http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/07/19/if-pot-were-legal-it-would-be-basically-free Comments On: If Pot Were Legal, It Would Be Basically Free by Unpaid Intern en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Sat, 18 May 2013 02:15:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by Mister G]]> Sun, 22 Jul 2012 12:45:20 -0700 The Stranger Posted by I have always been... east coaster]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:56:35 -0700 The Stranger Posted by I have always been... east coaster]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:53:29 -0700 The Stranger Before you get too excited, take a look at the alcohol market. All of the same factors apply to booze. In theory, grain alcohol should be incredibly cheap, and indeed, denatured alcohol, which is not subject to liquor taxes, is pennies on the dollar compared to the stuff you buy in the store. The good stuff on the other hand, is pretty expensive. I'm guessing it will be the same for weed.

As is typical for the dopers, you've done no thinking.

No one grows alcohol. They make it. Even bulk grain alcohol is a manufactured product. And it's not especially easy for an individual to produce. It needs specialized equipment (a still), and manufacturing is dangerous. Not only do stills have a tendency to explode, but the boiling points of ethanol and methanol are sufficiently close to each other that you can be killed by a "successfully brewed" batch.

All of that, plus the bulk nature of the end product, and then the further steps needed to turn commodity alcohol into something you'd want to drink, makes self-production fundamentally non-comparable to growing marijuana, which is no harder than growing dahlias or tomatoes.

Even brewing beer or making wine, which are easier than making liquor, are a lot more cumbersome and iffy than growing marijuana.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:32:59 -0700 The Stranger Nobody gives away free packets of fresh basil or oregano, that I know of, anyway.

Funny you should say such a thing. I have basil, oregano, bay leaves, thyme, sage, rosemary, and parsley coming out of my ears. One of these days I'm going to stick it on Freecycle.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:21:55 -0700 The Stranger I don't think most people would complain much if the cost of legal weed went up slightly from the normal $25-$40/gram, due to much easier availability

As someone who does not smoke dope and actively disdains and disrespects the fools who do, I must say that I will be laughing my ass off if you people actually think you're better off paying those prices for something you could easily grow yourself for free.

Leave it to a dope head to think $25-$40 a gram of marijuana is anything other than an absolutely shameless ripoff.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:18:43 -0700 The Stranger Is anyone keeping an eye on local pricing given that you can't let a fart without it being overwhelmed by the waft from a new neighborhood Cannabis Collective now? If the argument holds nationally, it should hold locally as well.

Marijuana isn't legal locally. I can't go to a nursery and buy seeds or starters. If I grow it at home, it can be seized. The same would be true if the faux-"legalization" proposition passes this fall.

Today, you have "dispensaries" operating in legal limbo. Legal under state law, illegal under federal law. Same with the so-called "collective gardens," many of which are vertically integrated, ownership-wise, with the "dispensaries."

So when you pay $250 and up per ounce from the "dispensary," you are buying something that probably cost the owner no more than $30. If it cost him any more than that, then he's simply not much of a businessman.

I don't smoke dope, but I have heard that, even with the current constraints, dope prices are dropping both here and in Oregon. Apparently, there's lots of discounting going on at the "dispensaries." If you REALLY "legalized" it, trust me, the "dispensaries" would be out of business in a year.

The faux-"legalization" proposition will tighten up a lot on the "dispensaries" by banning vertical integration, and by putting the state directly in charge of a growers cartel, while keeping home growing illegal. The end result will be higher dope prices and continuing illegal status.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:14:42 -0700 The Stranger what would regular cigarettes cost with out the sin taxes?

About a buck a pack. The price would be that high because a cigarette is actually a highly sophisticated manufactured product. Marijuana is a simple commodity.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:02:30 -0700 The Stranger
Fourth, and most important: Genetics is the biggest factor, by far, in plant quality when it comes to dahlias or anything else. Give your dahlias enough water and enough sun, keep pests and competing plants away, and apply some fertilizer, and you'll have nice flowers. In many cases, you'll have some nice dahlias even if you do nothing at all. Same for dope.

Legalize it for real, and you'll have high-quality "volunteer" dope sprouting all over the place within a few years. Why high quality and not the ditch weed of yore? Because people will be planting hybridized plants, and those plants will be seeding. The stuff you pick by the roadside will blast you out of your gourd, because it'll come from good stock.

Anyone who listens to the uber-grower propaganda is an ignorant fool.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 13:00:22 -0700 The Stranger @22, except that you don't have international competitions to see who can grow the best basil or oregano, with million-dollar prizes, and there aren't hundreds of named varieties of herbs or asparagus. I don't even smoke weed, but I know about Lemon Haze, Pineapple Express, Vanilla Kush, Sour Diesel, LA Cheese, White OG, Chocolope, ad infinitum.

I'm not clued into the oregano contests, but right here in the Pacific NW you have all kinds of competitions for growing dahlias, complete with shows and prizes that attract international attention. There are more varieties of dahlias than there are of marijuana.

Whenever I read the claims of horticultural genius from the dopers, one thing becomes hilariously clear: Pot growers have bamboozled themselves and their stoner customers into believing that dope growers are the only gardeners out there. I do realize that there's a reason they call it "dope," but do you realize just how utterly stupid you look when claiming unique gardening skill or experience?
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 12:52:52 -0700 The Stranger
As long as "legalization" includes the right to grow your own, there is no way the state will be able to collect significant tax revenues, nor will the price be anything remotely close to what it is today. The only way the state can "tax the hell out of it" is if they operate a cartel just like the current ones.

Google the following search term inside the quotes: "Estimated cost of production for legalized cannabis." You will get a Rand Corporation research paper on the subject. It shows that if pot were grown in California's central valley like any other agricultural commodity, growing cost would be $2.80 an ounce for 15% THC marijuana, and further processing would be $10 an ounce. So you'd start with $13 pot, which implies a retail price of maybe $25.

Now, for Econ 101. If producer A tried to charge $35 an ounce, he'd lose business to producer B. And producer C might find ways to cut costs, introducing $8 pot. That's how the economic system works. Taxes are governed by similar principles. if government tried to put, say, a $20 an ounce tax on pot at retail, then you'd have people growing their own at home.

In fact, given how easy it is to grow pot, even at a retail price of $25 an ounce, in a legal environment you'd see a whole lot of home growing. Heavy users would especially grow their own. The cost of processing, i.e. picking, separating, drying, packaging, and shipping, would be avoided, along with much of the cost of growing. Why pay $25 an ounce when you could do it at home for a few bucks an ounce?

There are at least 40 million gardeners in America. Roughly 6%-7% of the population smokes pot at least once a month. Apply that to gardening, and you start with a potential home-growing population of 2-1/2 to 3 million people, if pot is legalized. The only way these people will be price gouged is if growing pot remains illegal, which it would under the false "legalization" proposition on Washington State's ballot this fall.

True "legalization" of marijuana would allow home growing, and the free distribution of seeds and starter plants. Anything less than that is not "legalization." If pot was really legalized, the price would crash. There'd still be pot at the store, just as there is still lettuce at the store. But store-bought dope would be much, much cheaper than it is today.

Every time I read something from some pot head who tells a tale of the painstaking care that growers now pour into their dope grows, I laugh my ass off. Read the Rand study. The overwhelming majority of the cost of growing dope is connected to the need to conceal the activity. Remove that constraint, and growing high-quality dope will be easy and cheap, rendering the final product damn close to free.

Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 12:47:47 -0700 The Stranger
I'm for legalization, but I will miss the "bespoke" nature of underground weed. Regulation and industrialization will focus on consistency and in all likely hood will limit potency (every try to buy Everclear outside of Montana?). Get ready for legal weed that sucks.
Posted by Westside forever]]> Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:08:26 -0700 The Stranger Posted by neo-realist]]> Fri, 20 Jul 2012 09:33:11 -0700 The Stranger
They also were not looking at taxes.
Posted by giffy]]> Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:39:43 -0700 The Stranger we should expect legal pot to cost...100 times lower than the current prevailing price of $300 per ounce—or a few cents per joint.

Just as a point of reference, in late 2005 I bought a joint at the Bulldog Cafe in Amsterdam for 3.5 euros (about $4). I assume it was taxed to the hilt. Why wouldn't similar pricing be in effect here?
Posted by blackhook]]> Fri, 20 Jul 2012 03:53:25 -0700 The Stranger
will they have to be labelled as such?

what about the marketing? Sodapop is a good comparison - the cost of ingredients is about 5% of the price of soda, all the rest is Distribution, Marketing, Profit, and Taxes.

what would regular cigarettes cost with out the sin taxes?
Posted by Cassette tape fan]]> Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:11:05 -0700 The Stranger
Now, consider that the same exact seeds from a famous variety will turn out very differently in different growing conditions, just like wine grapes -- not just better or worse but locally different -- and the opportunities for extreme price competition are immense. Though I have a suspicion that a large part of the market will be for heavier and heavier stupefying indicas, where one hit induces a two-day total couchlock. The thing I hated most about smoking back when I did that, but very popular. People will still pay for that.
Posted by Fnarf]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 22:48:47 -0700 The Stranger
That's the problem with any tax scheme. Unless the penalties for cultivating outside of the regs are steep it is far to easy for people to just grow for themselves or their friends. I can't make whiskey easily but I can grow a plant no problem and unlike Tobacco one plant gets you pretty far. Nothing really wrong with that aside from the lost revenue, but still.
Posted by giffy]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 22:28:25 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Just Jeff]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:53:38 -0700 The Stranger
I have a "new guy" (although, in reality, not THAT new); that's how I know outdoor-grown OR bud is so much cheaper than local indoor-grown.
Posted by COMTE]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:42:20 -0700 The Stranger some price premium for pot that's a result of it being on the black market, which is the reason that California's recent legalization ballot question was not necessarily popular amongst Mendocino County's pot farmers. The money quote from a former grower there: "[prohibition] is the government's best agricultural price-support program ever."
Posted by Doctor Memory]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:37:14 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Xenos]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:31:16 -0700 The Stranger
The Government won't regulate it the same as sugar packets so why would he even draw the comparison. It's silly.
Posted by michael bell]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:55:16 -0700 The Stranger Maybe better to compare it to those tiny plastic clamshells of fresh herbs; an individual wee packet of fresh oregano is kind of expensive but acceptable if you don't grow your own; the price per pound that's listed in the micro print on the shelf tags shows the completely outrageous prices; I think basil comes in at about $100/lb.
Nobody gives away free packets of fresh basil or oregano, that I know of, anyway.
Posted by alight]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:50:53 -0700 The Stranger Posted by matt!]]> Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:36:11 -0700 The Stranger