Oakland rules on pot

[ponderingturtle]

Medical marijuana should be legalized just as soon as they can breed out that really bad side affect, intoxication.

Oddly, I don't hear many people pushing for research into intoxication-free pot...

Will that have the same medical effect though? We also need to stop letting people use prescription painkillers to get high. No opiates for anyone!

 

[ponderingturtle]

Imagine if a liter of whiskey cost $2,500.

Now you're in the ballpark to compare with the street price of marijuana.

So it is reasonable to smoke $2500 of marijuana in a day if one is trying to get really high? Is the cost really that high for the ammount used by the average user?

 

[Fishstick]

Exactly.

I think many from the pro-legalization crowd miss the point when we say that growing it will be too easy and far more convenient, and frankly the only option for some, due to it being heavily taxed. The general response is something like, "well I could technically grow my own tomatoes-- but it's far more convenient to just buy it from the grocery store."

I don't think that's a valid analogy considering it ignores the grand amount of tax we're talking here.

Growing proper weed takes more than just soil and water. You need lights, ventilation equipment, drying racks, proper seeds, enough room, knowhow, and a lot of electricity. Maybe you're cheaper off if you grow your own, sure, but convenience and practicality don't always make this possible. Legal weed (here, at least) is more than affordable for the casual smoker that their own growing-op is just not feasible for other than supplemental or hobby purposes.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Oh man! Music too!

The banning of drugs in the early part of the 20th century pretty much always had a racial component to it. Often with a component of them going after white women with or because of the drug. My favorite part of it was the southern cops saying that they needed bigger guns to deal with "Cocaine Crazed Negroes", who of course would rape any white woman they came across.

Cocaine->Blacks
Opium->Chinese
Marijuana -> Mexicans

It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that it changed that altering your brain chemistry by itself was enough to warrant criminalization on a national level.

Another fun fact. Ecstasy was the first drug criminalized on a national level with out a specific act of congress.

 

[GeeMack]

Growing proper weed [in North America] takes more than just soil and water. You need lights sun, ventilation equipment fresh air, drying racks, proper seeds, enough room, knowhow and the ability to grow dandelions and a lot of electricity.

There. Fixed it for you.

When the legal risks of prohibition aren't a factor, when people don't risk losing their homes and property for keeping a few plants on the sun porch or out back along the fence, there's no reason home grown marijuana won't be as ubiquitous as backyard garden tomatoes or cucumbers. Excellent pot can be grown almost anywhere in North America by anyone with the skills to water and weed a garden. That includes 99% of the consumers, the ones who take a few hits to catch a buzz after work or smoke a joint while they're changing the oil in their car. Only a tiny fraction of smokers sit around getting ****faced stoned and bragging about their super-skunk hydro.

Sure there's a subjective ideal that some will strive for, as there are beer and wine connoisseurs who demand a specialized product. But the vast majority of beer and wine consumed, to use that example, is produced millions of gallons at a time. And a huge portion of all liquor is bought by people saying to their bartender, "Rum and coke, please," or "I'll have a screwdriver." The largest demand is for a product that gets them sufficiently intoxicated for a reasonable price. Yes, lots of people buy particular brands, but most people, at bars anyway, probably don't even know the brand name of the vodka, rum, or tequila they're drinking. It's cheap. The taste is acceptable. And it gets them properly buzzed. There's no reason to think the same dynamics won't play out in a non-prohibition marijuana situation.

Post-prohibition marijuana will be a consumer product like Marlboro cigarettes and Bud Light beer, not Havana cigars and Dom Perignon champagne. It will follow the same kinds of economic dynamics as any other product used by tens of millions of people. If the tax structure doesn't make it cost prohibitive to the general user, people will buy it at the liquor store or pharmacy. If it becomes uncomfortable to pay the price for commercial weed, if it's over a few dollars an ounce, what it costs to grow it in the backyard, people will grow it in the backyard. No fancy lights, pumps, or ventilation, and no special skills or knowledge required.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Sure there's a subjective ideal that some will strive for, as there are beer and wine connoisseurs who demand a specialized product. But the vast majority of beer and wine consumed, to use that example, is produced millions of gallons at a time. And a huge portion of all liquor is bought by people saying to their bartender, "Rum and coke, please," or "I'll have a screwdriver."

Of course you are showing that people are willing to pay a high premium for convience there. Making those drinks themselves would be much cheaper after all.

Post-prohibition marijuana will be a consumer product like Marlboro cigarettes and Bud Light beer, not Havana cigars and Dom Perignon champagne.

And there are high premiums on cigarettes as well. But people still buy them and few people get rolling machines and loose tobacco even though it is much cheaper.

 

[quadraginta]

Of course you are showing that people are willing to pay a high premium for convience there. Making those drinks themselves would be much cheaper after all.


And there are high premiums on cigarettes as well. But people still buy them and few people get rolling machines and loose tobacco even though it is much cheaper.

Used to be, PT.

Used to be.

Thanks to the political machinations of Philip Morris/Atria last year, the Fed tax on loose tobacco for handrolling was increased by more than 2000%. (Yes, that's three zeros, from $1.10/lb to $24.78/lb.) This was orders of magnitude more than the increase on any other tobacco product which was imposed at that same time

The cost of making your own cigarette from a pile of tobacco and a piece of paper is now roughly equal to having someone else do it for you in a factory and packaging them in neat little sets of twenty.

This has decimated the handrolled tobacco market in the U.S. Much more than "decimated", actually, since well over ten percent of the players prior to the tax increase have backed out of the U.S. market. More than a few have simply gone out of business.

Philip Morris/Atria is quietly buying up those of the survivors it can, and starting to move into this area of the tobacco market which was in earlier times largely immune to their predations. This will come as a surprise only to the innocent and childlike.

As will the likely subsequent reduction in that prohibitive tax after the appropriate market ownership share has been achieved. (Do you think I will be surprised if such a tax reduction(?) ended up being lauded as a Conservative victory for consumers?)

 

[WildCat]

So it is reasonable to smoke $2500 of marijuana in a day if one is trying to get really high? Is the cost really that high for the ammount used by the average user?

I'm still waiting for you to explain how you can sustain a 6000% profit margin were marijuana to be legalized.

Can you do that?

 

[GeeMack]

Of course you are showing that people are willing to pay a high premium for convience there. Making those drinks themselves would be much cheaper after all.

Would it? Is making a steady supply of vodka or rum as cheap and easy as growing a couple of house plants on the window sill? Can a half dozen people make enough beer to satisfy a year's demand for all of them with a cash, time, and effort investment comparable to tossing some seeds along the fence row in one guy's back yard?

And there are high premiums on cigarettes as well. But people still buy them and few people get rolling machines and loose tobacco even though it is much cheaper.

How much do you figure that price differential would have to be before rolling your own would become the norm? (See quadraginta's post above.) How much time do you suppose is involved in preparing a typical user's weekly supply of tobacco? Can you go out back with the scissors and snip a week's supply from a tobacco plant, lay it on a window screen for a few days, then smoke it? You could do that with pot.

Although neither alcohol nor tobacco production are rocket science, neither can compare with the simplicity of growing good quality marijuana and preparing it for use. I did say, "If the tax structure doesn't make it cost prohibitive to the general user, people will buy it at the liquor store or pharmacy." There is obviously some amount of convenience people are willing to pay for. As long as the consumer price is reasonable compared to the cost in money, time, and effort of making one's own, people will mostly buy it at the store. But my point, and I believe part of WildCat's point, is that if some kind of tax structure made commercial marijuana comparable to today's black market price, and if one wasn't risking having his property confiscated for growing his own, people would be much more inclined to grow their own.

 

[WildCat]

Growing proper weed takes more than just soil and water. You need lights, ventilation equipment, drying racks, proper seeds, enough room, knowhow, and a lot of electricity. Maybe you're cheaper off if you grow your own, sure, but convenience and practicality don't always make this possible. Legal weed (here, at least) is more than affordable for the casual smoker that their own growing-op is just not feasible for other than supplemental or hobby purposes.

It's really not as difficult as you make it out to be. If you can grow tomatos, you can grow marijuana.

And if it's legal you don't need to grow indoors, you can grow outdoors using the sun as a light source. The sun, btw, is many times more luminous than any artificial light surce.

Maybe you could fool a few people into thinking that indoor-grown is better for a little while, but that myth would get busted pretty quickly. A properly tended outdoor crop will be superior to anything grown indoors, because no electric light can compete with the sun. Outdoor marijuana gets a bad rap now because the plants cannot be tended to properly because doing so greatly increases the risk of getting caught. No such risk is present if it were legal.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I'm still waiting for you to explain how you can sustain a 6000% profit margin were marijuana to be legalized.

Can you do that?

I am saying you can sustain the price. People are willing to spend a certain amount to get drunk or high. And not all of that might be a profit margin, a large amount of it could be tax. See the % of the cost that is tax on cigarettes.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Used to be, PT.

Used to be.

Didn't know that, but the point still holds even before they changed the tax structure it was not terribly popular, even though it was cheaper.

 

[quadraginta]

Didn't know that, but the point still holds even before they changed the tax structure it was not terribly popular, even though it was cheaper.

This is true.

Convenience was certainly a main impetus for this, as was taste (or lack thereof). For reasons which I will not delve into here blush I was very adept at rolling "cigarettes" for years before I started putting tobacco into them. Most people are rather intimidated by the chore, even with the aid of mechanical devices, and few become proficient. I can roll a cigarette in ~30 seconds while I'm walking down the street talking to someone. Most people would be pressed to do it in twice that time sitting at a table. Of course, I've been practicing for decades.

I think the taste thing is even more important. I purchased a pouch of quality handroll tobacco for the first time in 1974, and never looked back. The quality, freshness and lack of added chemicals make the product incomparably superior. I very nearly can't smoke factory mades. The tobacco is so stale, harsh, and drenched in additives that the experience is painful, and the nicotine kick is much less for all that discomfort.

Most smokers don't really care about that, despite protestations of brand loyalty. They want that nicotine delivery system, and similar to people who drink "lite" beer they don't want any fuss or bother about it. They may not even really like the taste of tobacco. (Just as "lite" beer drinkers obviously don't like the taste of beer. )

Any goals I might have of giving up cigarettes are complicated by the fact that I actually enjoy the taste of good tobacco. Philip Morris's market manipulation is liable to help me with quitting, not merely because of the cost increase, but because the availability of a decent product has plummeted as a result.

So, even though the 'pre-tax increase' market was small, it was still there for whatever reasons, and relatively well entrenched. The 2009 tax increases have certainly created a sweeping change in that market, not quite eradicating it utterly, but coming unfortunately close.

 

[WildCat]

So, even though the 'pre-tax increase' market was small, it was still there for whatever reasons, and relatively well entrenched. The 2009 tax increases have certainly created a sweeping change in that market, not quite eradicating it utterly, but coming unfortunately close.

If you google growing your own tobacco there is actually quite a movement underway already.

Tobacco, however, requires significant growing and drying space which may be unavailable to many smokers. Bear in mind that an ounce of tobacco lasts a cigarette smoker for a day or 2, while an ounce of marijuana will last a typicasl pot smoker months.

 

[quadraginta]

If you google growing your own tobacco there is actually quite a movement underway already.

Tobacco, however, requires significant growing and drying space which may be unavailable to many smokers. Bear in mind that an ounce of tobacco lasts a cigarette smoker for a day or 2, while an ounce of marijuana will last a typicasl pot smoker months.

Agreed. I have worked in tobacco fields, and ... umm ... may have reason to be somewhat familiar with the cultivation of pot.

Growing the herb is much easier. Probably less difficult than the basil plants I've had in my garden, which pretty much grow themselves and actually benefit from partial harvesting. Reefer doesn't seem to be as attractive to insect damage.

Or so I've heard.

 

[marplots]

The idea of grow your own has come up recently in Michigan where pot for medical use recently became legal. I know only one guy who is following the law (or nearly so). He has the card and permission to grow a few plants.

This guy has land, but for a few reasons, he's got an indoor grow.
1) He's worried about theft.
2) The growing season in Michigan isn't really conducive for pot (and not really for tomatoes either).
3) He's growing more than the law allows, so he wants to keep everything on the QT.
4) The operation involves cloning a good strain and is rather more involved than plopping seeds in soil.

I can't see grandma doing it, but it is within reach of people who would pursue any other hobby, although the time-to-harvest makes it less than an impulse deal.

Is it true that an ounce of weed lasts people a month? And how are the marijuana stores in Oakland staying in business if grow your own is such an attractive option? I've seen $75 for 1/8th ounce offered here in MI (although dispensaries are still finding their niche in the regulations, so this might not be a 'solid' price).

 

[Fishstick]

Is it true that an ounce of weed lasts people a month? And how are the marijuana stores in Oakland staying in business if grow your own is such an attractive option? I've seen $75 for 1/8th ounce offered here in MI (although dispensaries are still finding their niche in the regulations, so this might not be a 'solid' price).

If google isn't lying to me, an ounce is 28 grams. I take the trip to Holland once a week and buy 5 grams (the max technically allowed to be sold to one person) and that is enough for a week for me. Personally this is 1 - 3 joints a night, more in the weekends (goddamn moochers).

As far as price is concerned: 5 grams of good quality Haze goes for 50 - 65eur in a coffeeshop. White Widow and lesser strains can be gotten for as little as 20 - 30eur for 5 grams.

In Belgium/Holland though the usual joint is a mix of tobacco and weed, rarely pure, which may throw off your usage stats a bit.

ETA: As for the re: growing mechanics comments: I agree that pot can be grown without effort (that's why it's called "weed", after all), but if you are growing purely for the purposes of harvestable, smokeable weed intended to replace buying, there really is a time and equipment investment. Artificial light lets you control the flowering period much better than outdoor growing, and you can maximize the actual gain.

 

[GeeMack]

ETA: As for the re: growing mechanics comments: I agree that pot can be grown without effort (that's why it's called "weed", after all), but if you are growing purely for the purposes of harvestable, smokeable weed intended to replace buying, there really is a time and equipment investment. Artificial light lets you control the flowering period much better than outdoor growing, and you can maximize the actual gain.

As for myself, and not to be presumptuous, but I believe I'm understanding WildCat's position, the hypothetical we're describing is post-prohibition. With marijuana being illegal, people risk having their homes and property confiscated for growing it at home, so of course they want to get the maximum yield from the smallest possible area. But if risk of losing one's property isn't an issue, they won't care if they dedicate a few extra square feet to the pot garden. Not if it makes the pot almost free. Yes, we can grow high yield, pest free, consistently sized tomatoes (marijuana, cucumbers, etc.) in a climate and light controlled indoor hydroponic garden. But we can also grow excellent marijuana in most parts of North America without all the accoutrements.

And more to the point, if the taxes on commercial weed are so high that consumers are uncomfortable paying for it, and/or if permits and fees cost so much that commercial producers have to charge exorbitant prices, lots of people will likely grown their own. We're talking about mainstream users, tens of millions of them, not the small percentage of connoisseurs and hardcore stoners. The average guy won't care about maximizing gain any more than he worries about maximizing his cucumber crop. Even without lights, pumps, vats, and timers, regular people who just want a decent product for very little cost, time, and effort, will happily grow a year's supply in a corner of their backyard. And without even trying they'll often have enough to give a few ounces to some friends and relatives.

 

[quadraginta]

As for myself, and not to be presumptuous, but I believe I'm understanding WildCat's position, the hypothetical we're describing is post-prohibition. With marijuana being illegal, people risk having their homes and property confiscated for growing it at home, so of course they want to get the maximum yield from the smallest possible area. But if risk of losing one's property isn't an issue, they won't care if they dedicate a few extra square feet to the pot garden. Not if it makes the pot almost free. Yes, we can grow high yield, pest free, consistently sized tomatoes (marijuana, cucumbers, etc.) in a climate and light controlled indoor hydroponic garden. But we can also grow excellent marijuana in most parts of North America without all the accoutrements.

And more to the point, if the taxes on commercial weed are so high that consumers are uncomfortable paying for it, and/or if permits and fees cost so much that commercial producers have to charge exorbitant prices, lots of people will likely grown their own. We're talking about mainstream users, tens of millions of them, not the small percentage of connoisseurs and hardcore stoners. The average guy won't care about maximizing gain any more than he worries about maximizing his cucumber crop. Even without lights, pumps, vats, and timers, regular people who just want a decent product for very little cost, time, and effort, will happily grow a year's supply in a corner of their backyard. And without even trying they'll often have enough to give a few ounces to some friends and relatives.

Kinda like 'maters at the office. When the resident green thumbs' crops come in, everyone in the office ends up taking some home.

I could grow fond of a custom like that.

... or so I've heard.

 

[bit_pattern]

to sell for $400/oz.

.

Bwahahahaha! You're getting burnt at those prices, Fat Freddy!