A black market will almost always have higher prices than a legal market because of the risks of operating in a black market. In the U.S., widespread legal cultivation and legal sale of marijuana should result eventually in a large discount to black market prices. Black markets in legal goods tend to only exist where the black market product is able to be sold much cheaper to a legal product, this usually only happens when tax is involved.
Black market alcohol is still widely sold in parts of the country, because it’s very cheap to make and if your customers aren’t paying sales tax and liquor tax (which is usually 5-6% of the sale price in addition to the 5-8% sales tax) and you aren’t paying all the government fees and taxes as a producer you get a much cheaper product. It’s also able to be sold in far higher concentrations, many states prohibit spirits over a certain proof.
Black market “cigarettes” or grey market maybe, are common in border areas where it is profitable to buy cigarettes in one state where cigarette taxes are low, and smuggle them into states where cigarette taxes are high.
Legal marijuana will significantly reduce the black market regardless of the tax situation, as evidenced by the fact most people would rather buy legal alcohol or cigarettes than black market versions of those products even though it costs more. People are willing to pay more money for the convenience of being able to do their transactions openly and in familiar forms, and many people are unwilling to engage in black market trade for various reasons.
However, if there is a governmental desire to see near-destruction of the black market in marijuana they need to make sure the taxes are not outrageously high. If you tax it just enough that it’s about the same as it costs on the black market, few will have any reason to buy from illegal dealers. If you tax it such that it is 5x as much, the black market will continue to boom and only wealthier people who were put off by the issues related to black markets will buy the legal stuff.
No, I don’t think so. The legal risk isn’t that high. At best, it’s already a grey market. Governments will tax it to exactly the point where the tax eats any legality benefit, and maybe beyond that since consumers may be willing to pay even more since they a relieved of their side of the criminality.
Cigarettes come pre-packaged with a bar code and tax stamp. The issue with regard to taxes is how to distinguish between pot that was legally purchased and taxed and pot you bought from Ron in his van down by the river. Or that you grew yourself.
Pot (I’m using ‘pot’ rather that marijuana as shorthand) comes loose in it’s original form, more or less. There are efforts to bar-code individual plants and follow them to the final sale.
This will be needed if for no other reason than quality control. An agricultural product must be traceable to meet GMPs or Good Manufacturing Practices. You can bar-code the jars or packages pot is sold in but what do you do when it is removed from the package? Has it been taxed or bought from the Ron van?
And anyone who can grow a tomato plant can grow a pot plant. The potency is all in the genes of the seed or plant that you start with. You can improve the amount of yield by being a better gardener but it is still all in the genes of what you started with.
Since it is very valuable people tend to grow pot indoors where the security and environment can be controlled, but in the right climate it isn’t needed.
So what I am leading up to is that heavy taxation is a loser for those governments that see it as a cash cow. Once possession becomes commonplace, the taxable origin becomes problematic. Pot is much easier to produce than either moonshine or tobacco.
No-one who has never grown it should say it is so easy. It’s not as easy as making beer or wine. And I’m not talking about people selling what they grow, only about legitimate growers for personal use. Anyone who spends over a thousand a year on it, will probably start growing their own. That’s already happening aside from the legalization factor.
Actually it’s easier than making beer or wine, you may be arguing that producing a good product is harder than home brewing beer or wine, which is debatable. But an ill comparison, making the best wines and the best beer is the work of master craftsmen. It is extremely competitive and difficult, and their products are sold at a major premium. In the wine industry particularly some particularly good vintages sell for thousands of dollars a bottle.
There is hardly any risk you’ll get caught buying bootleg liquor, but it’s much less popular than the liquor store. Most people when they have the option to pay a little more for legal product versus pay a little less for an illegal product, will pay for the legal product.
Fully black market goods, like prostitutes or heroin or whatever right now, will be sold at a big markup. Marijuana is definitely “less black market” than heroin, but it’s still black market. But there is nothing in economic history to suggest that a black market will persist at its current levels if the illegal nature of the underlying product is changed so that it is no longer illegal.
With products that can’t be totally freely sold (requiring a tax stamp, government regulation etc) the only real niche the black market can fill is the bargain basement niche, people who will go outside normal markets to save money. But many, many people will not risk legal trouble when they can buy something legally.
So, if you come through Blaine and they decide to search your car and discover your weed, what happens? In WA, where you are, it will be legal to have, but the border staff are federal agents who uphold federal law, which says you may not have this stuff, would you get hauled off?
Absolutely. I’ve brewed several batches of beer. Some were good, some were bad. Drinkable beer is hard to make consistently. Even if your recipe is good, a single piece of poorly sanitzed equipment can make the product of your work and waiting a nasty mess. Growing marijuana is easy. Generally, it does it without your help at all if you like. Putting a small amount of effort into it will increase your yield, but that is the professionally inclined. I’ve seen a 20ft sativa plant that grew without any interaction from the owners of the property. They didn’t notice it until it had almost reached that size.
Even for the professionals, their problem isn’t growing the stuff. Drying, curing and preserving it is harder than growing it. That’s not even close in difficulty to brewing mediocre beer.
How many of you commenting on growing marijuana as being hard or easy have ever done it? I have. Like a lot of things, it’s easy once you are practiced but not easy to learn.
Many people assume that brewing a decent tasting beer is hard to do. It is not, if you adhere to a few simple principles. I imagine the same goes for the production of Cannabis; the info is already out there, it just needs to be implemented. Are you aware that you can graft a hops plant to the roots of a Cannabis plant and have hop flowers with THC in them? Apparently the plants are closely related.
Has anyone else seen the show American Weed about growers in, I think, Northern California? People would grow plants in their side yard in plain view, right beside schools, then be surprised when the police showed up. It’s like building a still in your front yard and being surprised that someone complains. “Huh, wha? I thought it was legal man.” Even if it is legal to grow at some point it will always be controlled in some form and there will be idiots to ruin it for everybody.
Tomatoes are easy to grow and I’ve managed to screw that up a few times. It’s easy to grow a tomato plant, anybody can do it. It’s a little more difficult to get a good product in the quantities one wants.
Most people growing pot for personal use are doing it indoors with hydroponics. You need a lot of equipment and to learn what you’re doing. This is nothing like planting something outside and waiting. You have to control water temp, air temp, nutrient density, pH, humidity. Then you have to have the right kind of lights. And you need to be able to put the growspace in TOTAL darkness for 12 hrs out of 24. And then you have to watch for insects, disease, nutrient shortage, nutrient toxicity. You have to control odor. Then you have to know when and how to harvest, dry and cure. It takes a couple years of experience to know what you’re doing. THEN it sorta becomes easy.
I have grown it in the past. What you are describing is the most difficult way to grow it. Again, this is the realm of professionals or the devoted hobbyist, and it wasn’t even the preferred method for the pros until the last 20 years. Even then, it’s not that hard. The hard part is keeping it undiscovered. The easiest way to grow it: leave a seed unattended in your yard in the spring. If I leave the ingredients for beer unattended in my yard, I’ll get mold.
Yes, I have grown pot several times, and yes it is easy. Growing inside takes a bit of learning, growing outside is something that anyone who has ever grown a garden can do.
It might actually be easier than growing tomatoes.
Like I said, it depends what you mean and what you compare it to. Growing hemp is a very standardized process thousands of years old, if you scatter seeds around in an appropriate climate there is a very good chance several plants will grow without any further intervention.
That’s the basic botany, now being able to grow it in a consistent manner, with consistent results, where you get optimal THC concentrations that is more akin to the difference between me scattering tomato seed in a backyard garden and a State fair winning tomato grower growing prize winning blue ribbon tomatoes. There is a difference, and I’m not denying that, that’s true with all plant growing. But if you’re just talking about the “base process”, growing a plant is easier than brewing your own beer or fermenting your own wine.
Now, growing “premium” quality plants is probably harder than fermenting toilet wine or brewing beer with one of those $50 do it yourself kits which take 99% of the effort out of it, I’ll give you that. But if you’re comparing brewing prize winning craft beer or award winning wine, I’d argue those are probably significantly harder trades than growing the most premium weed–or any “naturally grown” crop. Just because at that level of brewing or winemaking it is a highly complex process with many more variables than even the most intensive marijuana operation. If for no other reason than the best beers or wines involved rigorous control over the growing of the plants underlying those finished products in addition to rigorous control over a production process involving finicky chemical reactions that can go south because of any number of minor mistakes.
Well that’s like comparing maintaining a tropical saltwater aquarium to keeping regular fish. Both situations are highly unnatural for the fish (as is hydroponics and indoor growing for a field crop like cannabis), and thus require a great deal of human intervention and effort to keep working. The saltwater fish is a lot more out of its element than the freshwater temperate fish, just as a plant like corn would be a lot more out of its element indoors versus a fern. That has nothing to do with legal production, which is what this thread is about. Indoor growing is almost entirely done to avoid detection by authorities, which is not a concern with legalized growing.