http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/12/01/lack-of-foresight Comments On: Lack of Foresight by Goldy 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) Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:30:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Yea the Government is always there to help...remove the money from your wallet.
Posted by Cascadian Bacon]]> Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:30:44 -0800 The Stranger
Either way, they're ignorant.
Posted by their business model is disappearing]]> Tue, 04 Dec 2012 07:46:30 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Mister G]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:26:03 -0800 The Stranger Posted by dwightmoodyforgetsthings]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:58:10 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Mister G]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:42:38 -0800 The Stranger
If the seeds were legal at the nursery, they'd probably sell mostly female seeds. (This is the case with the illegal seed vendors -- "feminized" seeds are where it's at.) People who wanted to breed pot plants in a separate co-ed patch would want some male seeds. (Why the separate patch? Because you don't want the gals pollenized if you want the smokable dope. Which is to say that lesbian marijuana plants are the ticket.)

So, the choice would be (and actually is now) whether you want to breed plants through seeding; or going to grow sinsemellia ("without seeds") and then reproduce with cuttings (a/k/a "clones"); or whether you'd be fine with skipping the cloning and just buying new seeds when you needed them. Again, in a legal environment, I think most people would pick Door #3. Even illegally, it's pretty much what they do.
Posted by Mister G]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:37:55 -0800 The Stranger by mistake.
Posted by Mister G]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:14:01 -0800 The Stranger Posted by dwightmoodyforgetsthings]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:44:08 -0800 The Stranger
http://tinyurl.com/c9jwd44

Now, I think the two kids are clowns, and the Seattle Times was a sucker for a bunch of promoters. So why is it interesting? Because the only way "legal" pot can be (in the words of one of the shysters quoted in the story) "the next great American industry," as opposed to a packet of seeds and/or some starter plants to be bought at Swanson's nursery, is if you have a cartel operated and protected, or at least protected, by government.

Oh, and if that were to become the case, and if (fat chance) the government could really enforce its cartel, then you'd have real VCs get in there, not a couple of unemployed victims of Silicon Valley Bank's downsizing. I've got experience in the VC world, and the way the real ones work is to sell their startups. If you want this or that Big Corporation to run the "legal" marijuana show, the way to do it is to have a government controlled and enforced cartel run by and for whoever buys those startups.

On the other hand, if marijuana were to be truly and authentically legalized, meaning that individuals could grow their own just like we can grow our own lettuce and tomatoes, there'd still be a marijuana sector. But it would look very different. Pot would be just one more plant grown by big agriculture, out in the central valley of California, the Willamette Valley of Oregon, and east of the Cascades in Washington, and other places around the country.

There'd be lots of growers, and lots of competition -- most notably from amateur gardeners, who'd find it quite easy to grow enough for themselves and their friends if the prices in the stores got too high. According to the Rand Corp., legal pot can be grown in the central valley of CA, right next to the carrots, avacadoes, aparagus, lettuce, fruit, and all the rest, for less than $3 an ounce.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/…

Maybe those farmers would still get in the act under a state cartel system, but I doubt it. Why? Because the government's artificially high prices ($20 a gram being 250 times the cost of growing), combined with the prohibition of home growing, would make those marijuana fields very tempting targets for thieves. Costs would be much higher, and so would risks. Which would be used by the state government cartels to justify their $20 a gram prices, no doubt.

Bottom line: Make it legal for real, and your pot will cost pennies a gram, even after processing, transportation, and retail rakeoffs. Give it to the state cartel, and it'll be a circus. The only value of I-502 is that its implementation will quickly clarify all of this, including the foolishness of I-502 itself, even for those potheads who ordinarily couldn't even count the number of Doritos in a bowl if their lives depended on it.

Finally: Just to head something off at the pass, I'm not a "dispensary" or other marijuana industry participant. I truly have no personal dog in the fight. I'm just an independent cuss who's analyzed a lot of things, including businesses. It's all about the facts and the data. The "dispensaries" are just a bunch of greedy pushers, but the state cartel is a joke. You'll see. Eventually, pot will really be legal, and you'll sit there and wonder why the hell you ever paid so much.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:57:30 -0800 The Stranger
So. Sorry, it's good genetics that make good pot. You could plant the seeds that accumulate in the bottom of your baggie and prolly get SOMETHING...OR pay 5 dollars for a good seed and get something that will impress your friends a lot (for basically no extra gardening effort).

Posted by Sandiai]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:41:06 -0800 The Stranger
Why? Because he's dangerous? Nope, not at all. The seeds and the home grower will be illegal not because of danger, but because they're competition. The state will be charging 250 times production cost. The only way they can make it work is to try as hard as they can to put the competition in jail.

This is going to be funny to watch.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:29:53 -0800 The Stranger
Tomatoes vary. Some are determinate, others are indeterminate. Some are early, some are late. Some do better here, others do worse. Marijuana is simpler to grow than tomatoes. By far the most significant "growing difficulty" with pot is that it's illegal. Make it legal to grow in the same way that individuals are free to brew their own beer and ferment their own wine, and millions are gardeners will be growing tens of millions of pounds of good pot.

I don't agree with #45 that it would cost a couple dollars a pound. Not when a typical plant yields an ounce. I think the seeds and fertilizers will cost the typical pot grower a few bucks per plant -- maybe $30 to $50 a pound. More serious gardeners would have lower costs, but they'd put more time into it so it would even out. But that's a very minor disagreement. The state cartel wants to charge $20 a gram. I say legal pot would cost maybe $3 an ounce (11 cents a gram), and #45 thinks $3 a pound (6/10ths of a penny per gram).

Now, would the home gardener's 11-cent (or 0.6-cent) pot be as good as the state's $20 gram? I think there's a strong chance the answer would be "yes," especially over time, as gardeners gained practical experience and cultivation methods and new hybrid seeds emerged from the shadows. But even if not, the price difference would make it irrelevant. In the end, it would come down to price per high. If it took 2 or 3 hits of $20 state pot to get high but 4or 5 hits of your own 11-cent pot to get high, you'll smoke your own.

There will always be people who'll buy it at the store, no matter what. But if personal cultivation is legal, there is no way on earth that the state will be able to sustain its price of $20 a gram. If they try, then backyard gardeners would become sellers. It would be impossible to stop it. Oh, and the pot user base is certainly like the alcohol user base: the heaviest 10% of users consume at least half of the product. They would be the most likely to either grow it themselves or find someone who does. Just that part of the undercutting of the state would break the back of its cartel.

Finally: If you really don't want the big evil corporations to control marijuana, then you should be pushing for actual legalization, meaning the freedom to grow your own, and the full legalization of trade in cultivars. Put marijuana seeds in the hands of the army of American gardeners, and the game is over. This will happen anyway. The only question is whether it will happen soon, or whether the pot smokers can be placated by a state cartel charging them $20 a gram for something they can easily grow themselves for 11 cents a gram.

This is an I.Q. test, kids. How smart are you?


Posted by Mister G]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:18:21 -0800 The Stranger
sorry, that was kind of a boring post, wasn't it?
Posted by JAT]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 08:52:12 -0800 The Stranger
Give me a break. It's MUCH easier to grow great pot than it is to brew the crappiest beer and make the crappiest wine.
Posted by you must not know how to do any of this]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:07:25 -0800 The Stranger Posted by smade]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 20:44:46 -0800 The Stranger
I used to live on a small farm. Pot is a plant. It will grow like any other farm plant. If you take Pot out of the hands of illegal cartels and grow it like any other farm crop, it should cost no more than a couple dollars a pound to produce. With the right seeds and soil, almost anyone in WA could grow reasonably decent pot in their own back yard. It really isn't all that complicated. The only reason we have complex indoor grow ops is for secrecy and security, not because it's hard to grow.
Posted by Reverse Polarity]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 20:06:55 -0800 The Stranger You could say PBR and Chimay are the same, they use the same ingredients. As a gardener, you know the environment and the gardener make a huge difference. I don't know why you'd pretend otherwise. Also as a gardener you know, we could in Seattle skip buying pumpkins and grow our own, yet giving someone money is easier than putting in the effort.
You have to admit, you were woefully off when it came to the election. Perhaps you should leave the fortune telling to the gypsies.
Posted by CbytheSea]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:26:56 -0800 The Stranger
Use the right seeds, and you're going to get a perfectly adequate product. It's much easier and more convenient to grow decent pot than it is to brew decent beer or (especially) to ferment decent wine. Almost all of the "difficulty" in growing pot is a function of its legal status.

If pot were actually legal, you'd have people growing 10 or 20 plants in their yard every summer, drying it out in the garage or basement, and winding up with enough for the whole year. It's not any harder than growing veggies.

But then, you've never tended a garden, so you wouldn't have a clue. But, oh, about 75 million Americans are gardeners, and maybe 15 million are pretty serious about it. Legalize marijuana, and the pot scene (and prices) will be unrecognizable in today's terms.

All of this is going to happen eventually. Probably faster than you think, because once the state gets in there and is charging $20 a gram and then sending the cops out to (try to) enforce its monopoly, everyone will quickly see what a joke this has all been.
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:01:25 -0800 The Stranger
@40 The Stranger should hire you, as Goldy's Translator, lol.
Posted by Some Old Nobodaddy Logged In]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:52:39 -0800 The Stranger @39 I don't know why people keep thinking it'll be like what liquor was. It'll be like out of state beer/wine (three tiers) but with stores that will be privately owned but very limited in what they can sell. Mostly it's gonna be a lot of paperwork for all three levels. If you know anybody who runs a commercial alcohol producing setup ask them about the paperwork they do, multiply that by 3 and you're probably getting pretty close. The funny part was the medical industry was so stoner friendly, hardly any math was needed! But that'll be quite different with the new system.
To tell you the truth, as a brewery owner, I'm really excited that the WSLCB will have something totally different to focus on for a while. Here's hoping they get more staff, they're stretched so thin things take forever.
Posted by CbytheSea]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:49:02 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Brandon J.]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:06:38 -0800 The Stranger
Yeah, because privatization of liquor sales has worked out sooo well - for everybody EXCEPT consumers, that is.

If cannabis were to go the same route, that is, from state control of the process to private control, we'll end up with more-or-less the same effect as what's happening with liquor currently: wider availability, but with less selection and higher prices. This is what will create incentive for consumers to circumvent the state's distribution & sales system, just as anyone close to the borders of Oregon & Idaho are doing now, which means out-of-state growers will still have a ready and willing client-base, since they'll be able to provide high-quality product for lower cost by avoiding the taxation structure altogether.

Keeping it under state regulation at all three levels: manufacture, distribution & sales, on the other hand, not only ensures quality & consistency in the process, but will, as it did for liquor under the old, state-controlled system, also ensure costs can be more stringently managed and prices kept at a reasonable level, even with taxation mechanisms in-place. This in turn, also guarantees that the revenue will remain in-state, with the proceeds pumped back into both the state economy and tax coffers, instead of much of it being funneled out-of-state as is now the case with private retail liquor sales.
Posted by COMTE]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:54:50 -0800 The Stranger
You see, pot hasn't been legalized by any remote stretch of the imagination. All that's happened is that the cartel has been transferred to state control. The experiment will fail, though. People aren't going to pay what the state's going to demand. The state will be undercut by the Mexicans and by the "community gardens."

Once all of this becomes clear, the same impluse that led to the dismantling of the state liquor monopoly will kick in, and pot will be legalized. And Goldy will have to look for some other source of tax revenue. Maybe a fee for every breath we take?
Posted by Mister G]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:31:34 -0800 The Stranger
So if private sales do about the same as state stores at limiting who buys it, then why not sell it privately? And even if we built state run pot stores, they'd become the most hated institution in Washington in a few years, for the same reason the public hated the WSLCB stores. So why waste time on something born to fail?

You have to be a very special breed Democrat to think the government actually is capable of doing everything well.
Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 15:24:32 -0800 The Stranger
@ 17 Not really its worked out well so far, you got to pay for convenience and its not that more expensive for most of them. Besides state has no business in the liquor business it should focus on things like health care.
Posted by Seattle14]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 15:21:10 -0800 The Stranger