"After voters legalized marijuana two years ago under Proposition 64, state officials estimated in there would be as many as 6,000 cannabis shops licensed in the first few years. But the state Bureau of Cannabis Control has issued just 547 temporary and annual licenses to marijuana retail stores and dispensaries," the Los Angeles Times reported.
Welcome to the world of regulations and taxes, potheads.
Potheads said for years "legalize it."
Be careful of what you wish for.
“The cannabis industry is being choked by California’s penchant for over-regulation. It’s impossible to solve all of the problems without a drastic rewrite of the law, which is not in the cards for the foreseeable future,” Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, told the Times.
The alcohol industry feels your pain.
Those huge tax revenues NORML and others promised are as imaginary as keeping your doctor. It's as if Arthur Laffer and his curve were right.
"The state is expected to bring in $471 million in revenue this fiscal year — much less than the $630 million projected in Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget," the story said.
The new legalized industry has to compete with older and established illegal industry. Store owner Javier Montes told the Times, “Because we are up against high taxes and the proliferation of illegal shops, it is difficult right now.
“We expected lines out of our doors, but unfortunately the underground market was already conducting commercial cannabis activity and are continuing to do so.”
Imagine that. People won't pay extra for the taxed pot.
His customers pay a 15% state excise tax, a 10% city taxes, and a 9.5% sales tax — a markup of more than 34%.
Democrat state Assemblyman Jim Wood crafted the pot licensing system.
He is amazed it failed.
“The state licensing process this past year has been a painful one,” he told the Times.
“I recognize that this has been a significant undertaking for the state, and you combine that with the cannabis industry learning how to navigate the process — it’s been difficult for them both.”
I am laughing at all this because the same people who tell us they must tax the heck out of cigarettes to get people to quit smoking tried to start a legal pot smoking industry by taxing the stuffing out of it.
Now they wonder why people stick to an illegal smile. I hear it don't cost very much, but it lasts a long while.
Same in Oregon.the medical pot system was working. Not perfect but working better than
ReplyDelete100% ;eagal. Exactly the sme thing happened here-we still have drug cartels destroying the forest lands with pesticides,fertilizers and making a mess. and it is still dangerous to take a hike in the woods...
Not what was promoted by NORMIL
Lesson to pot loving Libertarians.
ReplyDeleteWhat lesson would that be? If anything it proves many of the complaints libertarians have about any incompetant government intervention in what should be an easy commercial matter. Living in California I laughed at the inflated predictions of the income it would generate knowing many smokers and how they had 0 problems getting what they needed. I never thought state weed would ever be able to compete and it looks like i was right.
DeleteProp 64 went down just like the ban on grocery bags, and the (non) repeal of the gas tax: Fraudulently.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who looked at the wording of 64 could see that it was nothing but a tax-rape of the cannabis market.
State legal weed?
You are welcome to pay $500.+ per ounce.
Gray market?
About $160.
Call up your old dealer, and you may cop a lid for $140. or less
The cannabis market was "born and raised" in the briar patch of bootleggers and smuggling. No one but the fools in the CA legislature thought they could extort that racket for their own gain.
JWM
Did you notice that previous state legalization referendum's went down in flames earlier because of the massive amount of money growers in Mendocino and Oakland dumped into the race? You can bet they also had a hand in crafting the eventual regulations and statutes that are hobbiling the selling of marijuana in the state.
DeleteThis is what you get when you expect potheads to think.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to have more on the ball than the legislature.
DeleteParasites are most successful when they dont kill the host.
ReplyDeleteLegal mj is the host. The legislature is the parasite.
Dont blame the host if the parasite takes too much blood from the host.
Libertarians accepted for pot what they anathematize in other things, taxes and regulation. This is what is otherwise known as hypocrisy. The goal wasn't a freer, more libertarian society. The goal was a society with pot in it.
ReplyDeleteLibertarians are shitheads.
The goal was not to have douchrbags tell us what we could Ingest or tax what we ingest excessively, shithead
DeleteNot every partaker is a libertarian and ever fewer impacted legislation, duh. drunkards annoy
DeleteDoc goes for the Daily Double! Anathematize and shithead in the same post. Well played.
Delete"The goal was a society with pot in it."
DeleteThanks, doc. you hit it on the head.
Pot makes the proles more docile and more than a bit psycho. Living with that in my own family.
Note to young people -do not use Pot. if you do wait until your 20's if any younger, like 16 or so you will be forever a teenager.Not good..It does no good with Bipolar and Schizoid
conditions-in fact make them worse..
Pot is not harmless..
If the goal was to have the douchebags not tax or decide for you, why all the compromise? Could hold out for making pot invisible to government? I would not have disagreed with that as I am in favor of deregulating medical care radically.
DeleteNo. The goal was pot. Pot at any cost, and under any conditions.
Admit it, shithead, pot is your God, not liberty. Suck on that.
Its pretty clear you have no idea of what you are talking about. Anything this state touches will be regulated into uselessness. The joke is pot smokers have had their own retail chain existing for a few decades to other than convenience their is nothing the state regulated stores can offer other than inflated prices and exotic hyrbids to try to lure people in. If anything its a classic libertarian argument of why governments disrupt commerce and provide advantages to special interests and other rent seekers.
DeleteCalifornia did not "legalize marijuana". Nor did Washington (my state), Colorado, or any of the rest.
ReplyDeleteWhat they actually did is muscle in on the illegal market with state-sponsored and state-controlled franchise outlets.
Had these states truly "legalized marijuana", it would now be legal to grow your own marijuana in the privacy of your own home. This did not happen in any state that has purportedly "legalized marijuana".
I had a cali medi weed cert over ten years ago. I could have 25 seedlings and five mature plants.
DeleteIgnorance is bliss
And now it is a turf war to see which cartel has the biggest baddest band of goons.
DeleteThe real ignorance is thinking that getting a permit to grow something in your own yard-- from the government-- is a freedom.
DeleteI live in California and I grow my own, but I have to grow it inside to be legal. Possession is legal but you can't use it in public.
DeleteWhat the state should have done was legalized it and let the legal cannabis businesses get licensed and established. After a couple years most of the illegal market would be kaput or would have gone legit.
That's when they could start adding taxes.
I just want to add that legalization has done wonders for the quality of the weed available. And edibles are incredible.
I imagine the updated remake of Walt Disney's Snow white,(It will probably happen at some point),will have Dopey smoking a big dooby somewhere back in the mine on coffee break.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion only: Dope makes ya dopey. I only gotta look at my neighbors or take a drive downtown and wait in line 'till they figure out that the light went green a ways back.
Geez what happened to the War on Drugs?
ReplyDeleteIt was more of a War on Drug Users. It helped to create the drug rehab industry as people take classes or enter rehabs to avoid prison.
DeleteOnly time I was ever shot at was flying with a Deputy Sheriff as we were investigating this pot facility in the Oregon woods.bullet went between the firewall and the engine.
DeleteIdiot made his case right there -Federal. this as 25 years ago, he's probably still in the Fed pokey.. The war will nevvere end as long as the Cartels and dealers can operate..
Response to Jim Wood:
ReplyDelete“Unexpectedly!”
2018 LibCommie of the Year nominee
Legal marijuana does not seem to have the same problems here in Nevada. The "dispensaries," which is what we call them for some reason, are doing huge business. But, then again, Nevada is still not yet California (although the influx of Californians here is destroying this state as surely as what happened to once reliably conservative New Hampshire once a critical mass of Mass-holes moved in).
ReplyDeleteThe reason to legalize cannabis, in my opinion, is that we were completely unwilling to equitably enforce the law. Our justice system was quite comfortable locking away for ridiculously long sentences blacks and white trash who used illegal drugs, including marijuana, but those laws were never enforced against the children of privilege living in wealthy suburbs, who would never be prosecuted and, even if they were, never given jail time. Inequitable enforcement of drug laws made a mockery of the 14th Amendment right to equal justice under the law.
So I am one "constitutional conservative" who is happy we have legal pot. Even if I think someone is an idiot for taking advantage of the change in the law and smoking that stuff.
-TK
What is lost on this is how illegal growers had poured money into previous legalization efforts to DEFEAT legal weed. Like Al Capone trying to stop prohibition from being repealed. they were seeing their empires collapse overnight. They still had a hand in drafting regulations and doing their best to make sure the legal weed shops sell at a price they can still easily undercut. Personally I think its a colossal waste of time and yet another drug to anesthetize the population but here we are. I am like TK though, I am glad it is no longer treated as a "narcotic" and part of the so-called "War on Drugs". It never should have had that classification and the law renforcement used to combat it has done much more harm than good.
ReplyDeleteMost profits from cannabis stocks have already been made. I sold most of my cannabis stocks (but kept some of the "medical marijuana" stocks) months ago. There's no money to be made in recreational marijuana. Why would anyone buy it when you can grow your own?
ReplyDeleteWhy buy bottled water when you can get it from a tap? convenience is king and people are lazy.
DeleteHere in Maine weed has been decriminalized my entire adult life and if you got caught with it by the cops they either made you dump it on the ground, took it and let you go or at worst you got a $100 ticket which was the equivalent of a traffic infraction. Then we legalized medical and suddenly the caregivers were quitting their jobs and making $100k/yr selling all their overproduction on the black market. Now it's legal and I can tell you that the old $100 ticket is going to seem great compared to the fine for sale, possession or use of UN-TAXED cannabis.
ReplyDeleteTeapartydouche......the real ignorance is thinking that I wanted a permit. I wanted to be left alone. I never claimed that the permit was a form of freedom.
ReplyDeleteYou claimed we were all forced to buy from the government purveyors and i showed how ignorant your self righteous douchbaggery can be