Of course, with no legal means of distribution (or taxation), frankly I don’t really see much of anything changing.
You can now possess up to 2 oz. (I always laugh at the amounts allowed in these laws; the people drawing these up obviously don’t realize that an ounce or two is a HUGE amount of weed to just be carrying around) and grow up to six plants. Problem with that is, it was already largely decriminalized last July, and most casual smokers don’t have the desire, wherewithal, or initiative to bother growing their own.
Besides, over the years I’ve known of absolutely no one who wanted to get weed (or anything else) who couldn’t get it.
I should think lots of people would start growing it for profit as well as use. At least, my county is awash in weed grows. We’ve got the stuff coming out of our earholes. I hear a lot of it is for export to the East, where it sells for 6x the price it is here.
I live across the river from Washington State which legalized last year. It took awhile for the supply chain to get up and going and prices were high at first. Now prices have dropped down to match the historical price of illegal pot from years ago, about $10 a gram.
Civilization survived. The cops don’t care, unless you are under the influence while driving. The world did not come to an end and there is really no impact other than the illegal dealers and sellers are slowly fading away. The illegal trade continues until the price drops to a point where they just can’t compete anymore and why bother. You can just walk into a store, buy, walk out. Getting rid of the shady people that a pot smoker used to have to know is a big plus.
Oregon, where I live, is set to go to live sales in July of this year. Several conservative towns (yes, there are many in Oregon), pre-empted the law and passed tax and exclusion measures that will effectively prohibit the locating of stores. Most were enacted by city councils without voter input.
The law contains provisions where the tax money collected is distributed in areas based on the store locations. So these conservative areas have effectively eliminated an easy tax stream. Once they figure this out these local ordinances will be repealed. There is already some scrambling to get back into the game.
I knew someone who had a small weed farm in his house once (as in a couple of plants), and it does involve a bit of work. Not an insane amount, but more than a regular potted plant.
The guy was a bit of a hobbyist gardener, and also grew his own zucchini. I like zucchini, too, but I don’t have the desire, wherewithal, or initiative to grow those for myself either. I just get them at the store. Don’t you?
Me too! Back in my pothead days, I dont’ think I ever even saw 2 ounces at one time. 2 ounces would have been like a bajillion dollars to me, just an unimaginable sum.
I guess the real result of these laws is that cops no longer will be arresting people for low lever marijuana use. Also, did you see that Nando’s was giving away free chicken for one hour in DC starting at 4:20 pm?
I had to look. Sales aren’t legalized under the ballot initiative that produced this. You can give away up to 1 oz but not sell it. Only three of the six legal plants can be mature/budding at a time so it’s hard to build a huge surplus legally to try and sell illegally. Whether police bother going after sales is a different issue; it’s still illegal though.
It’s very much a “roll your own” thing to source it legally in DC.
Correct. There has been some talk about ways around the lack of rules and regulations regarding sales, e.g. you make a “donation” and anything you leave with is a “gift,” or “private clubs” where you pay an admission fee that just happens to be the same price you’d pay for, say, an eighth of pot, and again, you leave with a “gift,” but I’m pretty sure the police can see through that sort of semantic game playing, although apparently the police are so far resigned to just let most things go:
“Unless someone is doing illegal distribution or mass cultivation, we probably won’t be doing anything about it.” - Delroy Burton, chairman of the D.C. police union.
Local radio hosts were amusing themselves earlier this week with Nebraska/Oklahoma scenarios, with Maryland and Virginia law enforcement staking out the district borders. But Maryland has recently relaxed its restrictions as well and there is zero groundswell here for our cops to harass anyone returning from the district.
Good for Muriel Bowser standing up to the congressional bozos threatening her with “arrest.” Who exactly were they gonna get to go haul her away?
Any time I see these limites of 2 oz of weed (or similar), I just laugh at how much weed that really is. I’m a nightly smoker and that would still last me 4 months.
U.S. Marshalls, that’s who. DC needs to remember that they are a federal district, under the control of the federal government. They have demonstrated various times that they cannot govern themselves and will never receive statehood.
No DC city ordinance can contravene federal law and those who initiated and enacted this particular local legislation are technically in violation of federal law.
Good luck to them winning support for their agenda after sending in the Marshalls. American voters, already favoring legalization, will take a dim view of a ridiculous action like that. DC may indeed operate under different rules but with the Colorado experiment in full swing that kind of overreaction would appear ludicrous to much of the public.
I presume your observation is an academic one and that you personally don’t favor such shenanigans.
