wanted (usually $1800-2400 depending on the strain). I send a text and get an automated menu reply, text back my order plus address and within an hour or less someone is outside in an "uber" or "lyft" with my weed. I pay $80-100 for 0.5 oz. BTW, if you live in NYC and pay over ~$30-35 for an eighth ounce you're getting ripped off BIG time (unless its in a branded bag like Jungle Boys etc.) I have a friend who moved to Williamsburg tell me how they buy from same the guy I do, more than double the price and sell it to "stupid rich white kids from Iowa".
- hackingthelema 5y ago
  > Its more than that. I have a few dispensarys in CA and the experience is shit. The places are loaded with cash because they cant legally accept credit or debit cards. So you have to bring cash or use their ATM and get charged a withdrawal fee. This also means they are targets for robbery so security at these places is crazy with guards, waiting rooms and check points. This meeans you have to wait upwards of 20 minutes just to get inside to wait on a counter line for another 10 minutes. The experience is miserable. That sounds awful to me. Here in Canada, legal dispensaries accept debit, cash, and various credit cards; you can order online for in-person, same-day delivery (within a couple hours); you can order online and pickup in person, too. If you go in-person, you might have to wait if their employees are all helping other customers, but otherwise I can be in and out within 5 minutes. > I pay $80-100 for 0.5 oz. That seems obscene, coming from Canada. A decent-quality 28g bag of weed here tops out at 160 CAD, from what I've seen (edit: and I just bought an ounce I am perfectly happy with for 90 CAD). I'm not sure I've seen an ounce for more than that. Half-oz usually range from 60-80 CAD, depending on quality/sales. At this point I greatly prefer the legal dispensaries to any black market weed for quality, convenience, price -- whether MOM or dealers. I think the only place dealers would have an advantage is more freedom to offer a better price to certain clients.
monocasa 5y ago
Which states? Oregon, and Colorado are no where near that, and quality $125/oz can be found.
opportune 5y ago
Hate to say it but your dispensary might just be ripping you off. I’ve searched high and low for good prices and found that even in states like CA (on average much more expensive than e.g. OR) you can find good priced bulk deals on good - not amazing but at least 6-7/10 - product. Definitely on par with the wider market’s prices. Talking about ~$150/oz. The problem is just most dispensaries don’t want to sell this presumably because 1 it’s low margin 2 Demand for large quantities actually isn’t that high, go into a brick and mortar dispensary and usually you will wait behind someone asking really basic/newbie questions to the budtender. Which is to say, most customers are not hardcore and aren’t buying large quantities. Most customers probably don’t even know how much things “should” cost either, so no need to go super cheap. 3 It basically cannibalizes business from their much higher margin SKUs, like 1/8 oz of 9/10 quality weed. 4 It starts a race to the bottom which isn’t really where you want to be.

by bryans 5y ago

dumbfoundded 5y ago

Additionally the taxes create operational overhead to stay compliant. Every product follows a chain of custody similar to pharmaceuticals. Even the scales used must be of the same spec used for gold weighing and cost roughly $1,500 each. It's not just the dispensaries but the wholesalers, processors, and cultivators need to buy these scales and register them once a year with the state for $100. Furthermore the batches sizes are too small for the cultivators and processors. In Oregon, it was 15lbs each. An outdoor harvest may bring 1,500lbs an acre. Each test costs roughly $50 plus the labor for a human measuring it. Even if it was all going to biomass processing (think isolates and distillates used for edibles and vapes), the same process applies. Part of the reason to justify all of this regulation was to ensure that the blackmarket would update accordingly. Instead, rich investors took control of the cannabis market and the underground market thrived without enforcement pressures. Poor people who actually suffered the consequences of prohibition received none of the benefits of legalization. This issue is certainly economic and racial. Now the legal cannabis market wants to expand but can't. Now it has to compete with a market thriving due to enforcement evaporating. One way is to reduce taxes. This would make it more profitable for the already rich existing investors in cannabis to make more money. Taxes are extreme and certainly need to be reduced but the real issue is supply chain and access to market. It's really difficult to sell weed legally if you want to. More importantly, it's expensive. We should make it cheap to sell weed. You should be able to sell weed like alcohol. Alcohol licenses are much cheaper and with much larger quotas. Additionally alcohol is more standardized than cannabis while facing less supply chain inspections & requirements. There should be strong exceptions to small producers. Also, interstate sales should be allowed. Illicit markets serving out of state customers won't go legit if they can't ship across state lines. Especially to adjacent states with legalized cannabis. Isn't it crazy you can't ship weed from Oregon to Washington? Lowering the barrier to market would have the additional benefit of enabling smaller market participants like the people who did it before it was legal. I actually have no problem with very high taxes on the larger companies. Maybe it'll fund building schools and hospitals in the places ravaged by the drug war. It's a great disgrace that our laws have prevented any reasonable path for going legit while demonizing them in the process.

aww_dang 5y ago
If people can sell pies, vegetables, dairy and sometimes cider at informal farmers markets, cannabis should be the same. Moldy cannabis is self-apparent in most cases. Toxic distilled alcohol isn't. Some claim you can use a flame test to detect poisonous liquor.
- namibj 5y ago
  Well, a flame test is suitable (at least against liquor that isn't deliberately trying to kill you), but the naked eye isn't sophisticated enough to analyze the spectrum.
  - OneTimePetes 5y ago
    sodium dichromate ?
- bryans 5y ago
  Some states did initially allow co-op markets where farmers got to sell directly to consumers, and only needed to test large batches to meet requirements. The prices were very low because there were no extra middlemen to get taxed, and because each farmer was its own vendor, you could buy very large quantities in one location -- and I think the concept eventually got shut down for that reason.
  - OneTimePetes 5y ago
    The middle-man feared to be cut out and replaced by new humbler middle-man and lobbied for safety regulations to kill the emerging competition?
    - pibechorro 5y ago
      Ding ding ding.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      And the regulators obliged because they got to take a cut and control how it gets spent and they get to pick winners by exerting influence over the myriad of licensing and compliance stuff that legitimate business in this day and age. Win-win, so long as you don't care about the outcome for the peasants.

darthrupert 5y ago

50% is worth the diminshed crime, and nobody should consume cannabis daily.

lordfoom 5y ago
That's, like, just your opinion, man.
mandmandam 5y ago
> nobody should consume cannabis daily. Only a sith etc.. You do know there are low THC strains available? And that there are people who self medicate with cannabis for scores of reasons? What exactly are you scared is going to happen to these people? An increased risk of bronchitis? Some people would consider that a great trade for reduction of chronic pain, nausea, or seizures.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Medical use notwithstanding, people who use cannabis on a daily basis will probably tend to produce and pursue bad ideas. I've been there when I was younger. That state of mind is like turning the temperature up on the generative function in the mind. Lots of exciting, weird shit reveals itself to your conscious perception. On the other hand, our brains probably evolved to favor adaptive ideation. If that system's filters are always tweaked or turned off, then eventually the ideation will be misaligned with the "sober" environment.
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    > people who use cannabis on a daily basis will probably tend to produce and pursue bad ideas I'm convinced people just produce and pursue bad ideas in general. That's why our society functions best by rewarding people with good ideas, and making damn sure everybody knows the core ones, from language to mathematics. Every idea starts out bad, anyway. That's what design, engineering, and craft are for: Making ideas better until they're useful, beautiful, or good enough to experiment further with.
  - 5y ago

staticassertion 5y ago

I'd expect Eaze to have a bigger impact than anything else. It's hard to beat a curated experience plus delivery.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dkdk8283 5y ago

Great example that taxes and government involvement aren’t always positive.

pibechorro 5y ago

They demonize it for a decade, create a sophisticated black market, and now via pen on paper they want a pound of flesh? Pfff.. let them compete in the open market. What value do they provide? None. They are owed nothing, if anything they need to pay restitution to the thousands who rotted in jail for non violent pocession of a flower.

MisterTea 5y ago

> For a daily or heavy smoker, a ~50% discount is a massive amount of money. Its more than that. I have a few dispensarys in CA and the experience is shit. The places are loaded with cash because they cant legally accept credit or debit cards. So you have to bring cash or use their ATM and get charged a withdrawal fee. This also means they are targets for robbery so security at these places is crazy with guards, waiting rooms and check points. This meeans you have to wait upwards of 20 minutes just to get inside to wait on a counter line for another 10 minutes. The experience is miserable. My NYC dealer has been in the game for ages and moves volume. You can buy plates (pounds) from him if you wanted (usually $1800-2400 depending on the strain). I send a text and get an automated menu reply, text back my order plus address and within an hour or less someone is outside in an "uber" or "lyft" with my weed. I pay $80-100 for 0.5 oz. BTW, if you live in NYC and pay over ~$30-35 for an eighth ounce you're getting ripped off BIG time (unless its in a branded bag like Jungle Boys etc.) I have a friend who moved to Williamsburg tell me how they buy from same the guy I do, more than double the price and sell it to "stupid rich white kids from Iowa".

hackingthelema 5y ago
> Its more than that. I have a few dispensarys in CA and the experience is shit. The places are loaded with cash because they cant legally accept credit or debit cards. So you have to bring cash or use their ATM and get charged a withdrawal fee. This also means they are targets for robbery so security at these places is crazy with guards, waiting rooms and check points. This meeans you have to wait upwards of 20 minutes just to get inside to wait on a counter line for another 10 minutes. The experience is miserable. That sounds awful to me. Here in Canada, legal dispensaries accept debit, cash, and various credit cards; you can order online for in-person, same-day delivery (within a couple hours); you can order online and pickup in person, too. If you go in-person, you might have to wait if their employees are all helping other customers, but otherwise I can be in and out within 5 minutes. > I pay $80-100 for 0.5 oz. That seems obscene, coming from Canada. A decent-quality 28g bag of weed here tops out at 160 CAD, from what I've seen (edit: and I just bought an ounce I am perfectly happy with for 90 CAD). I'm not sure I've seen an ounce for more than that. Half-oz usually range from 60-80 CAD, depending on quality/sales. At this point I greatly prefer the legal dispensaries to any black market weed for quality, convenience, price -- whether MOM or dealers. I think the only place dealers would have an advantage is more freedom to offer a better price to certain clients.

monocasa 5y ago

Which states? Oregon, and Colorado are no where near that, and quality $125/oz can be found.

opportune 5y ago

Hate to say it but your dispensary might just be ripping you off. I’ve searched high and low for good prices and found that even in states like CA (on average much more expensive than e.g. OR) you can find good priced bulk deals on good - not amazing but at least 6-7/10 - product. Definitely on par with the wider market’s prices. Talking about ~$150/oz. The problem is just most dispensaries don’t want to sell this presumably because 1 it’s low margin 2 Demand for large quantities actually isn’t that high, go into a brick and mortar dispensary and usually you will wait behind someone asking really basic/newbie questions to the budtender. Which is to say, most customers are not hardcore and aren’t buying large quantities. Most customers probably don’t even know how much things “should” cost either, so no need to go super cheap. 3 It basically cannibalizes business from their much higher margin SKUs, like 1/8 oz of 9/10 quality weed. 4 It starts a race to the bottom which isn’t really where you want to be.