From NPR: San Francisco moves to delay its cannabis business tax to give legal dealers a boost
City officials in San Francisco want to delay the imposition of a tax on lawful recreational cannabis businesses to help them compete with illegal marijuana dealers.
“Cannabis businesses create good jobs for San Franciscans and provide safe, regulated products to their customers,” Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said in a tweet. “Now is not the time to impose a new tax on small businesses that are just getting established and trying to compete with illicit operators.”
Last week the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance to suspend the Cannabis Business Tax for the 2021 and 2022 tax years.
Way back in the days when marijuana was illegal, you paid a premium for it (or so I have been told). You were mostly paying for discretion and for the risk that your dealer was taking (and that his supplier was taking).
Well, marijuana is much less risky (legally, anyway) in the current year. Hell, you can grow your own if you’re so inclined. Colorado Springs allows you to grow six plants at any given time (but only 3 can be mature). Which means that two cohabiting adults can grow a dozen plants (with six mature ones).
Looking at the prices for Strawberry Fields, Pueblo North, I see that you can get a quarter bag for more or less the same price a quarter cost in 1992 (or so I have been told). AND THOSE WERE CLINTON DOLLARS. (Checking out the inflation calculator, I see that $55 in 1992 would be around $108 today… that 4.5 star pot costs about half as much as the ditch weed those people had available back then. Or so I have been told.)
A quarter was a *TON* of weed, or so I have been told.
A mature plant will give a home grower about a pound of weed, under more or less ideal circumstances (which probably aren’t available for a dozen plants for the average home grower… but I imagine that a non-idiot home grower could alternate mature and growing plants in close to ideal circumstances in his or her basement).
What is the buyer buying from the business, now that discretion is much, much less dear?Report
Rent, utilities, and paychecks that include all the tax withholdings.Report
Those were included back in 1992, though. Well, not the taxes.Report
In a way. But I have to figure storefront rent in a pricey city like SF is a lot more than a crummy apartment.. and the quality of what seems to be generally available is worlds away from my recollection of how it was in the 90s/early 2000s. Or so I was told by a friend of a friend of a friend that is.
Point being I think there’s a premium and more overhead on a high quality legal-ish product. It’s like we’ve jumped straight from bathtub gin in a milk jug bought from a guy in a parking lot to the high end liquor store with 100 whiskeys without much in between.Report
Modern pot is waaaaaay more potent than pot in the 80s. The difference is bonkers.Report
That’s one reason I’m happy with dispensaries instead of just buying weed or growing it myself.
At least from licensed, regulated dispensaries I can see actual dosages.
Also, having had both home-made and professionally produced edibles, I’m really amazed at the taste difference.
Then again, I am by definition entirely recreational — I visit a legal state perhaps every two or three years, and that’s the only time I indulge.Report
What those that I heard rumors about got in college wasn’t bathtub gin as much as something on the continuum between Keystone and Coors. Occasionally they’d get some Guinness and it would blow everybody’s mind. Someone visited who had The Hookup and treated them to a Cosmopolitan and they just sat in silence in the basement.
I’d be interested to know what the numbers were for the stuff they had. Strawberry Fields has stuff between 20% and 30%. And they’re selling wax that is 67%. Jeez. “I want to get so high that I can’t even move for the evening, but I only have 3 minutes.”Report
while i think you can safely assume that all testing numbers in any state are mostly nonsense, one of the bigger perks in legal/mostly-legal (aka medical) states is the testing for pesticides, contaminants, etc. now, as people in oregon, washington, and colorado (and maryland a few other places, probably) know, testing labs can be bought; they can be gamed (e.g. sending the most heavily dusted samples for testing); and overall effects and potency are highly variable (har har).
that said, it beats the old days. it would be nice if maryland fixed its currently stupid model (artificially low caps and sweetheart deals on licenses for producers, dispensaries, and processors) but even in its most scummy, corruption-laden, cronyist worst the current medical market is at least something of an improvement over the illegal market.Report
The annoying part is that the only way it could be done was via the lamest and most transparently corrupt licensing process possible. The less annoying part is that there is now a dispensary literally down the hall from my dentist’s office.Report
it is astounding how poorly this system was implemented, especially with the first round missing any MOB-aligned owners and having the maryland black caucus threaten to stop the legislation before it started.
then again, i have been reliably informed by md natives that this is how the state rolls.Report
I’d be inclined to say that Colorado almost did it right?
For a few years there, visitors from out of town would come over to the house and we’d drive somewhere to eat and I’d go out of my way to drive up Platte Avenue and I’d tell my friends to “count the weed shoppes”.
There were more than a dozen just on Platte between General Palmer and Powers.
The Independent was our little local free weekly and, for a while there, it had 10 pages dedicated to marijuana ads/content. Like, full page color ads, quarter page ads, reviews of various strains (“after my dog got hip surgery, I needed a strain that was appropriate for me wanting to lie on the floor for four hours.”), and whatnot.
I went from thinking “holy cow, this would have blown my mind back in 1993!” to “jeez louise, is this the only thing happening in Colorado Springs?” pretty darn quick.
But one thing I noticed was the race to the bottom. The dispensaries started by giving prices that were in the ballpark of black market prices and then they’d all start undercutting each other with coupons and discounts and NEW LOWER PRICES and, next thing you know, it stopped being fun to show people all of the shoppes on Platte Avenue because a dozen turned into, like, 3. The Independent has a mere 4-5 pages dedicated to cannabis.
There are now more burger joints on Platte than weed stores.
So the best way to do it is to go totally laissez-faire and let a hundred of the things open up… and *THEN* start taxing them out the nose until you get somewhere around the number of them that you think is appropriate.Report
It would not be hard to do it better. Maryland did not actually legalize like Colorado did, but rather follows the quack doctor system where a ‘prescription’ (obtainable via telehealth to anyone who wants one) is required which can then be filled at dispensaries authorized to operate via political favoritism. So it’s certainly superior to prohibition but far from a triumph of sensible policy. However to dhex’s point it’s completely consistent with how these things are done here.Report
Oooh. Um. That’s how Colorado Springs did it too.
Any given adult is only allowed to grow 6 plants (3 mature) at any given time *BUT* you can outsource this to someone else on your behalf.
Colorado Springs has not legalized recreational (yet). You have to go to Pueblo or Manitou.
And so the shoppes offer deals for people who are willing to make their shop their grower. Like, you have to be put on a registry with the government and everything.
And while the average home grower is likely to grow a plant that has somewhere around a pound of weed on it, the average industrial grower can make a damn tree.
Anyway, Colorado used the quack doctor system for years prior to recreational being legalized. (And recreational still ain’t legal in Colorado Springs proper.)Report
if there’s ever home grow in MD i will legit be shocked. it’s such a weird state, and that’s despite proximity to dc’s grey market, which coincidentally has legal home grow for residents.
that dc grey market is, coincidentally, andy harris’ fault, so that’s another reason to be upset with md politics in general…Report
Quality. Superior breeding, optimum curing, higher THC content, consistency. The same reasons that some of the drug cartels have started smuggling Colorado weed to Mexico, for their more discerning clients. Also too, ideal indoor conditions are harder to achieve and maintain than you might think. Disease and mites are a pain to get rid of once established. Or so I have been told.Report
I imagine that close enough to ideal indoor conditions are easy to achieve if you need a square yard of ideal conditions. (And by “close enough”, I mean, “like in the ballpark of a beer guy making a batch of beer that isn’t ruined before it’s ready to drink”.)
Something the size of a garage? Okay, now you need someone who has read a book instead of a webpage. Something the size of a warehouse? Now you need an expert.Report
Luckily, places like SF have experts on created ideal controlled conditions for indoor Ag operations (https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/With-huge-new-vertical-farm-Plenty-s-produce-14021237.php).Report
“Master’s Degree in hydroponic botany”
Way back when we had a Weed Only AM station, one of the guests explained that a good tech was worth six figures.Report
Clinton dollars were all right, but they were no McKinley dollars.Report
If your planned tax on a legal product is making the black market version even remotely competitively attractive, you did your taxation wrong.Report
See Garner, EricReport
It was amazing how the city scrambled to ban chokeholds, but discussions about maybe lowering the tax burden so selling loosies wasn’t attractive quickly got shot down.Report
Here in Oakland, there is a cannabis business right next to Oakland’s police headquarters. I always found this really funny.Report
Apparently they get robbed a lot, so that kind of makes sense.Report
Matters less than you’d think!
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No special duty.Report
It’s the Ferguson effect.
People on Twitter criticized police unions so the cops are just responding rationally and letting crime get outtacontrol.Report
I’m interested in seeing who blinks first.
Will the dispensaries shut down and move?
Will the cops get fired/replaced by police officers who act more in line with what San Francisco wants?
Will the prosecutor get fired/replaced and start prosecuting in a way more in line with what San Francisco wants?
Will we just keep this stupid, stupid equilibrium indefinitely?
Gotta say, if San Francisco is the template for the Progressive City, the commercials don’t make it very tempting.Report
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.htmlReport
Lemme guess… Wreckers? Hoarders?Report
Let’s just say that self-interest will usually win out over ideals that are not aligned to self-interest.Report