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Legal Weed is Hurting San Francisco's Hippies

• rwmj 13y ago
  Well, good. Proper regulation is the whole point. Edit: You (probably) do want control cannabis sales to teenagers. Citation: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201208/study-finds-regular-marijuana-use-damages-teenage-brains http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201208...
• rdl 13y ago
  If only we could do this federally, and then do exactly the same thing to Mexico's narcos.
  • icpmacdo 13y ago
    This is proving a point that a lot of pro legalization people have been saying for years.
    • djrogers 13y ago
      I've long felt this way as well, but increasingly I'm becoming convinced that the narcos would just refocus on coke, meth, heroin, slavery, etc. It's not as if startups are the only entities that can 'pivot'...
      • luscious 13y ago
        Then legalize those as well... Treat addiction. Educate and inform instead of scaring and prohibiting. Instead of the boogey man and crapping bricks of money to build more jails, paying lawyers and DEA, provide safe guidance in drug use. Pay for the the treatment industry and you will get recovering addicts and fewer cartels. Pay for the punishment industry and you will get criminals and cartels. "in your choices lies your talent..."
      • Amadou 13y ago
        That is my understanding of what happened after the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the USA. The original prohibition created a significant amount of criminal infrastructure and faced with alcohol no longer being insanely profitable they switched to a variety of other enterprises, like hard drugs, prostitution, etc. I recall one article put most of the blame for the rise of organized crime in the US on Prohibition and that it wasn't really the dedicated work of the FBI that stamped out the mafia in the US, it was the aging and eventual death of the entire generation that had risen to wealth and power during those times. It looks live we've really set ourselves up for long-term pain with the drug war, even with total de-criminilization like Portugal has done, it will probably be at least another generation before the worst effects of the criminal organizations fade away. By which time enough people will have forgotten the price of the drug war and be gung ho to start some new socially-destructive campaign.
        • hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
          So far, decriminalization only happened on small countries that are mainly consumers, not producers. In this aspect, de-criminalization is more a commercial policy (fostering a regulated local industry vs. "importing") than a social one, since it doesn't fix the social injustices that allow traffic to happen in the first place, just deflects it. It's similar to how all manufacturing happens in China because it's a way for countries to export their social issues and environmental impact to another country that is willing to take it.
      • rdl 13y ago
        Decriminalizing all mainstream drugs (PCP, etc. probably don't matter since there is limited demand, but anything where there's enough demand should be decriminalized, and you may as well do everything) would reduce profits for the narcos, which would make them less potent. They'd probably switch to cigarettes and counterfeit goods and other tax or regulation evasion operations, but those are much less profitable.
      • tomjen3 13y ago
        Suppose that was true, then why wouldn't they just pivot now and make more money? If you think they would make less money under the new scheme then that would be a good thing because it would lower the benefit of doing the crime and thus fewer people would risk being involved. And honestly there isn't really a market for slaves (at least in the US), so the organizations would mostly collapse, with the remnants smuggling counterfeit goods, which is an outcome I would be okay with.
  • anigbrowl 13y ago
    I agree, but there's a qualitative difference here, in that the hippies that are the subject of this story don't tend to kill or even beat up people. I've never sold any weed, but I've known enough hippies to recognize that they're basically benign black market traders rather than organized criminals, and the fact that they are sidelined in a new market is a problem for them. Lots of people (who were not hippies) were interested in buying weed, while hippies were happy to supply the willingness to take a moderate legal risk. However, non-hippies aren't all that interested in other things that hippies like, such as hemp weaving or handicrafts - at least, not to the extent of providing hippies with any sort of livable income. So the choice is to either supply other, more risky markets - in other states, or with 'harder' and potentially more dangerous drugs - or find some other kind of employment. But other kinds of employment aren't really compatible with being a hippie, and while I don't think that's a fantastic thing to aspire to I respect that some people would rather live simpler, non-materialistic lives, or part of their their lives, and this is increasingly hard to do in a society that fetishizes private property.
    • strlen 13y ago
      Except the actual folks around the Golden Gate Park area do beat up, stab, shoot, and often kill people. These people aren't hippies in any sense of the word. They're low-grade gangsters. War on drugs[1] is a cure far worse than the illness it tries to cure: It's one thing to idealise the hippie culture of the 60s, it's another to bend the facts of what GGP panhandle neighbourhood is really like to fit that narrative. I am sure there are actual hippies out there, but it's unlikely that they're in SF or even Berkeley. (Background: spent sometime time in Inner Sunset in ~2009-2010 and walked to Haight; know a lot of folks who also attended USF Law in that neighbourhood). [1] I'll also note that by drugs I generally don't mean marijuana. I have zero interest in marijuana, but to put it in the same category as heroin, cocaine, or meth seems odd. We do need to decriminalize the "harder" drugs as well for both moral and pragmatic reasons -- bulk of drug war violence (especially in the US border states and south of the US border) is not over marijuana.
      • anigbrowl 13y ago
        Obviously I'm generalizing, and I quite agree that there are 'low level gangsters' as well (though I think you're rather overstating your case). Not trying to one-up you, but I've lived almost 20 years in the Bay Area, most of that time in SF and most of that in the Sunset. I'm intimately familiar with the the Haight, hippie subculture etc.
  • chrischen 13y ago
    My inner conspiracy theorist says the Mexican cartels are paying off US politicians to keep anti-drug laws. It is a $30 billion dollar industry after all. [1] [1] http://www.cfr.org/mexico/mexicos-drug-war/p13689 http://www.cfr.org/mexico/mexicos-drug-war/p13689
  • jorgecastillo 13y ago
    Legalizing weed will certainly affect organized crime in Mexico but it won't be significant. There are plenty of other drugs and other criminal activities from which organized crime gets income. Other important thing to consider is that Narco Culture is pretty strong in Mexico. This people will not stop being involved in criminal activities just because their income dropped. Moreover there will always be people willing to become involved in criminal activities, not to become rich but to make a living wage.
    • rdl 13y ago
      Decriminalizing all drugs in the US (with substantial effort spent on education, anti-addiction, treatment, etc.), should go a long way toward cutting off their revenue. Combine that with immigration reforms, and better governance in Mexico (which should be easier when the cartels can't bribe everyone in government), and it seems like things would get better. Not overnight, but over 5-10 years.
  • hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    My gut feeling is that it hasn't happened yet because the total payoff (I'm talking money) is worse than the status quo. The problem with substance consumption is that it's an asymmetric negotiation. The consumer is the weakest link (for obvious reasons), so the dealers have the upper hand. You don't even need to look at illegal drugs, just look at pharma industry for an example of that. Legalization only benefits the consumer, who have access to a better product at a lower price and zero risk. Also, creates low wage jobs. To everyone else involved (and that's a lot of people: farmers, cooks, dealers, truck drivers, cops, politicians, even consumers who sell to friends), it's the most interesting that it stays illegal. The tendency with weed legalization is for dealers to start moving a better high, not go bankrupt. The tendency of consumers is to look for a better high also. In the places where weed is legalized, you now have higher THC breeds and hash oil. It's a forever regulation struggle (are these harmful? can it still be classified as pot?).
• rhizome 13y ago
  Priceonomics sure seems to have a high regard for its belly-button lint. Their motto is "Priceonomics: The Price Guide for Everything," ...and the value guide for nothing, I presume. Here in Priceonomics’s home city of San Francisco, however, legalization is also eroding the easy drug profits that have been a lifeline to the remnants of the hippy scene. Yes, lets all lament the demise of the "Haighth"[1], while ignoring the political, artistic and, well, non-weed legacies of the late-60s San Francisco subcultural landscape. 1. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=haighth http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=haighth
  • anigbrowl 13y ago
    I don't think you can disentangle them. I used to be close friends (until I moved abroad) with the then-head of the Haight St. merchant's association, who had opened up the first 'head shop' there and had been intimately involved with the cultural scene there since the 60s, often as curator and sponsor, as well as with a lot of political issues (beyond the scope of a HN comment). That guy arrived in SF as a young man during the summer of love and made his seed money selling LSD before setting up a more conventional business, and I presume weed as well. I don't think you can sensibly the political and cultural changes in isolation from the recreational drug use. tl;dr it's totally interconnected, man.
    • rhizome 13y ago
      I don't think you can disentangle them. Yet Priceonomics attempts to do so.
      • anigbrowl 13y ago
        That wasn't my takeaway, but I see your point.
• notjustanymike 13y ago
  "There were lots of customers and they made enough in a few days to travel for a few weeks. Now though..." Man, rough life. I really feel for those guys...
  • Freestyler_3 13y ago
    Where is the post about people working for an entire year to go on vacation for a few weeks? Yes, rough life these guys, selling plants for extremely high prices so they can do fun stuff with the money they took. Almost sounds like capitalists.
• applecore 13y ago
  According to free market principles, this will free the street kids and hippies to pursue other, more productive work, and therefore increase wealth.
  • jusben1369 13y ago
    Hahaha. The problem here was that there was no free market in the first place. The Hippies are more akin to your cable company or some other state sanctioned monopoly or oligopoly now being opened up to real market forces. Inflated profits due to protection almost never ends well.
• omni_ 13y ago
  This is a good thing. One of the main reasons that cannabis has failed to be fully legalized in California is because greedy dealers want the industry to stay small and contained. I remember seeing tons of "Vote No" signs in Mendocino and Sonoma counties regarding legalization (which are huge cultivation areas,) and have known many growers and distributors who were vehemently against legalizing it.
  • ctdonath 13y ago
    "Known many"?
    • omni_ 13y ago
      Yes, I have known many growers. Not an exaggeration. I've grown up in this area.
  • ojbyrne 13y ago
    Huge cultivation areas but very low population areas. According to [1] - those areas had no significant effect on the vote. But lobbying by Prison Guard and Police Unions, and Alcohol companies (!) did. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Humboldt-Life-Americas-Marijuana-Frontier/dp/1455506761/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374869327&sr=8-1&keywords=humboldt http://www.amazon.com/Humboldt-Life-Americas-Marijuana-Front...
    • omni_ 13y ago
      According to Wikipedia, Sonoma County has over 483k residents. That's a "very low population" area?
      • ojbyrne 13y ago
        Actually from what little I know, Sonoma County isn't really part of the main weed growing region: "The Emerald Triangle refers to a region in Northern California so named because it is the largest cannabis producing region in the United States. Mendocino County, Humboldt County, and Trinity County are the three counties in Northern California that make up this region." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Triangle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Triangle
• josh2600 13y ago
  I feel like the topics Priceonomics covers have been getting less interesting over time. I suppose that's natural for a content engine, but this piece left me feeling sort of disenchanted. I'm used to graphs and visualizations on Priceonomics, and there was a distinct lack of hard data from this piece. It felt much more subjective than what I'm used to. In short, I don't doubt the conclusion, but this doesn't feel like a normal priceonomics piece. Just my $.02.
  • rdl 13y ago
    Yes. It's not just the decline of quality analysis/execution, but the actual topics are becoming dumber (and more overtly political). I wish they had a way to filter based on bylines. Generally the articles by Rohin Dhar are awesome.
    • Cyranix 13y ago
      If you use NewsBlur to subscribe to their feed, you can use the "intelligence trainer" feature to filter based on author, tags, or phrases in titles -- works quite well almost always. (Not sure if other feed readers have the same capability.)
      • rdl 13y ago
        The genius of the blog was taking on the surface boring topics and, through quality analysis, doing something awesome. That might be hard to identify programmatically.
• deleted 13y ago
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  • anigbrowl 13y ago
    I think it's extremely interesting. At least in California, hippies have had a lot to do with the advocacy of weed as a benign recreational drug over several decades, so they deserve a share of the credit for the quasi-legal status the drug now has. They took on most of the legal risk and while exemplifying the positive aspects (by being 'mostly harmless,' so to speak) so that you could enjoy this freedom, whether or not you personally choose to exercise it.
  • 3825 13y ago
    > Unlike that issue, the main issue is whether the weed is harmful to its users. I am pretty sure if (I'd love to say when but let's be realistic) we get proper legalization (as opposed to decriminalization), we will have to start considering regulation on smoking marijuana just like we need to regulate smoking tobacco. Perhaps not as much as smoking tobacco because we know that second-hand tobacco smoke can cause cancer but there might be further discussion on how far this freedom takes us. We might still force people to go on smoke breaks to smoke rather than let them smoke at their desks. Do you know if the smoke "sticks" to the paint on the walls like tobacco smoke tends to do? Is comparison to tobacco even fair? Sorry, I have to resort to asking others as I don't have much personal experience in this matter.
    • chrischen 13y ago
      Isn't it all the same smoke?
      • bestdayever 13y ago
        There is probably some differences but most of the carcinogens should be in both. A consequence of burning plant material AFAIK. Maybe somebody better versed in the subject can chime in.
        • 13y ago
• unethical_ban 13y ago
  If I'm supposed to care, I'm failing. It is always a rough transition when government changes its policy to one of more morality and fairness. Protected business interests who have shaped their business model around shitty laws now are at a disadvantage to businesses that can spring up around new rules. That doesn't mean our laws shouldn't change for the better.
  • riggins 13y ago
    If I'm supposed to care, I'm failing. I don't think you're supposed to care. I just think its an interesting observation for a couple reasons. One, there's modest historical significance to the hippie movement, especially in SF. Hippie culture dying out is news worthy. Two (less interesting, more obvious), is to note that people who sold drugs illegally are hurt by legalization. That's not given, it's possible that people who sold drugs illegally would be the same people who sold drugs legally .. but that doesn't seem to be the case (or more interesting, the profit margin got squashed).
    • dubfan 13y ago
      Hippy culture largely died out in the early 1970s. What's newsworthy is that there are still people who believe it's a viable lifestyle.
      • marssaxman 13y ago
        Did it die out, or did it just go mainstream? I see organic food, recycling programs, yoga, and co-ops everywhere. The local Safeway has a cooler full of kombucha bottles on display twenty feet from the front door. People are more likely to frown at you for smoking cigarettes than marijuana. We may not look or dress like hippies from the '70s but many of the the social trends they pioneered seem to be more popular and successful than ever.
    • jordan0day 13y ago
      As others have pointed out, I think the article is probably somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Additionally, I doubt that the legalization of marijuana would actually eliminate hippies altogether -- it only hurts the subset of them that made their living selling illegal marijuana.
• ihsw 13y ago
  Imagine for a moment if meth were legalized -- production would move beyond shady basements with lax safety measures, distribution would move beyond inner-city gangs and other unpleasant cartels, consumption would move beyond lonely apartments and back-alleys, and storage would move beyond dirty needles and shoddy pipes (it could even be refined into pills). Now realize that the entire pharmaceuticals industry is born from this desire for safe production, distribution, consumption, and storage of drugs -- and the hypocrisy of selective drug prohibition.
  • oinksoft 13y ago
    Just wanted to point out that drugs are insufflated, smoked, or taken intravenously so that the chemicals enter the bloodstream and hit the brain quickly (so I'm not sure tablet meth would be a big hit).
    • foobarbazqux 13y ago
      Also you can put them in your bum.
  • jbronn 13y ago
    Meth is legal, the pharmaceutical name is Desoxyn.
  • axus 13y ago
    Meth is a very destructive addictive substance. Legalized, it would addict and harm more people than pain pills, and not really add any benefit to society or individuals. The gang violence from keeping it illegal isn't too bad now, is it?
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • wycx 13y ago
    If all drugs were legal, would people still take meth? I suspect meth is abundant now because of logistical reasons i.e. it can be manufactured in the country it is sold, using precursors that can also be obtained there (legally or otherwise), rather than having to grow plants (coca, poppies, marijuana) which can be seized whilst growing or being imported from overseas. A good drug policy would make meth seem like the bad idea that it is by providing superior alternatives.
• krosaen 13y ago
  “The hippy kids used to be able to sell their weed real easy at high prices,” he tells us. “There were lots of customers and they made enough in a few days to travel for a few weeks. Now though...” "Many are homeless by choice: Some are the transient underemployed or unemployed that hop railcars across the country." http://24.media.tumblr.com/f57b0d94ce4e855c44891a68b21abe20/tumblr_mn7hc0DIR11rmibjxo1_500.gif http://24.media.tumblr.com/f57b0d94ce4e855c44891a68b21abe20/...
• zackmorris 13y ago
  Legal Beer is Hurting Boise Hipsters News at 11. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Since Idaho is so behind the times on the legalization front, hippies are most welcome here. So if any hippies are reading this, there are many markets opening in the gateway states that lie between the cool states. Another way to look at this is, marijuana legalization will lead to the liberalization of the states that are behind the times, which is probably why fogies are fighting against it so vehemently.
• seldo 13y ago
  Legalizing drugs cuts crime in two ways. Directly, by reclassifying a bunch of formerly criminal drug users as just drug users. But also indirectly: it makes them cheap, which makes them unattractive targets for organized crime. If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer. And this isn't a hypothetical: more than 12 years ago, Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- and plowed the money saved by no longer jailing addicts into treating them. The result has been lower rates of addiction and HIV infection, and higher rates of treatment: http://www.alternet.org/story/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_legalized_all_drugs_--_what_happened_next http://www.alternet.org/story/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_... Now possession is a misdemeanor, like a traffic violation, punishable by a fine or community service, and accompanied by a screening for risk factors of addiction, with encouragement to enter treatment programs: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d... It hasn't been a magic bullet, but nor has it been a disaster. And what is a disaster is the current policy: drug money fuels endless violence and murder inside the US and across central and southern America. The social fabric of my home country (Trinidad & Tobago) is being torn apart by violence from drug trafficking, and there's nothing we can do about it as long as the amount of money to be made by risking the drug trade is so enormous. We can't lower the price, because we are not the market: the US is. I wish more people in the US were aware that their paying $100/gram for the occasional fun evening is paying for murder on the streets of my home town. And I wish more people realized they don't have to stop taking cocaine; they just have to lower the damn price.
  • temp9251 13y ago
    Is there any hard proof that marijuana prices have been affected by the availability of medical marijuana? Further north they certainly haven't (medical marijuana sells for more), and the same people end up distributing both kinds to consumers. Taking a quick look at crowdsourced prices, weed in CA looks to be about $200/oz, which is not very cheap. edit: $100 a gram.... what?! Are you talking about cocaine?
• deleted 13y ago
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• rdouble 13y ago
  I lived for years right by the Haight entrance to GGP. I wouldn't call the participants in the drug scene there hippies. There were a lot more crusties and gutter punk types, along with stereotypical thug dudes and tweakers. A lot of people were really aggro and there was some sort of fight nearly every day. A friend of mine would buy her pot over there and her dealer was a clean cut looking late 20s guy from the avenues, who used a cane because he had been shot in the leg. Gun violence didn't seem very hippie to me, either. One of the odder things to me about the area (everything was odd to some degree, including my presence there) was that there was so much drug activity right next to the police station.
  • fizx 13y ago
    I live on the alley across the street from the primary SF Mission District Police Station, and hard drugs are regularly dealt outside my door.
  • flomo 13y ago
    The more stereotypical flower children hang out inside the park a bit at Hippie Hill. (Some SF old-timers use the word hippie for any sort of 'street punk'.)
• Apocryphon 13y ago
  Could the reverse of the gateway drug theory be true? If marijuana and "lighter" narcotics were to be legalized, might potential addicts and users flock to those drugs instead of riskier substances like cocaine or heroin?
  • redwood 13y ago
    Perhaps but another key point is that mj is a gateway for dealers more than anything else. Removing it as an entry point into the biz will almost certainly mean fewer players in the biz, I believe.
• dobbsbob 13y ago
  They can still make LSD that wont be legal anytime soon. In Canada price of weed dropped to $80/120 per oz of AAA kush since washington legalized and more exports come out of california
  • GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    That is not true at all in Toronto.
    • dobbsbob 13y ago
      Dirt cheap here in BC. A pound of kush was 1800-2600 depending on time of year from a middleman wholesaler, now its half that. Even with smart meters (easily bypassed) that were put in to supposedly catch grow ops.
  • mistercow 13y ago
    If weed is legalized nationally and this phenomenon in SF is observed in other places, it might get people to start thinking about whether the war on drugs is effective in general, in which case other relatively harmless drugs like LSD would be next in line. Ha! Just kidding, as if people used reason when thinking about political issues! No, the question is really whether tribal forces will drift in the direction of ending prohibition in general. Superficially, it will appear to be reasoned arguments swaying public opinion, but the true nature of the beast is betrayed by its slowness. In any case, the problems with them switching to selling LSD are that the demand isn't anywhere near as high, and that producing it requires a fair bit more education than reading about gardening on the internet and then growing some plants in your closet.
  • syncopatience 13y ago
    It's my understanding that LSD production is far more complex and resource intensive than growing marijuana.
    • dobbsbob 13y ago
      It is but san fransisco hippies are known for making some of the best LSD like greatfull dead fluff and liquid. Most of the LSD I did in highschool was from California or from Nicholas Sand who fled California to Canada to run a giant lab until 1996. So California/SFO is like ground zero for LSD manufacturing and underground hippie culture that still exists
• deleted 13y ago
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• wilfra 13y ago
  Very disappointing to see no data of any kind on the Good Old Days other than the word of some people they met in a park in San Francisco. Needless to say, their word is extremely unreliable. Two claims specifically are pretty obvious exaggerations/blatant lies: That a marijuana dealer can make 4-times more selling in New York than in California[1]. And that street kids used to make enough in a few days to travel for weeks[2]. [1] Unless the difference is purely a matter of volume, price alone cannot account for that big of a difference, as the article seems to imply. Marijuana is more expensive in New York but it's nowhere near 4-times more expensive. [2] I sold marijuana in the bay area in the timeframe referenced in the article, between roughly 1999 and 2001 (in the dorms, to friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends etc). Yes the prices were higher than they are today ($50 an 8th was standard) but wholesale prices were also much higher. In the end I was lucky to clear $100 an ounce, after smoking myself - which the street kids surely do. They'd have to have been selling a half pound or more per day at full retail to make the claim even remotely possible. And a small piece of anecdotal evidence - I went to Haight Ashbury in search of some weed not long ago. I asked some street kids near the park. I was quoted $60 an 8th and they were unwilling to bargain. The quality was low - probably over 100% markup from what they paid. Those kinds of margins were not possible in the Good Old Days glorified in this piece. Cliffs: don't take the word of street hippies on how great things were in the past.
  • lnanek2 13y ago
    +1 for real data points. Thanks! That said, people who bum around can go a long time on very little cash. Imagine if you only had to pay for food and sometimes got it free crashing with friends with chickens, etc.. Housing - crashing places, parks outside, tents, etc.. Transportation - hopping trains.
• jusben1369 13y ago
  For every sad Hippy in the 1st World there's hopefully 100 great stories in ravaged 2nd world countries up to their eyeballs in corruption funded by the distorted profits of an illegal trade. Maybe Marijuana really will be the "gateway drug" The first drug that marches us towards a path of i) legalizing, ii) taxing, iii) treating addicts and iv) reducing prison populations.