[HN Gopher] What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?
___________________________________________________________________
What do you do with a billion grams of surplus weed?
Author : pseudolus
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-08-07 10:55 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| codevark wrote:
| Which is why there should never be a "cannabis industry". We
| created a food industry that produces sub-standard food and much
| of it goes to waste. Applying the same obviously flawed
| principles to cannabis is another mistake. Pot should be legal to
| grow/possess/use, but not to buy or sell. There's no point. It's
| so easy to grow. Just plant some in your backyard and smoke it.
| Or give it away. That's what it's for.
| standardUser wrote:
| I don't have a backyard.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| There needs to be SOME kind of market. Not everybody has the
| time, space, inclination, or knowhow to do a good job of
| cultivation, and not everybody has friends who grow.
|
| You could make exactly the same arguments about alcohol. I'm an
| enthusiastic homebrewer, but I wouldn't say that everybody
| should brew their own.
| stef25 wrote:
| What's the advantage of handing out these licenses to companies
| that will then be run like a Silicon Valley start-up?
|
| Why not just allow dispensaries to grow a small amount of their
| own stuff on premise, say 20Kg / month? Limit each customer to a
| 5g purchase. You just need a proper space and half a dozen staff
| (if that). No need for massive investments and all this maxed-out
| capitalist accounting trickery.
|
| Legalisation should put dealers out of business on day 1. There's
| no way I'm going to engage in criminal activity, texting a dealer
| and waiting on a street corner if I can just walk over to a bar
| and buy what I need, super chill like it is in Holland.
|
| Unbelievably sad they managed to screw it up so badly.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > A recent survey conducted by Abacus Data for Medical Cannabis
| Canada found that those who access medical cannabis legally pay
| on average 34 percent more for their medicine than if they bought
| from the unregulated market.
|
| I'm unfamiliar with the weed market in general, but it seems like
| this problem is self-inflicted.
|
| They're simultaneously oversupplied and overpriced. Lower prices
| and both problems sort themselves out, plus they can slowly out-
| compete the illegal sellers by undercutting their pricing.
|
| It seems the real problem is that they are afraid to cut their
| margins because it would break their financial models and risk
| the stock price. It's strange that they'd rather destroy excess
| product than try to move it at a steep discount.
|
| I'm also afraid this could create other problems by giving them a
| huge incentive to try to push more and more weed consumption
| among the public. Whatever your thoughts about weed, I hope we
| can all agree that over-consumption is not good and that it could
| be a problem if multi-billion dollar companies are stuck in a
| situation where they need to greatly increase the public's
| consumption of weed to become profitable.
| jbuhbjlnjbn wrote:
| >I hope we can all agree that over-consumption is not good and
| that it could be a problem if multi-billion dollar companies
| are stuck in a situation where they need to greatly increase
| the public's consumption of weed to become profitable.
|
| First, this is semantics, "over-comsumption" is bad no matter
| the substance, but who is able to define it generally? But this
| is an experiemnt I would love to see, big companies pushing
| weed the same way then, say, the tobacco or alcohol industry
| before them. I have a hunch from all the information I have, it
| would be not nearly as problematic as the former, possibly even
| have generally a more positive impact on society.
| Closi wrote:
| > those who access medical cannabis legally pay on average 34
| percent more for their medicine than if they bought from the
| unregulated market.
|
| I mean, that's true with most things isn't it? If you buy meat
| from the dodgy guy in a pub then it's cheaper. Bloke selling
| televisions from a van? Cheaper. Cigarettes from a corner store
| that have been imported from a low tax country? Cheaper.
| Getting the electric/gas done in your house from someone who is
| unlicensed? Cheaper.
|
| Not sure why we would expect this to be different.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| > If you buy meat from the dodgy guy in a pub then it's
| cheaper.
|
| I don't know about that. First of all, I've never had a dodgy
| guy in a pub try to sell me meat. Second of all, the market
| for meat, at least in the U.S., is relatively unconstrained
| and therefore the prices are pretty reflective of the cost to
| produce (including the costs for the various middlemen in the
| chain, etc.). So with meat, if some dodgy guy is selling it
| for cheaper, it's probably because it's subpar product in
| some way or another.
|
| Televisions from a van? Stolen. Has nothing to do with
| economics -- the guy didn't pay the costs of producing those
| televisions, so his prices don't reflect them.
|
| Among your selection of analogies, only the cigarette one
| seems comparable. But even with this it's a little different.
| In that case, the cigs are cheaper because the tax is not
| being paid. That might be a factor in the black market price
| difference for weed in Canada, but according to this article,
| price manipulation by producers is a big factor, which isn't
| reflected in the cigarette analogy.
| slapfrog wrote:
| > _Cigarettes from a corner store that have been imported
| from a low tax country?_
|
| Probably just smuggled across state lines. Bought in a state
| with low taxes, then sold in a state with high taxes. The
| store pockets the taxes instead of passing them along to the
| state, which it can do because the cigarettes being sold were
| smuggled so the high-tax state doesn't have any record of
| them existing.
| blt wrote:
| The comment you are replying to does not look like it was
| written by someone from the USA.
| psychonautLorax wrote:
| > I'm unfamiliar with the weed market in general, but it seems
| like this problem is self-inflicted.
|
| >I hope we can all agree that over-consumption is not good.
|
| The following is for the purpose of conversation only, food for
| thought if you will, and does not constitute any sort of
| condonement or endorsement, tacit or otherwise, of the use of
| cannabis products. Tread with extreme caution if you have any
| personal or family history of schizophrenia or schizotypical
| personality disorder as their is rather strong evidence that
| cannabis can have particularly profound effects on this group.
| Everybody reacts differently to different psychoactive
| substances, you only have one brain and one body, and treat
| them as your greatest asset:
|
| What is the "over consumption" of weed? Unfortunately we really
| don't have much reliable data on marijuana consumption, that
| I'm aware of anyway, and the longitudinal studies that do exist
| are from institutions with an obvious agenda, the National
| Institute on Drug Abuse being chief among them[1], and there
| was a ban on marijuana research until 2015 [2]. NORML has a
| pretty comprehensive overview of what data we do have with
| context of other substances.[3] Another good, more traditional
| take, is this review in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry[4].
| The biggest problem I see with most of the data is that, for
| obvious ethical reasons, all the marijuana users are self-
| selected, I'm personally of the belief that many people who
| consume cannabis, especially into adulthood, are self
| medicating, and as [4] suggests this may have a lasting effect
| on their psychiatric outcomes.
|
| I don't know how much experience you (or other readers) have
| with weed or drugs in general, but I have decades of experience
| (with sometimes lengthy breaks) of what by most definitions is
| "heavy" use, and know some extremely heavy (i.e. nearly
| constant) users who are also extremely capable. Before I delve
| further, I'd like to stop (again) and point out that I'm not
| trying to focus on the exceptional here, but I feel in the
| context of recreational drug use, it is important to look at
| the whole spread of users.
|
| Most of the following is anecdata: One interesting thing about
| cannabis use that I wanted to highlight for non-users in the
| context of "over-consumption" is that a very common sentiment
| among long-term chronic (pun intended) users, is that you
| develop a sort of "permanent tolerance", even if such a user
| has a long period of abstinence, upon recommencing use they
| will rapidly return to their previous state of tolerance---a
| (lower) level of efficacy that might have taken years of use to
| get too will return in a matter of days/weeks. This seems
| particularly pronounced in cannabis relative to other
| psychoactive compounds. I would, based on my experiences and
| those of all the (hundreds of) people I've met and had frank
| discussions with about their use, rate weed on a
| "problematicness scale" between coffee and alcohol, but much
| closer to coffee. Their is a component to cannabis use that it
| was[5] seen as something of an act of rebellion, and that
| people who are past the "teenage rebellion" stage tend to self
| moderate similarly to coffee drinkers---many of whom have a cup
| in the morning with the spectrum going all the way to people
| who drink coffee all day. I say its closer to coffee than
| alcohol because if someone is an alcoholic, and drinks all day,
| it will _absolutely_ be noticeable to most people around them,
| and have an obvious and severe effect on their health.
| Conversely, I've known near constant weed users who were able
| to keep their use a secret from their family, employer and
| colleagues, were in athletic clubs and in some case on the
| extreme end of physical fitness. I've yet to meet someone who
| drinks all day and is otherwise extremely healthy, but I
| definitely don't feel I have enough data to make any claims one
| way or the other about physical fitness. Overall though, I
| think the jury is still out about how harmful cannabis
| consumption is, especially if taken independently from smoking,
| and one of the best things about legalization movement, in my
| opinion, is that its given users much healthier alternatives to
| smoking, gummies are great!
|
| [1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-
| notes/2018/02/lon...
|
| [2] https://www.marijuanatimes.org/medical-marijuana-research-
| ba...
|
| [3] https://norml.org/marijuana/library/cannabis-mental-
| health-a...
|
| [4]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221171/#ref47
|
| [5] https://archives.drugabuse.gov/news-events/news-
| releases/201...
| blacksqr wrote:
| Don't bogart it!
| forkLding wrote:
| I've bought edibles and weed in Canada, mainly in Toronto. It
| used to be a lot stricter but now a lot less people check my ID
| or whatever. Overall the process feels more informal than before
| and less go through all these checks etc. Could be I look a bit
| older although I was able to buy weed at different places when I
| was much younger without showing my ID either back when it was
| stricter.
|
| Also I've stopped calling them dispensaries because the places
| that sell weed have diversified, specialized or started marketing
| themselves with different products that it isn't just a buy weed
| location anymore so it's hard to put them in one category.
| newsclues wrote:
| Process it into commodity cannabis compounds (THC, CDB, etc) and
| lower the prices to fair and reasonable.
|
| The Canadian cannabis market is regulated by idiots for the
| benefit of companies, and the consumers are taken advantage of.
| mandmandam wrote:
| It seems that they've managed to set things up in such a way
| that it's actually more profitable to destroy the cannabis than
| process it.
|
| Reminds me of the neoliberal take on housing and healthcare.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Not just housing but even more so commercial and industrial
| facilities where property taxes give great incentive for
| scorched-earth demolition in response to only nominal
| downturns in occupancy or utilization.
|
| Always with less than one-year deadlines before reassessment
| since these are recurring taxes, one of their most
| destructive features.
|
| Regardless of how many nearby citizens are homeless, jobless,
| and/or capable of operating a prosperous small cannabis farm
| if they could freely grow & sell their fresh product at the
| local farmers' market with no different regulation or taxes
| than the other crops.
| shawnz wrote:
| One problem with processing it is that there are very low
| limits on dosages of edibles in Canada (currently 10mg THC per
| serving). I think lifting this absurd restriction would help
| enable those ideas.
|
| See here https://www.change.org/p/remove-the-10mg-thc-limit-on-
| edible...
| mandmandam wrote:
| So wait, they're holding (and destroying!) massive quantities to
| keep the price of medical marijuana "34% higher" than the black
| market price, then acting surprised that their product isn't
| moving?
|
| > Forced, in most cases, to sell to a provincial wholesaler along
| with everyone else in the sector
|
| Okay I know nothing about Canada's cannabis market, but who
| thought that could possibly be a good idea?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Canada has a ton of such cartels, the egg board, the milk
| board, the LCBO and so on.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| This is really the worst kind of shit. Destroy food so they
| can charge more, while so many starving people could use that
| food.
|
| I've heard it a million times, but it'll never stop shocking
| me to here about this idea: Keeping market value up is more
| important than reducing starvation.
| gruez wrote:
| But that happens in the US as well? See all the stories
| about farmers dumping milk during the pandemic.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I thought the milk destruction during the pandemic
| happened because the processing facilities for the milk
| were closed and there was no way otherwise to use the raw
| milk? I.e. we can't stop producing it, because cows need
| to be milked, but raw milk is useless without further
| processing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's
| only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time
| they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off.
| Doesn't matter if it is US, Canada or a dictator doing it
| in front of the people that were hoping to receive it.
| It's a shit move.
|
| However, let's not forget the logistics of getting the
| food to locations it was never thought about getting to
| when it was "made". Farms pretty much know where their
| food is going to be sold when it comes time for harvest.
| Food like milk definitely has an expiration factor as
| well. So if American farmers can't sell their milk
| normally and have never tried to arrange for it to be
| sold elsewhere, getting it to elsewhere before expiration
| isn't as easy as one might think.
| gruez wrote:
| >I don't think the comment you replied to was saying it's
| only bad because Canadian. They were stating every time
| they hear about food being destroyed it pisses them off.
|
| But if you're against food waste, shouldn't you be
| supporting supply management (ie. preventing excess
| production)?
| dylan604 wrote:
| You state this like I'm not, but this is just as complex
| and complicated issue. Do you pay farmers to just not
| grow anything in exchange for not over producinng? We
| kind of already do that in the US. Do you legislate that
| any producer must have primary buyers as well as
| secondary/tertiary buyers lined up to ensure never
| wasting the product? Do you legislate that any one farmer
| is only allowed to produce X amount of whatever, or state
| that only X amount of product can be produced annually in
| total, so put you bids in now for a stake? Do you take
| the farmer for any crop that is destroyed to discourage
| over production? Or you can do a startup to disrupt
| farming with a way to preserve food so it never spoils (a
| la Twinkies). Good luck selling that product.
| SECProto wrote:
| And most of us are very happy to support supply management!
| "Cartel" has very negative connotations.
|
| The issues in this article are also entirely different.
|
| edit: you forgot to mention our nefarious healthcare cartel!
| gruez wrote:
| >And most of us are very happy to support supply management
|
| Is it? This poll seems to say otherwise:
| https://angusreid.org/supply-management-nafta-
| renegotiation/
| SECProto wrote:
| That poll says 74% of canadians either don't want supply
| management changed during nafta renegotiations, or it
| could be changed but only as a last resort? That sounds
| like pretty high support.
|
| edit: The later questions are misleading - they ask if
| people would rather buy supply managed dairy at 2.25/L or
| no-supply-managed dairy at 1.50/L. Meanwhile I go to the
| grocery store and buy supply managed dairy at 1.23/L
| every week. Pointing out that people would buy a cheaper
| product isn't really groundbreaking research...
| gruez wrote:
| >That sounds like pretty high support.
|
| That's one way of spinning it. The other replies paint a
| different picture. Specifically:
|
| 1. https://i0.wp.com/angusreid.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/08/S... most people prefer the non-
| supply managed products, _taking into account the pros
| /cons_. (emphasis mine)
|
| 2. https://i1.wp.com/angusreid.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/08/S... only ~40% "support" it, so
| concluding that "most of us are very happy to support
| supply management" is a stretch.
| SECProto wrote:
| > most people prefer the non-supply managed products,
| _taking into account the pros /cons_.
|
| I don't think they pros/cons they listed (i.e. price
| differences) are reflective of reality. Specifically,
| they list milk as $2.25/L, citing statscan as a source.
| This is $9 per 4L bag, an absurd price outside of the
| Territories. Reviewing the actual statscan data source
| [1], milk prices have been very stable at $1.25 to $1.37
| per liter as long as they're been recording data. So I
| don't know where $2.25 came from. The second source they
| listed is crowdsourced and refers to milk costs as $0.62
| per 0.25L which might be accurate if you're buying a
| 250ml or 500ml carton with your lunch ... but not if
| you're buying a larger quantity to take home (and to make
| useful economic comparisons with).
|
| > only ~40% "support" it, so concluding that "most of us
| are very happy to support supply management" is a
| stretch.
|
| That's firmly in Majority territory when it comes to
| Canadian politics :). There's a reason even the
| conservative party (the only political affiliation with
| more people opposed to supply management than supporting
| it) will not touch the issue.
|
| The most interesting data in that study was the age-based
| breakdown - younger respondents were much more likely to
| support supply management, apparently.
|
| [1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid
| =181000...
| gruez wrote:
| >I don't think they pros/cons they listed (i.e. price
| differences) are reflective of reality
|
| What makes you think the pros/cons they listed are just
| the price? In the linked questionnaire they have:
|
| _Supporters of the system say it ensures high quality,
| safe products and a secure level of profit for farmers
| who, in turn, don't have to worry about changing world
| market prices._
|
| _Opponents say it restricts choices and increases prices
| for Canadian consumers.According to some estimates,
| Canadians pay 1.5 to three times what they would without
| supply management for these goods.Opponents also say that
| while the system once protected more than 150,000 farmers
| in the 1970's,it now protects only about 17,000,
| suggesting it is less necessary or outdated_
|
| That seems to line up with the arguments for/against
| supply management discussed in this thread.
|
| >Reviewing the actual statscan data source [1], milk
| prices have been very stable at $1.25 to $1.37 per liter
| as long as they're been recording data. So I don't know
| where $2.25 came from.
|
| The article was dated August 2, 2017. If we checked the
| archived page as of jun 17, 2017, we see the $2.33/L
| price figure.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170617054025/http://www.sta
| tca...
|
| As for whether the numbers are representative because
| people buy in bulk: does it matter? The hypothetical non-
| supply managed prices were obtained by taking the current
| price and dividing by 3 (which was the suggested price
| premium according to University of Calgary's School of
| Public Policy), so it doesn't really matter which
| starting price you used.
|
| >That's firmly in Majority territory when it comes to
| Canadian politics :).
|
| 1. this is a sneaky moving of the goalposts from "most"
| to "majority"
|
| 2. Maybe en-CA has a different definition for "majority",
| but the definition on wiktionary unambiguously states
| that it has to be greater than 50%. maybe you're looking
| for "plurality"?
|
| 3. even if we use "plurality", using that to paint the
| picture that the policy has widespread support is
| misleading, especially when it's split pretty close 3
| ways. At best it can be called "mixed".
|
| >There's a reason even the conservative party (the only
| political affiliation with more people opposed to supply
| management than supporting it) will not touch the issue.
|
| I don't get it. Why arbitrarily exclude people of a
| certain political affiliation? You can't say "most people
| disapprove of biden", then backtrack and say that it's
| true because you excluded all the democrats.
| SECProto wrote:
| Alright, lot of comments to respond here, I'll do my
| best.
|
| > What makes you think the pros/cons they listed are just
| the price?
|
| I think that because consumers (myself included) will
| always choose a commodity that costs one third less. The
| description of the differences is irrelevant.
|
| > The article was dated August 2, 2017. If we checked the
| archived page as of jun 17, 2017, we see the $2.33/L
| price figure
|
| Interesting. I don't think that's a relevant price, as
| people who buy milk generally do it in a 2L or 4L
| package. I'm glad statscan is now tracking more relevant
| data.
|
| The price listed in their question as "no supply
| management $1.50/L" lines up pretty close with actual
| market costs for a 2L or 4L package of milk, while the
| other one is enough of a price premium to be absurd for
| what shoppers consider a staple.
|
| > The hypothetical non-supply managed prices were
| obtained by taking the current price and dividing by 3
| (which was the suggested price premium according to
| University of Calgary's School of Public Policy)
|
| It matters because the non-supply-managed-price matches
| the actual market cost for supply-managed milk. That
| said, if the question had used $1.25/L and $0.83, the
| survey respondents still would've selected the cheaper
| one. Run the same question again and ask if consumers
| would prefer $1.25/L Canadian milk or $0.83/L American
| milk and I think you'd get a response more accurate of
| both what the outcome will be and what the consumers'
| opinion is.
|
| Interestingly, reading the original report from the UofC
| [1], they used the 1Litre price and applied a "typical"
| 2.7 cost multiplier to get an estimate of the 4L price
| (at 6.02-6.48 for 2010-2012), and compared it with the
| real 3.8litre price from US Bureau of Labour statistics.
| The earliest statscan data currently available (from
| 2015) shows it at $5.52 and slowly steadily increasing to
| $6.05 in June this year. So their estimated cost
| differential is off by 10-15% right off the bat due to
| lack of data and a poor assumption. The paper also picks
| and chooses whether to compare supply-managed sectors to
| other agricultural sectors in Canada, or to the
| equivalent sector (eg dairy) in other countries - I don't
| find this to be rigourous. They quote the "mere" 12,786
| dairy farmers in Canada - without comparing it to the
| size of dairy industries in comparable countries. Eg the
| US is down to ~30k dairy farms. I got a bit bored of
| skimming it to be honest, but I didn't find it to have
| even attempted to remain unbiased.
|
| > 1. this is a sneaky moving of the goalposts from "most"
| to "majority"
|
| It wasn't sneaky. That's why I put a smiley-face. It was
| somewhat satirical moving of the goalposts.
|
| > 2. Maybe en-CA has a different definition for
| "majority", but the definition on wiktionary
| unambiguously states that it has to be greater than 50%.
| maybe you're looking for "plurality"?
|
| Sure, plurality. I wasn't being too precise.
|
| > 3. even if we use "plurality", using that to paint the
| picture that the policy has widespread support is
| misleading, especially when it's split pretty close 3
| ways. At best it can be called "mixed".
|
| Ok
|
| > I don't get it. Why arbitrarily exclude people of a
| certain political affiliation?
|
| I wasn't excluding them. I was _explicitly_ including
| them. Read it again without the parenthetical clause. The
| equivalent statement would be "most [a plurality of]
| people disapprove of Biden, even including democrats"
|
| To further expound on my position: I don't believe that
| supply management is perfect by any means. I think
| particularly the price of quota is too high, and this has
| a chilling effect on new entrants and novel ideas. I
| don't believe the solution is to remove quota, but other
| options are possible (eg have quota only available to buy
| from and sell to the relevant board to prevent
| profiteering on quota sales, or maybe have farmers
| require to "lease" quota annually, or maybe increase
| maximum herd/flock exemption limits (particularly notable
| with laying hens) to allow new entrants with novel ideas
| to compete on a small/local basis, maybe tie some fees to
| carbon reduction/addressing climate change, maybe provide
| tariff exemptions/reductions for novel products not
| available on the Canadian market). All that said,
| protection of the domestic industry for certain staples
| is worthwhile, and doing it with supply management rather
| than taxpayer subsidies is a lot more fair in my opinion.
|
| [1] https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/03/suppl...
| slapfrog wrote:
| > _And most of us are very happy to support supply
| management! "Cartel" has very negative connotations._
|
| Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more important
| than having an economically efficient supply of food. Of
| all industries, the food industry in particular should not
| be left totally up to market whims.
| gruez wrote:
| >Exactly. Having a stable supply of food is more
| important than having an economically efficient supply of
| food.
|
| Has there any empirical studies/evidence that supports
| this claim?
|
| > Of all industries, the food industry in particular
| should not be left totally up to market whims.
|
| The oil industry seems pretty important as well. After
| all, most of our vehicles run on it. Maybe we should be
| glad that OPEC is engaging in "supply management", so
| they're not "left totally up to market whims"!
| slapfrog wrote:
| > _The oil industry seems pretty important as well._
|
| Not nearly as important as food; the only thing as
| important as the food supply is our supply of drinking
| water. Nothing else is comparably important, so you're
| wasting your time trying to find analogies. And the
| instability historically see in the oil industry is
| precisely what sane people want to avoid in the food
| supply.
| gruez wrote:
| >Not nearly as important as food; the only thing as
| important as the food supply is our supply of drinking
| water. Nothing else is comparably important, so you're
| wasting your time trying to find analogies.
|
| Guess what modern agriculture (tractors, fertilizers,
| pesticides) runs off of?
|
| Furthermore, if food security really is important, why is
| only dairy and egg supply managed? Surely if you want to
| keep your country fed, you'd want to go after the staples
| like potatoes or grain? If all the milk cows and egg
| laying chickens vanished, people would have to change
| their eating habits. Some people (working in adjacent
| industries) might lose their jobs, but that'd be it. On
| the other hand, if all the wheat/soybean/corn/rice/potato
| crops vanished there would be a massive famine.
| slapfrog wrote:
| Supporting the entire food industry keeps the entire food
| supply secure. Shortages in one sector will raise prices
| in another. Libertarian madness is not a sensible way to
| run a country. Not even America is that crazy.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Surely if you want to keep your country fed, you'd want
| to go after the staples like potatoes or grain?
|
| Canada is extremely competitive on grain and potatoes
| (and lentils and oilseeds and ...). Supply management
| isn't needed if we're already competitive exporters of a
| given product.
| gruez wrote:
| >Supply management isn't needed if we're already
| competitive exporters of a given product.
|
| sounds more like the real goal is protectionism rather
| than "having a stable supply of food"
| SECProto wrote:
| Yes, protecting important food suppliers from some
| foreign competition to ensure a stable supply of food is
| protectionism.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Maple syrup too! https://www.vpr.org/vpr-
| news/2018-03-08/quebecs-legal-maple-...
| joncp wrote:
| Don't mess with those guys.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Onions too. They used some trade negotiations to put a
| northeast US farmers out of business for certain onions,
| which now sell for retail at less than production price.
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| You're misreading. They're not being ordered to destroy crops
| in order to support the medical marijuana price. They're
| destroying crops because there was a bubble and they've created
| way too much supply.
|
| Cannabis stocks were a fad for a while, and I know lots of
| people who invested in them blindly. The number of legal
| cannabis retailers is exploding. I live in a mid sized town and
| there are three more opening this month, and the ones I see
| always have customers.
|
| The system's hardly failing, some speculators just played
| themselves.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > they're not being ordered to destroy crops in order to
| support the medical marijuana price.
|
| I didn't say, or suggest, that anyone was ordered to destroy
| crops?
|
| They created too much supply, yes. Follow the logic chain out
| a step. If they wanted to sell it, they could lower the
| price...
|
| Instead they _choose_ to keep the price above the black
| market price. The black market price which is already
| inflated far above production cost, by virtue of it being
| illegal.
| CitizenHeat wrote:
| Legalization in Canada has dropped unregulated prizes. An
| 1/8oz (3.5G) pre legalization could fetch $30-$40. Post
| legalization is maxed at $25. This might not seem like
| much, but as the weight goes up, it gets drastically
| cheaper.
| Yeroc wrote:
| You seem to be assuming that the producer/grower and
| retailer are the same company. There are often disconnects
| in supply chains like this where someone is hemorrhaging
| money while others in the chain are doing quite well. And
| besides if your production costs are high there's a point
| where lowering the price no longer helps. eg. the cost to
| package it for retail distribution just adds more even more
| loss.
| voisin wrote:
| A bit off topic, but for the smokers here what are your thoughts
| on lung cancer and other negatives associated with smoking? I
| bought a vaporizer but not sure it is actually healthier than
| smoking joints. Tried edibles but can't stand the lack of
| uniformity and time to kick in.
| anglicanchurch wrote:
| Vaping is quite substantially healthier than joints/bongs. You
| aren't burning the material but baking it at oven temps.
|
| I tried to get my stoner buddies into vaping and everyone's
| switched except the guys that are culturally infected to give
| up being the "joint smoking guys".
| tayo42 wrote:
| I switched from bongs to dabs and felt better cardio wise. Live
| resin extracts are suppsedly pretty minimal in extra stuff. I
| think the vape oils have a lot of extra crap. I went back to
| smoking for a bit though I think the dabs are to potent and I
| was getting panic attacks
| tenfourwookie wrote:
| We've been hearing about surplus for several years now, and yet
| the price of weed is going up, not down. I regularly see $400
| retail ounces in Oregon for top shelf.
|
| Supply/demand should push the price to the floor, and yet prices
| continue to increase.
|
| It's like ECON 101 doesn't apply to pot.
|
| What are they going to do, dump it in ocean? And how is retail
| maintaining these (obviously artificially high) prices (in this
| crazy-lopsided buyer's market)? Collusion is about the only
| explanation I have. They're all just colluding to prevent price
| collapse.
| josefresco wrote:
| > Collusion
|
| It's either straight up illegal collusion or a "natural" side
| effect of allowing only "big business" to enter the market.
| Combined with sky high taxes and "community impact" fees and
| there's not much room for price differentiation,.
|
| I live in a state that is just now seeing recreational shops
| open and _miraculously_ all their pricing is exactly aligned.
| grawprog wrote:
| >Barely more than half of all pot sales today are conducted
| through the legal market
|
| When the government won't pay more than $850/lb no matter the
| quality of the weed, what do you expect?
|
| The weed in legal dispensaries is straight trash. It's dry,
| usually packaged months before in containers or bags, costs more
| than the old medical dispensaries or literally anyone else
| selling weed.
|
| There is zero reason to go into a legal dispensary, spend between
| $25-$40 for 3.5g of weed that's going to be pure garbage when I
| could get high quality weed for $15-$20/3.5g from pretty much any
| street dealer or delivery service.
|
| Why would I spend more money on 10mg edibles when I can spend
| less money on 100mg + edibles.
|
| It's completely mindboggling how badly the government fucked this
| up. It's hard to believe it wasn't intentional.
| rubatuga wrote:
| n=1
| kevmo wrote:
| Unprofitable growers should maybe turn to growing food.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Weed being legal is cool (and a huge deal and way overdue) but,
| until I moved to SF, I still bought from a dealer. It was cheaper
| and I got really high quality stuff, got to give feedback to the
| guy on the strains, chocolates, etc. Plus my guy would smoke me
| up for free a good amount of the time and we'd just chill and
| chat for a bit.
|
| Legal weed is wayyyy more expensive in my experience and I
| dislike the experience. I went to an SF dispensary and it was so
| odd - had to give them an ID, sit there and fiddle with some
| ipad, etc. Presumably there's a lot of overhead with taxes,
| employees, property, etc.
|
| And apparently artificially keeping prices high...
|
| Also a somewhat damning case of "we have no idea how to value
| this"
|
| I don't really smoke anymore, no time, but it was enough of a
| difference that the novelty of cutesy edibles wore off fairly
| quickly.
| dpweb wrote:
| In Illinois, I felt the original medicinal stores were more
| warm and very friendly and helpful esp to first time users.
| Compassionate to first time users who are dealing with legit
| pain and medical issues.
|
| Newer recreational stores have popped up everywhere with many
| many more to come, but the few I've visited are cold and the
| staff act like they could give a shit.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| On a gram for gram basis, legal weed may be more expensive. But
| most people don't appreciate that legal weed is significantly
| more potent. (Not to mention the health benefit of smoking less
| plant material.)
|
| The average THC content in illegal states is around 10%. High
| quality legal strains regularly clock in above 25%. So even if
| you're paying twice as much per gram, you're getting a better
| deal per mole of THC.
| Talanes wrote:
| I don't think that necessarily holds true if you're making
| the choice to buy from a dealer though, as having the choice
| implies you're already in a legal state.
|
| At least in California, I'm under the impression the legal
| and illegal supply chains are still very intermixed, so the
| stuff from your dealer is as potent as dispensary. Though I'm
| not sure how true that holds as you get further from the
| major growing areas.
| [deleted]
| KMnO4 wrote:
| When it was legalized in Canada, the legal prices were pretty
| bad. There were also restrictions on only allowing the sale of
| flower (ie no edibles or concentrates IIRC).
|
| Since then, the government has pulled up their socks. The
| prices are competitive, the quality is fantastic, and the doses
| are accurate (as opposed to a "300mg edible" actually having
| anywhere from 50-500mg THC).
|
| As a result, I don't know anyone who doesn't buy from legal
| dispensaries. There still exist some grey area mail order
| services, but the concept of "texting your dealer" is largely
| extinct.
| k12sosse wrote:
| I've been kicking this idea around in my noodle since
| judgement Day passed: a business like a local wine u-brew,
| where you come rent a stall in my warehouse and we grow your
| weed for you, in your name. When it's time to harvest, you
| can either take it home damp and dry it yourself or pay for
| us to cure it for you. Secure, safe, convenient.
|
| I can currently easily grow a (reasonable) year's supply for
| someone within the legal 2-plant limit, this just takes all
| the pains and theft-risk away from the end user (mom and pop
| Canadian backyard growers)
|
| Pretty sure this would be highly illegal under the current
| laws, but I'm old enough to remember when homebrew was
| illegal in Canada, too.
| rambambram wrote:
| This what they do in Barcelona, if I understand you
| correctly.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| just set up streaming webcams :D
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/ashevillecraftcannabis
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Always%20On
| moistly wrote:
| I believe a company named "True Leaf" ("TruLeaf"?) in the
| town of Lumby, BC, is doing exactly that.
| sharken wrote:
| I wish more countries would pick up legalization of cannabis.
|
| Anyhow, i suppose there is still a black market for other
| drugs, that would be curbed with legalization.
|
| It would be quite a feat if Canada were to be the first, but
| it seems more time has to pass.
|
| https://biv.com/article/2021/04/most-canadians-not-ready-
| exp...
| handmodel wrote:
| In california. I only do edibles. For $1.50 (including tax) I
| get 5mg so I either spend 1.50 or 3.00 when getting high on a
| night. Its within walking distance of my house. They do check
| my ID - but seems easier than dealing with a person I have to
| meet on a random corner. And if you were a woman or old person
| - that option would seem even less safe.
|
| My yearly budget for pot if probably about $100-150 which seems
| remarkable low compared to my food or alcohol budget.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Check ID as in verify age >= 21, or put PII into a corp/govt
| database?
| Talanes wrote:
| It's often the second one, as under the prior medical-only
| regulations, dispensaries were all technically organized as
| cooperatives. I've definitely been in places in the
| recreational era where I just had to verify my age though.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i'm not american and i've bought weed from california
| dispensaries -- just check id to see if you are over 21.
|
| in my case, they just looked at my passport and that was
| it.
| reidjs wrote:
| Not everyone was lucky enough to have a chill dealer. It
| reminds me of joe Rogans bit about how in order to buy this
| harmless plant you have to interact with a criminal. Oh, and
| commit a crime. Legalization is 100% the right thing.
|
| You can grow it yourself or get it delivered if you hate the
| dispensary so much.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >You can grow it yourself
|
| Yes, you can legally do this where it is allowed, but other
| than that, it is pretty much a copout. Not everyone can grow
| things well. Not everyone has a green thumb. Also, weed is
| not the easiest plants to grow and takes a lot of time and
| effort to get quality flower. It's also not like you can just
| walk over to plant(s) whenever you want to smoke up. The
| plant has cycles of when it is making flower and when it's
| not. Now, you can trick it out with grow tents, lights,
| hydroponics, etc, but now you're a freaking grow house and
| most people definitely don't want that.
| chillwaves wrote:
| How much easier can it be than literally growing from a
| plant?
| nom wrote:
| it's easy to grow the plant, you can put seeds in your
| garden and it will grow. It's not easy to grow and then
| process (!) the good product people are used to.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I love when the inexperienced stand up like an expert.
|
| There's a huge difference between having a plant that is
| alive and a plant that is producing quality flower of
| enough quantity to make a difference. There is much
| better info on the web a simple search will show you
| compared to me describing to someone that already thinks
| it's super easy.
| chillwaves wrote:
| That's not my question. My question is how much easier
| can it be? I'm just not sure what you are complaining
| about.
|
| Give me an example of a more accessible drug than
| marijuana.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sugar
|
| Edit: Didn't mean to post a one word reply
|
| While it's not classified as a drug, it's definitely
| addicting. Also, you question is very leading. More
| accessible? Depends on location. There are plenty of
| places where meth is much more accessible than anything
| else including alcohol.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Coffee. Tea. Coca cola products with extract from the
| coxa plant (cocaine removed, other medicinal compounds
| retained), cinnamon which is a blood thinner, olives and
| hot peppers and myriad other things which have medicinal
| uses.
|
| Edit: I forgot to say _alcohol_ for those folks who think
| of "drugs" primarily as _recreational drugs._ Not
| everyone is into getting high. Some people have other
| interests in "drugs."
| staticassertion wrote:
| Very first sentence is me saying legalization is great and
| overdue. Feels like it shouldn't be a huge ask that people
| read the first sentence.
| delusional wrote:
| > It reminds me of Joe Rogans bit about how in order to buy
| this harmless plant you have to interact with a criminal. Oh,
| and commit a crime. Legalization is 100% the right thing.
|
| I'm all for legalization but that's just a really bad take.
| The whole point with it being criminalized is that you
| SHOULDN'T buy the plant. Anyone pro criminalization would
| also probably not call it "harmless". Making it inconvenient
| and illegal is the point.
| voisin wrote:
| I think most people pro criminalization simply want to
| control others. There is objectively far more damage caused
| by alcohol and I have yet to meet anyone that wants to
| criminalize cannabis _and_ alcohol.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Go to Utah sometime.
| campground wrote:
| Weed is a bit more expensive now than when I bought from a
| dealer, but it's still seems very cheap for what you get out of
| it. The amount of modern, high potency cannabis I can buy for
| the price of two beers would turn me into a complete zombie if
| I was even able to smoke it all in one sitting, and I'm a
| habitual user. Of course, I've noticed a large variance in how
| it affects different people.
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| From my experience, there are huge differences between stores
| in terms of pricing and customer service. The industry is so
| new that just having your doors open is a license to print
| money, but it'll start to standardize once banks are allowed to
| enter the field, permitting successful dispensary operations to
| scale storefronts. I just stopped at a dispensary in CA about
| and hour and half outside SF and picked up an ounce for $100,
| which is a better deal than I ever got from a dealer.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| The shops on the main roads in SF have a certain aesthetic to
| appeal to a new audience of smokers. If the new age guru /
| apple store thing isn't your vibe, look for shops off main
| roads, they tend to be somewhere btwn the LA medicinal alleyway
| shop and the apple shop. Bloom Room comes to mind. Small,
| focused on quality, had (? pre covid) a volcano you could use
| on premise. It's still a store, they aren't gonna smoke you out
| and be your friend. But SF weed scene is not yet a techy
| monoculture
| hncurious wrote:
| The regulators were way too aggressive. They overburdened farms
| and dispensaries to such a degree that legal sources are having
| a hard time competing with the black market even though
| dispensaries were considered essential businesses (able to stay
| open) through the pandemic.
|
| Now California is bailing out the industry to the tune of
| $100M.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-14/californ...
| travisjungroth wrote:
| This is the consequence of the "regulate and tax the hell out
| of it!" policy that some Americans want to apply to all
| vices.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| But that's what lots of the legalization activists asked
| for. I heard "just make it legal and you can tax it all you
| want" for nearly half a century. Well, now they got what
| they asked for. IIRC, one of the few voices that said
| "legalize it and don't tax it at all" was Ron Paul.
| Everyone else was so enthralled with finding a way to get
| it legal that they really didn't give much thought to how
| the government could end up making legal weed a lot less
| desirable than illegal weed.
| ihsw wrote:
| The wrong lesson will be learned from this, ie: increased
| law enforcement to stamp out the black market rather than
| remove barriers in the free market.
| slapfrog wrote:
| I hated the 'dealers system'. I didn't want to give some
| lowlife drug-dealer my address, nor my phone number. Neither
| was the idea of meeting such a person in a parking lot
| somewhere appealling to me at all. Consequently, I virtually
| never smoked weed at all until it became legally available in
| stores, except at parties where somebody else had it. Two or
| three times I bought from a dealer, and each time it confirmed
| all my biases about the experience.
| humbleMouse wrote:
| Maybe you should reconsider your bias that all dealers are
| "lowlifes"
| serf wrote:
| >Plus my guy would smoke me up for free a good amount of the
| time and we'd just chill and chat for a bit.
|
| that was my experience with earlier weed delivery groups in
| SoCal as well, when recommendations were required.
|
| A guy with a suitcase of samples would show up to your door,
| and offer you a sampling of everything he sold. That person
| would even help you light-up or vaporize the goods if you have
| a physical disability that prevented you from doing so yourself
| , or perhaps teach you how to in-case you're unfamiliar with
| equipment or technique.
|
| They would sit there and smoke with you or bullshit for a few
| minutes about strains/strain-quality/benefits/whatever, make a
| sale with whatever was chosen during the sampling, and then
| head out the door.
|
| Since those days medical prices have gone down significantly,
| but the process is now more sterile and 'mass-friendly'. Gone
| are the days of interactive sampling or someone teaching you
| how to use a bong or vaporizer -- it's now mostly all
| 'delivery-fied' : "give me my cash, here's your delivery that I
| know absolutely nothing about, and i'm gone ASAP."
|
| It's a shame in some ways -- the earlier methods were a lot
| more compassionate towards actual medical patients and actual
| medical needs for this product -- the status in SoCal now feels
| more on-par with UberEats-profit-maximization than it does
| compassionate-care; a shame since 'weed products' have gotten
| way more complex with the addition of a million different
| tincture/extract/compound/etc and the various ways to imbibe
| them.
| [deleted]
| blamazon wrote:
| Once you learn the system, dispensaries are very convenient. At
| practically every location you can peruse the menu and place an
| order ahead of time. Then, at the dispensary, show ID, receive
| selected cannabis products.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands tax for weed is really high. 50% if I
| recall correctly.
|
| Not sure I hate the idea -- at least tax money is put to very
| good use. But for those for whom it's more than merely
| recreational (e.g.: medicinal use), I wish they'd sell a tax-
| free version. Too prone to abuse I guess.
|
| However, heading to a coffeshop[1] isn't a big deal. It's a
| person behind the stand, you pic what you want from a menu, and
| they hand it over. Very nice and friendly, not dissimilar to
| ordering at a cafe.
|
| I don't look under 25, and they've NEVER asked me for an id at
| any of these places. It surprised me in the US that even to
| sell alcohol to someone clearly over 40, they still ask for an
| id.
|
| [1]: Stores that sell weed here are called "coffeeshops".
| ryanlol wrote:
| > they've NEVER asked me for an id at any of these places
|
| Nobody ever carded me in Amsterdam coffee shops when I was
| 14-15, I don't think it's a common practice.
| bdjddd77 wrote:
| Same actually. But this was 25+ years ago. Oddly think we
| got IDs for the sex museum though and was it beers in
| McDonald's at lunch, there some oddities that trip.
| OJFord wrote:
| > But for those for whom it's more than merely recreational
| (e.g.: medicinal use), I wish they'd sell a tax-free version.
|
| (I'm not Dutch but) Are you sure they don't? Obviously not
| claim tax back having bought on the street corner, but if
| it's medicinal as in actually prescribed, not just 'self-
| medicating', then surely it's tax free just like I assume
| anything else would be?
| bdjddd77 wrote:
| It's fucking nuts, 40, looking 50, got IDs buying a pack of
| beers in Walgreens I think, just stopping two night usa back
| to Europe. She wasn't happy that she couldn't scan the EU
| driving license but eventually she relented, same next night,
| I was perplexed, do they not enpower their workers? Uk is
| over 18, but ask for id if you have any doubt less than 21,
| 3yr margin, common sense
| kamarg wrote:
| No empowement. Mistakes could lead to too much bad PR,
| court cases, or fines. It also means that if anything bad
| happens, they can fire the employee that didn't follow
| corporate's rules and claim it was a mistake by the
| employee and totally not the company's fault.
| handrous wrote:
| > do they not enpower their workers?
|
| The US is pathologically concerned with blame, and with
| avoiding blame. Everything about the US makes a ton more
| sense if you understand that.
|
| If you don't empower workers, then anything they do is
| their fault. If you do, then anything they do might be your
| fault, for failing to restrict them ahead of time. It's as
| simple as that.
|
| So you let them make as few choices as possible (then, if
| they do and it's bad, you're off the hook).
| Talanes wrote:
| >3yr margin, common sense
|
| I cannot guess ages with anywhere near that precision. In
| California the usual standard is if you look under 30.
| monocasa wrote:
| > I was perplexed, do they not enpower their workers?
|
| No, big chains like that in the US don't even empower
| middle management.
| patmcc wrote:
| >>>Uk is over 18, but ask for id if you have any doubt less
| than 21, 3yr margin, common sense
|
| People are much worse at estimating ages then they think.
| If the policy is "ID anyone that looks <21" many 16/17 year
| olds will look 23 and not get asked. I worked for a chain
| of liquor stores that had an "ID 25 and under" policy - and
| to check it, they would send in 25 year olds. Lots of time
| staff would fail those checks. In my jurisdiction the
| penalties for selling to minors are strong enough that I'd
| consider a blanket "ID everyone" policy, or at least "ID
| everyone <40" or similar.
| riekus wrote:
| There is no tax on weed in the Netherlands, and I always have
| to ID myself (mid 30, Rotterdam)
| remirk wrote:
| I'm not sure on the 50%. I didn't even know there was a
| separate tax. It seems unlikely to me as weed is still
| 'illegal'. The police won't look your way if you use it or
| sell it in shops. But everything that happens before the shop
| (growing and transport) is still very much illegal and you
| will get a big fine if you get caught. You are only allowed
| to have 5 grams or a small amount of plants.
|
| The government together with a few selected municipalities is
| starting an experiment to grow it in selected growing
| facilities. As far as I know no municipality has started
| selling those yet.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| >It surprised me in the US that even to sell alcohol to
| someone clearly over 40, they still ask for an id.
|
| it's weird, some american states are like that, others are
| not. also, it depends on the bar.
|
| seattle, for example, always asked for id. new york was
| suuuuper chill with ids.
|
| sf was hit or miss, some bars would ask, some other wouldn't.
| yesco wrote:
| My limited understanding is that for most states, if a
| store, even if accidentally, sells to a minor and gets
| caught a certain amount of times, the store will lose it's
| liquor license.
|
| This results in the following problems:
|
| * Underage College students and teenagers are very creative
| at appearing way older than they are if it means getting
| booze
|
| * People who are of legal age, particularly older men, will
| often get offended if carded since it implies the person
| asking thinks they are young looking
|
| Making it a policy to just check the ids of everyone
| decreases the amount of people offended and decreases the
| risk of losing your license which could destroy your
| business.
|
| I imagine your varying experiences across multiple states
| is a combination of individual business decisions and how
| strict that state is with enforcement.
| [deleted]
| d--b wrote:
| A billion gram? You mean a thousand ton?
| 14 wrote:
| People buy weed in grams, eighths, quarters, ounces, and pounds
| typically. Not tons. I assume they went with grams because that
| is the most common purchase amount and people can possible get
| a sense of quantity.
| tartoran wrote:
| Same thing but tons are hard to gauge when consumption of weed
| is closer to grams.
| codetrotter wrote:
| A billion grams. A million kilograms. A thousand tonnes.
|
| ...one kilotonne?
| OJFord wrote:
| Tonne is the more common form for (but exactly equivalent to,
| assuming metric tonnes) the SI megagram (Mg).
|
| Anyone that would use the hypothetical 'kilotonne' would use
| 'Gg' instead. Agriculture works in tonnes though, not SI
| prefixed grams, so it would just be 1000t.
|
| (Source: from writing a lot of code for doing conversions and
| display and things with differently denominated quantities for
| ag users!)
| NullPrefix wrote:
| A thousand tonnes is ambiguous because you cannot know if it's
| metric tonnes or not.
|
| A billion grams is unambiguous, because a billion prefix for
| the regular reader would mean pretty much the same as infinity.
| The 0.0000001 as the multiplier after billion prefix doesn't
| discount that, because you still have to read the billion out
| loud.
| _Microft wrote:
| Isn't a "tonne" always 1000kg, while they only would have to
| disambiguate if they had written "ton"?
|
| Edit: yes, seems to be like that.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| There's always this authoritative reference documenting
| some unambiguous weights & measures terminology:
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Metric%20Fu
| c...
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Oddly enough, "one billion" _can_ mean different amounts in
| different countries:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does it make your head go Boom like an H-Bomb? That would be
| one hell of a marketing campaign
| _Microft wrote:
| Isn't that as much weed as the Dark Lord smoked per hour?
|
| Edit: english subtitles say ,,hundreds" while it is actually
| ,,thousand" in the German version. ~1 minute into
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPVKaj9hVcY
| grumple wrote:
| A gigagram?
| skripp wrote:
| 1 gigagram, for us Europeans. ;)
|
| Edit: it would most likely be written as one thousand tonnes.
| dluan wrote:
| conversely, in europe, do you hit up your dealer for 10 micro
| tonnes of weed?
| cushychicken wrote:
| Ali G always had the best answer to this question: "Why doesn't
| you give it to charity?"
| latchkey wrote:
| This was easy to predict.
|
| Anyone who's been in the industry knows that there is not only
| not enough demand, but it is also seasonal. Other than the
| heaviest users, people don't consume 365 days out of the year,
| they go through phases.
|
| If you grow weed year round in high tech facilities that maximize
| production, you're going to just have massive piles of it that
| you cannot unload.
|
| Making it legal didn't really create that much more demand
| because it was already easy enough to get in most places where
| there were enough consumers.
|
| I drove through Oregon not too long ago. There is literally miles
| of weed shops right next door to each other. There are more weed
| shops than gas stations... and the gas stations usually have one
| right next door anyway. I have no idea how they all stay in
| business, but it couldn't be good.
|
| Now this is the comparison to tulip mania that kind of works.
| slapfrog wrote:
| > _There are more weed shops than gas stations... and the gas
| stations usually have one right next door anyway._
|
| In Washington state [or just Seattle? I'm not sure], there are
| laws restricting how many square feet the signage for a weed
| store is allowed to have. In response to this, weed stores
| devised a trick where they buy up neighboring businesses and
| run them under the same brand name as the weed store, with very
| large signs. So next to "Bubba's weed store" with small signs,
| you have "Bubba's Car Wash" with very large signs. Anybody
| looking for Bubba's weed will see the huge sign for Bubba's car
| wash, and know they found the right spot.
| latchkey wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see what happens to the secondary
| business when the primary fails and Bubba realizes he doesn't
| want to run a car wash...
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I sort of question the framing here? Not yours, but the
| article's. There is exactly enough demand, because however much
| people want of a mostly harmless plant is how much people
| should want of that plant. Nobody turning a profit should be no
| surprise: farmers barely turn a profit either, because selling
| commodities is not a means of getting rich quick. Considering
| how low-risk buying pot was before legalization, it boggles the
| mind why anyone thought there would be a huge growth in
| consumption, especially when the legal product is priced so
| much higher that it might as well still be illegal.
|
| As far as why such a low fraction of transactions are in the
| legal market: the only way to move pot transactions out off the
| black market would be to either make it substantially as
| convenient to buy it legally, or to dramatically increase
| enforcement against black market transactions at the same time
| that weed was legalized. It seems Canada did neither.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Considering how low-risk buying pot was before legalization,
| it boggles the mind why anyone thought there would be a huge
| growth in consumption, especially when the legal product is
| priced so much higher that it might as well still be illegal.
|
| I have no idea how much consumption has changed. But for a
| casual/occasional user seeking out a dealer seems like a
| fairly high bar. And even if legal prices are higher, again
| for a casual user, the total incremental amount seems pretty
| trivial.
| latchkey wrote:
| As a culture, we over produce, under consume and just throw
| the rest away. Ever looked into the dumpsters behind super
| markets?
|
| I may have known a grower who would always struggle with the
| seasons. Indoor growing is year round, but the outdoor stuff
| is what everyone wants. So every time the outdoor harvests
| would happen, it was nearly impossible to sell the indoor
| stuff.
|
| So now you combine massive indoor with massive outdoor and
| year round production... and a customer base that is also
| trained to be seasonal (wait to stock up on the best stuff
| when it is available)... total recipe for failure.
|
| Needless to say, my grower friend saw the writing on the wall
| and exited the business before things became legal. It was
| really too bad, their multi-year cultured strain was
| excellent and no longer exists now.
| Animats wrote:
| _" The business model at that time didn't demand actual weed
| sales: selling hype, selling the potential of selling weed, was
| proving lucrative."_
|
| Where have we heard that before?
| taurath wrote:
| This is a new era though where companies can survive for over a
| decade on hype and the promise of future profits. In fact
| present profits make it seem like you're running out of room to
| grow.
|
| Not that any of the companies anyone here works for work the
| same way.
| gumby wrote:
| What's wrong with saying "tonne" instead of "billion grams"
| kleene_op wrote:
| It's harder to smoke
| hollerith wrote:
| A metric tonne is a million grams :)
| [deleted]
| gedy wrote:
| > The business model at that time didn't demand actual weed
| sales: selling hype, selling the potential of selling weed, was
| proving lucrative.
|
| That's kind of everything these days.. Tech, stocks markets,
| housing, etc. is less about fundamentals as it is the
| "potential".
| h2odragon wrote:
| Many planning failures in the field.
|
| Last year _lots_ of people planted hemp around me, as it just
| become legal and there was a small market opening. Very, very few
| of these people had any notion what it would take to harvest,
| process and store their crop, and no notion of how or where to
| market it once in.
|
| I've seen multiple Craigslist ads attempting to sell garbage bags
| of wet, mouldy, untrimmed hemp. I've been told that anyone who
| has a sales channel has been inundated with "buy my crop" offers.
| Ive heard one guy had grown and harvested several acres or so and
| had a couple truckloads _in round wrapped bales_ he was looking
| to sell.
|
| People didn't dive into cotton farming this way, when it became
| viable in the area again.
| treis wrote:
| I did the math on this a few years ago and it came out to be
| less than 10 farms to supply the entire US with weed.
|
| Edit:. Found my post:
|
| For comparison, bulk price of tobacco is a few bucks a pound.
| Admittedly I am not an expert in marijuana vs tobacco
| cultivation, but I doubt it's 1,000 times more expensive.
| Ultimately, the problem with profiting in a legal marijuana
| industry is that people simply don't smoke that much pot.
|
| Say that there's 260 million adults in the US and they all
| smoke 1 joint per day. Assuming:
|
| 1 joint = 1 g of marijuana
|
| 1 lb = 454g
|
| 1 acre can yield 600 lbs of marijuana
|
| 1 farm is 1000 acres
|
| If you do the math, that means we need roughly 350 farms worth
| of marijuana. Or in terms of acreage, roughly 0.04% of all the
| acreage in the U.S. under cultivation. In other words, even if
| we assume a ridiculous level of smoking there's simply not a
| huge demand for pot. Using more realistic amounts, a handful of
| large farms could produce all the marijuana consumed in the
| country.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Tobacco is harder to grow _and cure_ than good cannabis.
|
| The tobacco industry consolidation bent the market to the
| point that "tobacco" as sold is the result of a large
| industrial process that happens to use nicotina plant matter
| as an input.
|
| I think the cannabis industry is flying hellbent to that
| point just to have an excuse for spending all the investor
| money. As well as a literal distaste for burning plants as a
| social thing.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-07 23:01 UTC)