The National Academy of Sciences has just issued a new report on marijuana and public health. Among their recommendations is that bans on research should be rescinded. (Because marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug in the Controlled Substances Act, it's hard to get permission to study it and its effects...)
Cannabis Policy Impacts Public Health and Health Equity (2024)
Transitioning from a thriving black market for marijuana to a regulated legal market isn't so easy.
The Guardian has the story from Germany, where so far clubs, but not shops, have been legalized:
Cannabis legalisation hampered by most German of substances: red tape. Activists say the rollout of laws permitting recreational use of the drug has been hampered by a ‘bureaucratic monster’ by Deborah Cole
"Joints now mingle openly with pints among fans watching the European football championship in host nation Germany, which in the spring became the first big EU country to legally allow personal recreational use of cannabis.
"That is, provided the fan is over 18, only carrying a small amount of the narcotic, not smoking in the stands of a stadium and not in possession of more than three plants at their officially registered home.
...
"The hotly disputed law passed by Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition, which took effect in April, legalised cultivating up to three plants for private consumption, the possession of 50g (1.75oz) of cannabis at one time at home and 25g in public.
...
"A key phase began on 1 July with the establishment of registered cannabis clubs, which proponents say are vital to assuring the smooth path towards legal weed and supplanting the underworld street trade.
...
"In order to thwart drug tourism, members must have lived in Germany for six months, sign up to a club for a minimum of three months and have a clean criminal record for narcotics.
"Clubs are dependent on fee-paying members to start operating but are not allowed to advertise, said Marten Knopke of the Cannabis Social Club Leipzig, thus robbing them of a key source of capital needed to rent offices and land for growing purposes. Consumption on club premises is also verboten.
“We are subject to more restrictions than any alcohol company,” Knopke said, echoing a frequent complaint from the cannabis scene about drinking, which kills more than 60,000 people in Germany each year. “The government has also made it really difficult for us to stand up to the hidden [narcotics] market.”
...
“There are no shops where you can buy, meaning they [foreign tourists]" will end up buying something on the underground market, which is very dangerous in Berlin,” because of contaminated drugs and the role of the mafia in the trade, he said."
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And here's the New York Times on New York:
The Real Problem With Legal Weed, By Charles Fain Lehman
"When New York legalized recreational marijuana in 2021, the future seemed bright. ...
"Three years later, things are not going to plan. Gov. Kathy Hochul has called New York’s legalization rollout “a disaster.” Mayor Eric Adams has spent months demanding that Albany fix the current system. “What happened?” The New Yorker recently asked in a feature on the collapse of the state’s marijuana “revolution.”
...
"There are around 140 recreational dispensaries operating statewide — about one for every 148,000 New Yorkers. Instead of shopping legally, New Yorkers tend to get their weed from the illegal shops that now blanket the state. Estimates suggest that there are anywhere from 2,000 to 8,000 in New York City alone, with uncounted more from Ithaca to Oneonta. Recent crackdowns have temporarily sealed more than 400 stores — only a small fraction of the total in the city.
"These shops undercut the legal stores, offering the same high at a fraction of the price. And they attract crime: There were 736 robbery complaints at unlicensed shops last year, according to the New York Police Department. Shootings are not uncommon, including the killing of a 36-year-old man captured on video last April.
"They also sell to teenagers, as The Times has reported. Teachers, prevention experts and pediatricians have raised the alarm about high schoolers smoking or vaping marijuana at school."
The WSJ has the story:
Do Americans Drink Too Much? Alcohol Is Driving a Debate in Washington. Agencies, lobbyists and lawmakers are fighting over alcohol guidelines due to be updated next year By Kristina Peterson and Julie Wernau
"For nearly three decades, federal dietary guidelines have said it is safe for men to have two or fewer drinks a day, and for women to have one. That could change next year when the Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments update recommendations that are part of federal dietary guidelines.
...
"Alcohol-industry officials and lobbyists have sent materials to government officials questioning the research methods of scientists drafting the recommendations. Alcohol companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers, more than a dozen of whom wrote to HHS and USDA on May 30 demanding more information on the process.
“We don’t want arbitrary decision-making by these agencies that’s not rooted in real science,” said Rep. Andy Barr (R., Ky.), who is co-chair of the Bourbon Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers. The group was founded in 2009 by a lawmaker from Kentucky, which considers itself the birthplace of bourbon, and now has around 40 members.
...
"Guiding Americans to drink less would be a blow to an industry that is already losing some customers. Younger generations have moved away from alcohol over health concerns. For the first time, the U.S. has more daily cannabis users than alcohol users.
“If they want us to drink two beers a week, frankly they can kiss my ass,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said on Newsmax in August of the potential for lower alcohol-consumption guidelines.
...
The six-member HHS panel includes three researchers whose studies have demonstrated that any amount of alcohol can be harmful: Tim Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research; Jürgen Rehm, senior scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health; and Kevin Shield, an independent scientist who runs a World Health Organization center on addiction."
Here's a paper forthcoming in the journal Addiction:
Changes in self-reported cannabis use in the United States from 1979 to 2022, by Jonathan P. Caulkins, published online 22 May 2024, https://doi.org/10.1111/add.16519
"Abstract
Background and aims: Multiple countries are considering revising cannabis policies. This study aimed to measure long-term trends in cannabis use in the United States and compare them with alcohol use.
Design and setting: Secondary analysis of United States general population survey data.
Participants: The national surveys had a total of 1 641 041 participants across 27 surveys from 1979 to 2022.
Measurements: Rates of use reported to the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health and its predecessors are described, as are trends in days of use reported. Four milepost years are contrasted: 1979 (first available data and end of relatively liberal policies of the 1970s), 1992 (end of 12 years of conservative Reagan-Bush era policies), 2008 (last year before the Justice Department signaled explicit federal non-interference with state-level legalizations) and 2022 (most recent data available).
Findings: Reported cannabis use declined to a nadir in 1992, with partial recovery through 2008, and substantial increases since then, particularly for measures of more intensive use. Between 2008 and 2022, the per capita rate of reporting past-year use increased by 120%, and days of use reported per capita increased by 218% (in absolute terms from the annual equivalent of 2.3 to 8.1 billion days per year). From 1992 to 2022, there was a 15-fold increase in the per capita rate of reporting daily or near daily use. Whereas the 1992 survey recorded 10 times as many daily or near daily alcohol as cannabis users (8.9 vs. 0.9 M), the 2022 survey, for the first time, recorded more daily and near daily users of cannabis than alcohol (17.7 vs. 14.7 M). Far more people drink, but high-frequency drinking is less common. In 2022, the median drinker reported drinking on 4–5 days in the past month, versus 15–16 days in the past month for cannabis. In 2022, past-month cannabis consumers were almost four times as likely to report daily or near daily use (42.3% vs. 10.9%) and 7.4 times more likely to report daily use (28.2% vs. 3.8%).
Conclusions: Long-term trends in cannabis use in the United States parallel corresponding changes in cannabis policy, with declines during periods of greater restriction and growth during periods of policy liberalization. A growing share of cannabis consumers report daily or near daily use, and their numbers now exceed the number of daily and near daily drinkers."
Daily and Near Daily (DND) use
...
"That is still not as high as for cigarettes. The 2022 NSDUH survey finds that 58.7% of PM ["Past Month"] cigarette smokers smoked ‘daily’—defined as ‘smoked one or more packs of cigarettes per day’ [8]. Therefore, there are more daily cigarette smokers than DND PM marijuana users (24.1 vs 17.7 million). 3 Still, patterns of marijuana consumption have shifted from being like alcohol to being closer to cigarette use. It is also no longer a young person's drug. In 2022, people 35 and older accounted for (slightly) more days of use than did those under the age of 35."
Here's a map from The Hill of places where marijuana will be legal to various degrees by the end of this year. Grey states are where marijuana is still entirely illegal. Despite the best attempts of the previous presidential administration to make America grey again, Idaho is one of only three states that remain grey: they are surrounded by states in which cannabis is legal in some form, and most of Idaho's neighbors have legalized marijuana (even) for recreational purposes (bright green on the map).
But Idaho is holding the line, which seems to be politically popular there.
The NYT has the story:
A Legal Pot Pioneer Was Busted in Idaho With 56 Pounds. He Has a Plan. By Corey Kilgannon
"In retrospect, the Idaho shortcut might have been a bad idea.
...
"Idaho is surrounded mostly by pot friendly states and is strict about people driving through with the stuff. The authorities are especially vigilant in “corridor counties” along Interstate 84, of which Gooding County — where Mr. Beal encountered the state police — is one.
"Under state law, carrying more than 25 pounds of marijuana is a felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years; the maximum is 15 years, with a maximum fine of $50,000.
“It’s one of the worst places in the country to possess marijuana, definitely,” Michelle Agee, Mr. Beal’s court-appointed lawyer, said. “Idaho is stuck in the 1950s as far as marijuana goes. It’s definitely the wrong place, wrong time for a person to be accused of having marijuana.”
...
"Reached for comment, Idaho’s attorney general, Raúl R. Labrador, a former Republican congressman who helped found the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that legalization in neighboring states had done nothing to deter the strict enforcement of the laws in Idaho.
“We’ve watched how those decisions to legalize drugs have ruined other states, and Idaho demands just a bit better for our citizens and communities,” he said. “If you are trying to transport marijuana across state lines through Idaho, take the long way instead. It’ll save us money on your incarceration.”
An anomaly of US Federal law is that marijuana is illegal on airplanes (interstate commerce) even when the airports involved are in states where marijuana is legal.
The WSJ has the story and a picture:
Don’t Put Your Stash in the Overhead Bin. A ‘Cannabis Amnesty Box’ at Chicago’s Midway Airport. By Bob Greene
The LA Times has the story, about how legalization of marijuana in California so far failed to end the black market, complete with violence in the Southern California desert.
A massacre that killed 6 reveals the treacherous world of illegal pot in SoCal deserts, by SUMMER LIN, SALVADOR HERNANDEZ, KAREN GARCIA
"A Times investigation last year uncovered the proliferation of illegal cannabis in California after the passage of Proposition 64, which legalized the recreational use of marijuana in the state. Although the 2016 legislation promised voters that the legal market would hobble illegal trade and its associated violence, there has been a surge in the black market.
"Growers at illegal sites can avoid the expensive licensing fees and regulatory costs associated with legal farms. Violence is a looming threat at these operations, authorities said, because illicit harvests yield huge quantities of cash to operators who can’t use banks or law enforcement for protection.
...
"In 2019, an audit by the United Cannabis Business Assn. found nearly 3,000 unlicensed dispensaries and delivery services were operating in the state — at least three times more than legal, regulated businesses.
...
"Warrick wouldn’t comment on whether the slayings were cartel-related but said there were “certain things at the scene that show a level of violence that obviously raises some interesting questions for us.”
The market for legal marijuana in the U.S. is suffering from (literal) growing pains, as large scale legal cultivation runs into both crop diseases, and zoning issues.
As a crop that is legal at the state level in many states, but still illegal under federal law, large cannabis farms don't get some of the benefits regarding the spread of plant diseases that are provided for other crops by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The WSJ has the story:
Cannabis Industry Confronts Billion-Dollar Threat: Weak Weed. Pathogen spreading among crops is cutting recreational drug’s potency, forcing growers to cull ‘dudded’ plants. By Dean Seal
"A pathogen is contaminating cannabis crops around the country and threatening to leave billions of dollars of losses in its wake.
"Cannabis researchers and experts are sounding the alarm for what is known as hop latent viroid, or HLVd, and cultivators are stepping up efforts to discover whether their plants are infected. The pathogen can drastically reduce the potency of the psychoactive compounds in marijuana, a phenomenon that growers have long called “dudding.”
...
"Plant pathologists and cannabis experts say the spread of the viroid was likely accelerated by the popularity of weed from California, which legalized cannabis for medical use in 1996.
"The spread also reflects the evolution of the cannabis business into a major agricultural crop. The risk of a new disease expanding increases for any crop that goes from low to high production, as cannabis has in the past two decades, said Jeremy Warren, Dark Heart’s director of plant science.
“You saw the spread happen in the legal states first, like California, where you started having bigger grows and bigger greenhouses that are making thousands and tens of thousands of plants,” Warren said. “In that system, it’s harder to maintain sanitation and it’s easier for a pathogen to take off.”
"The U.S. Agriculture Department typically sets quality standards and inspection requirements for agricultural products, but marijuana’s illegality at the federal level keeps it out of the agency’s purview."
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And big farms mean that agriculture and expensive housing may rub shoulders in California. Here's the Guardian on Santa Barbara County.
A beachside city became California’s legal cannabis capital. Not everyone is stoked by Nicholas Schou
"Thanks to the most lenient policies in California for recreational marijuana, Santa Barbara county is now the state’s undisputed capital of legal cannabis, boasting more acres than the storied Emerald Triangle of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties.
"Santa Barbara voters overwhelmingly backed California’s legalisation of recreational marijuana in 2016, with hopes that the cannabis boom would bring tax revenue and new jobs to the county. The transformation has been fast and furious. Santa Barbara county is now home to around a third of all cultivation licenses issued in California, despite making up only 1.8% of the state’s land, with some megafarms stretching over dozens of acres.
"But the sudden influx of growers has inspired a broad coalition of frustration that spans local high schools, uber-wealthy homeowners and the region’s influential wine industry, who argue the pungent industry threatens to ruin their cherished lifestyle in a region dubbed the “American Riviera”.
...
"The tensions underscore a wider drama playing out in California over the promises of legal weed. Despite broad public support for bringing the industry out of the shadows, seven years on the illicit market is thriving, businesses are struggling to turn a profit, and many on the frontlines of the transition say they have yet to enjoy the returns.
"In fact, for the first time, officials in Santa Barbara are acknowledging that if market trends continue, the cost of the program both to public finances and to quality of life may outweigh any actual benefits.
...
"California’s cannabis market has been operating in a quasi-legal sphere since 1996, when medical marijuana was decriminalized. In 2016, advocates for Proposition 64 successfully argued that decriminalizing all cannabis use would create lucrative tax schemes and rewrite the historic injustices of policing such a widely used drug.
"But Prop 64 allowed cities to choose whether to allow cannabis businesses or not. Many refused to, banning both cultivation and dispensaries. Others, with varying degrees of success and scandal, sought to cash in on the “green rush”.
...
"Santa Barbara is alone among counties in that it taxes farmers based on the value of the marijuana they sell, as opposed to the acreage of their farms. While that strategy works when cannabis values are high, the industry has experienced a massive decline in profitability during the past year. With the sale price of cannabis in the state at roughly a third of its value just a year or so ago, many corporate investors have pulled out of the market entirely, and the number of licensed growers in Santa Barbara county has declined by about 25%.
"As a result, the county is expecting to earn just $7.5m in cannabis tax revenue this year, a 54% decline from 2022 and only half the $15.2m that was expected to fund the county’s latest budget, according to a county report."
Here's a proposal for a bit pf reality-based legislation that has some bipartisan support. DefenseOne has the story:
Proposed marijuana waivers acknowledge blunt recruiting truths. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to remove a barrier to joining the U.S. military. by LAUREN C. WILLIAMS
"As the military services struggle to meet recruiting goals, lawmakers in the divided House seem united on a proposed fix: relaxing the Pentagon’s policies on marijuana use.
“I do not believe we should be testing for cannabis [in] people who want to join the military,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told the House Rules Committee during a hearing on Tuesday. “We should be thinking about cannabis more in terms of alcohol.”
Gaetz testified in support of his amendment that would ban drug testing for marijuana as a condition of enlistment or to become a commissioned officer.
“We are having a recruiting crisis,” he said, noting that many “people use cannabis under the color of state law.” So far, 23 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized the recreational use of marijuana.
"The Florida lawmaker stressed that his amendment wouldn’t preclude DOD from prohibiting marijuana use for individuals actively serving in the military, but that cannabis testing is “an unnecessary gate” for recruitment. In 2021, Gaetz sought to overturn U.S. election results."
The Washington Post has the story on a big bet on the future of the American cannabis market:
Giant California greenhouse signals a big bet on cannabis legalization. One enormous facility on the northern edge of metro Los Angeles reveals expectations of marijuana becoming legal nationally. By Scott Wilson
"Graham Farrar has placed the bet here. He is the president and co-founder of Glass House Farms, and the company’s greenhouse offers 5 million square feet of indoor space for cannabis production. That comes to just over 114 acres, the equivalent of about 86 football fields.
...
"Far from the misty northern redoubts of the state’s historic cannabis culture, the crop here grows just a few miles from highway-side outlet malls, an expanding regional airport, and the broad blue-stretch and logo-smile of an Amazon warehouse and distribution center.
"Those neighborhood ambitions help reveal Farrar’s own restless intent — to create a national cannabis business, even though his product, while legal in the Republic of California, remains illegal in the United States of America.
“I have the capacity, when the time is right, to produce on a national scale the best cannabis in the world,” Farrar said during a recent tour.
“And when that happens,” Farrar added, speaking of national legalization, “this farm goes from feeling really big to really small.”
...
"Last year, the California legislature passed a bill to allow licensed California cannabis businesses to sell their products in other cannabis-legal states.
...
"In a recent interview, Lee said that allowing trade with Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Colorado — all cannabis-legal states — would pose a risk not “qualitatively” different than what the state or cannabis businesses are taking now by defying federal law.
...
"In this marketing view, California is to weed what Cuba is to cigars."
Just as markets need social support, bans on markets need social support. Even in Kansas, apparently, where marijuana remains completely outlawed. (Kansas borders on Colorado and Missouri, where (even) recreational use of marijuana is legal, and on Arkansas, and Oklahoma, where medical use is legal.)
The Guardian has the story:
A dying cancer patient used cannabis to ease pain. His hospital called the police. ‘You’d think they would have shown compassion’: patient’s son decries Kansas police who issued citation as father suffered. by Lois Beckett
"Hospital staff in Kansas called the police on a man dying of cancer who was using cannabis products to cope with his symptoms, in an incident that has since sparked outrage and renewed calls to rethink the state’s strict cannabis laws.
"The encounter took place in mid-December, when police in the city of Hays say two officers showed up at the cancer patient’s hospital room to issue him a citation for a drug violation.
...
"Because of the Christmas holiday, the city prosecutor had not seen the email about dismissing the charge until after the police interaction with the cancer patient had already become a viral news story, the police chief said. He said he personally let the patient know on 27 December that the police department was not pursuing the citation and that he would not have to appear in court.
"More than a hundred people have called or emailed the Hays police department, upset about news reports of officers’ interactions with the cancer patient, the chief said. "
Time Magazine published this map under the headline "Why Marijuana Had a Terrible Night in the 2022 Midterm Elections"
It doesn't look so terrible to me, so much as increasingly inevitable. The grey states on the map (where marijuana remains entirely illegal) are shrinking steadily: it doesn't appear that opponents will succeed in making America grey again.
*********
It's going to become increasingly hard for States to enforce draconian laws against something that is legal in neighboring states. That doesn't mean that legalization is always going to go smoothly--the end of Prohibition didn't end alcoholism, and the end of marijuana prohibition won't make marijuana chemically safer (in fact competition will develop strains that are chemically more potent). But removing legal risks from what would otherwise be uncontrolled black markets, and taking them out of the hands of criminals, still seems to have momentum.
The Guardian has the story:
Here's one bit that suggests that ambivalence is widespread, and baked into current regulations.
"In April, in a 13-page policy proposal, the mayor asked for the council’s support to temporarily enforce the residents-only law, largely because of concerns about the “criminal back door” of the coffee shops. Smoking and possessing weed for personal consumption are “tolerated”, but commercial growing is not – so coffee shops must buy from criminals. An influential 2019 report on the capital’s “dark side” suggested revisiting the residents-only rule to help tackle this “urban jungle”.
The NY Times has the story:
Legal Marijuana Sales Will Start Next Thursday in New Jersey. All adults will be able to purchase cannabis at certain medical-marijuana dispensaries starting April 21. By Tracey Tully
"The first sales of recreational, adult-use cannabis in New Jersey will start next Thursday, marking the culmination of a yearslong effort to legalize marijuana and to curtail the racially unbalanced penalties for possessing the drug.
"At least a half-dozen medical-marijuana dispensaries are planning to open their doors to all adults on April 21 after winning final approval this week from New Jersey’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission.
...
"“The end of prohibition is coming to New Jersey,” said Ben Kovler, chief executive of Green Thumb Industries, which operates both dispensaries. “We’re prepared for a tidal wave of demand.”
"He estimated that New Jersey, the second state on the East Coast to begin adult-use sales, could eventually become a $3 billion industry.
“The war on drugs was a failure for people of color,” he said. “This is going to create a lot of wealth, for a lot of people.”
...
"New Jersey voters approved a referendum legalizing marijuana in November 2020, but it was not until this week that the commission established a pathway for the first legal sales of adult-use, recreational cannabis."
In both maps, brown is the color of permissiveness. E.g. on the northern border, only Maine and Montana don't require permits/prescriptions for either guns or marijuana...
The gun map is from this Washington Post story: Nearly half the country requires no permit to carry a concealed weapon — and it’s a growing trend By Kim Bellware
 xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
| from https://mjbizdaily.com/map-of-us-marijuana-legalization-by-state/ |
The WSJ has this update:
Push to Relax Marijuana Laws Hits Roadblocks. Biden administration has sidestepped the issue of decriminalizing cannabis despite bipartisan support. By Alex Leary
"Facing a tough midterm election and divisions in Congress, the Biden administration is sidestepping the politically sensitive issue of loosening marijuana laws even as the idea has gained support of most Americans.
"More than half of U.S. states have legalized cannabis use for some purposes. Lawmakers have proposed decriminalizing marijuana, which would entail reduced penalties for users, and have pushed for giving the industry access to banking services. Those promoting changes include a diverse range of political figures, from former Republican House Speaker John Boehner to progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.).
...
"More than two in three Americans support legalizing marijuana, according to a 2021 Gallup poll. That is up from a decade ago, when half of Americans were in favor, Gallup found.
...
"The House has previously passed legislation to decriminalize it and this month approved provisions to give cannabis companies access to the banking system, as marijuana lobbying has soared in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry.
"But with many Republicans and some Democrats opposed, odds of Senate passage are slim given filibuster rules requiring 60 votes."
In a growing number of U.S. states, it is legal to grow and sell marijuana. But the price remains highest in the states where it is illegal, and so black markets persist alongside legal markets.
Politico has the story:
"Over the last two years, there’s been such an influx of outlaw farmers that southern Oregon now rivals California’s notorious Emerald Triangle as a national center of illegal weed cultivation. Even though marijuana cultivation has been legal in Oregon since 2014, Jackson County Sheriff Nate Sickler says there could be up to 1,000 illegal operations in a region of more than 4,000 square miles. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, which oversees the state’s $1.2 billion legal cannabis industry, estimates the number of illicit operations is double that.
...
"What is happening in the woods of the southern Oregon represents one of the most confounding paradoxes of the legalized marijuana movement: States with some of the largest legal markets are also dealing with rampant illegal production — and the problem is getting worse. Oklahoma, where licenses to cultivate medical marijuana are some of the easiest to get in the nation, has conducted more than five dozen raids on illicit grows since last April. In California, meanwhile, most of the state continues to purchase cannabis from unlicensed sources — straining legal operators already struggling with the state’s high taxes and fees.
...
"One of the underlying promises for legalizing cannabis was that legalization would make the illegal drug trade, with all its attendant problems of violent crime and money laundering, disappear. But 25 years into the legalization movement, as 36 states have adopted some form of legalized marijuana, the black market is booming across the country. Legal states such as Oregon and California — which have been supplying the nation for nigh on 60 years — are still furnishing the majority of America’s illegal weed.
...
"Oregon’s weed is some of the cheapest in the nation, and Oregonians predominantly purchase weed from licensed dispensaries. Economist Beau Whitney estimates that 80-85 percent of the state’s demand is met by the legal market. But most of the illicit weed grown in southern Oregon is leaving the state, heading to places where legal weed is still not available for purchase such as New York or Pennsylvania — or where the legal price is still very high, like Chicago and Los Angeles. In Illinois, which legalized medical marijuana in 2013, only about a third of the demand for cannabis is satisfied by legal dispensaries, according to Whitney. Differences in tax rate and regulations plays the major role in differences from state to state, Whitney explains.
*************
And in California it appears that high taxes on the legal market allow the black market to exist alongside. NBC has the story:
Craft cannabis industry in California is 'on the brink of collapse,' advocates say. Small cannabis growers and operators say the state's hefty taxes are shutting them out despite promises to expand the industry and make it more inclusive. By Alicia Victoria Lozano
"Last month, marijuana companies warned Newsom in a letter that immediate tax cuts and a rapid expansion of retail outlets were needed to steady an increasingly unstable marketplace shaken by illicit dealers and growers.
"More than two dozen cannabis executives and legalization advocates signed the letter after years of complaints that the heavily taxed industry is unable to compete with the widespread illegal economy, which offers far lower consumer prices and has double or triple the sales of the legal market."
Who will be most in favor of eliminating the federal ban on marijuana in the US? Not necessarily growers and sellers in the many states in which marijuana can legally be grown and sold. There are some advantages to being in a legal market that is illegal elsewhere (and not just because of the possibility of illegally selling at the higher prices that black markets command...)
The WSJ has this story:
"To date, 18 states have legal adult-use cannabis industries, according to the latest tally from the Marijuana Policy Project. As the drug can’t be transported across state borders while it is still federally outlawed, anything that is smoked within a state has to be grown and sold locally. These independent fiefs, which are growing bigger every month, would be disrupted by national legalization.
"One of the biggest concerns is what happens when cannabis can be traded across the country. More mature marijuana markets such as California and Oregon see interstate commerce as an opportunity to get excess stock off their hands. For recent converts such as New York and New Jersey, a gush of cheap outside inventory would be a threat to their nascent industries. This is particularly sensitive for small, minority-owned cannabis businesses that are being given priority for licenses but would be rapidly undercut.
"States also want to protect the tax windfall that cannabis creates. Illinois has collected more taxes from cannabis than liquor every month since February, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue. Since 2014, when legal sales began in Colorado and Washington, cannabis has raised $7.9 billion in taxes for states, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. Sales levies should stay with local markets, but those associated with production could be hard for certain states to hold on to if the drug is federally legal. Cultivation is likely to shift to warm and low-cost states where cannabis can be grown cheaply outdoors."
***************
And then there's Oklahoma. The NY Times has the story:
How Oklahoma Became a Marijuana Boom State. Weed entrepreneurs have poured into Oklahoma from across the United States, propelled by low start-up costs and relaxed rules. By Simon Romero
"Ever since the state legalized medical marijuana three years ago, Oklahoma has become one of the easiest places in the United States to launch a weed business. The state now boasts more retail cannabis stores than Colorado, Oregon and Washington combined. In October, it eclipsed California as the state with the largest number of licensed cannabis farms, which now number more than 9,000, despite a population only a tenth of California’s.
"The growth is all the more remarkable given that the state has not legalized recreational use of marijuana. But with fairly lax rules on who can obtain a medical card, about 10 percent of Oklahoma’s nearly four million residents have one, by far the most of any other state.
...
"That unfettered growth has pitted legacy ranchers and farmers against this new breed of growers. Groups representing ranchers, farmers, sheriffs and crop dusters recently joined forces to call for a moratorium on new licenses. They cited climbing prices for land, illicit farms and strains on rural water and electricity supplies as among the reasons. In some parts, new indoor farms are using hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.
...
"But unlike local businesses, where the customers are typically residents, critics assert that growers in Oklahoma are producing far more marijuana than can possibly be sold in the state and are feeding illicit markets around the country.
"Because of lower costs for licensing, labor and land, growers can produce cannabis for as little as $100 a pound, and then turn around and sell that for between $3,500 to $4,000 a pound in California or New York, said Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.
The Guardian has the story:
California legalized weed five years ago. Why is the illicit market still thriving? by Amanda Chicago Lewis
"Voters passed a law in November 2016 making recreational marijuana legal. But today, the vast majority of the market remains underground – about 80-90% of it, according to experts.
"Because that 2016 law, known as Proposition 64, gave municipalities the power to ban weed as they see fit, the majority of cities and counties still don’t allow the sale of cannabis, inhibiting the growth of the legal market.
"In the places that do allow pot shops and grows, business owners say high taxes, the limited availability of licenses, and expensive regulatory costs have put the legal market out of reach.
...
"The story of California’s legal weed chaos dates back to 1996, when voters passed a law allowing medical marijuana. At the time, Bay Area Aids activists saw the way pot relieved pain and stimulated hunger among their emaciated and desperately ill friends. That led to a grassroots campaign to get Proposition 215, a measure legalizing the medical use of cannabis, on the California ballot.
"However, Prop 215 only allowed doctors to recommend that patients and their caregivers grow their own weed. Essentially, it legalized a commodity without legalizing the business side of it.
"For the next 20 years, a laissez-faire, gray market for medical marijuana flourished and became entrenched. With doctors’ recommendations for medical marijuana easy and cheap to come by, cannabis entrepreneurs practiced a lucrative form of civil disobedience, opening dispensaries, manufacturing edibles and growing acres of plants that brought in enough money to offset intermittent law enforcement crackdowns. The industry developed protocols to get a business back up and running right after a raid, such as keeping cash offsite and obscuring ownership through a series of management companies.
"If you could withstand the legal uncertainty, it was a good time to make money in marijuana. By 2010, the city of Los Angeles had about 2,000 pot shops illegally selling cannabis. Statewide, the total illicit market surged, causing Mexican cartels to either stop growing weed or to relocate their grows to California.
...
"For a marijuana enterprise today, becoming legal has often meant sacrificing a good deal of profit. Businesses frequently pay an effective tax rate of 70%, in part because they are breaking federal law and therefore aren’t able to take tax deductions, but also because politicians see the industry as a source of tax revenue and set higher rates.
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"But the longer we allow cannabis to remain state-legal and federally illegal, the harder it will be to fix. Though botching weed legalization sounds like a trivial issue, it intersects with many of the issues that are fundamental to our lives, from criminal justice to public health, gang violence to economic inequality, the opioid crisis to the wellness craze. Cannabis is the second-most-valuable crop in the country, after corn and ahead of soybeans. It’s the most common reason for arrest in America. And despite marijuana’s dubious reputation, research has shown the plant “may have therapeutic potential in almost all diseases affecting humans”.
Luxembourg is combatting cannabis black markets by ending the prohibition on home cultivation.
The Guardian has the story:
"Adults in Luxembourg will be permitted to grow up to four cannabis plants in their homes or gardens under laws that will make it the first country in Europe to legalise production and consumption of the drug.
"The announcement on Friday by Luxembourg’s government was said to deliver fundamental changes in the country’s approach to recreational cannabis use and cultivation in light of the failure of prohibition to deter use.
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"Justice minister Sam Tanson described the change to the law on domestic production and consumption as a first step.
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“We want to start by allowing people to grow it at home. The idea is that a consumer is not in an illegal situation if he consumes cannabis and that we don’t support the whole illegal chain from production to transportation to selling where there is a lot of misery attached. We want to do everything we can to get more and more away from the illegal black market.”
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