(This is cross-posted in the Los Angeles section of Huffington Post – please feel free to surf over there and leave a comment that will be read outside our NORML forum.)
Evergreen Collective, one of many advertising at this year's THC Exposé in LA, promoting their $45 / 4-gram eighth ounce "specials".
Yesterday on our daily webcast for NORML we interviewed Dale Sky Clare, a spokesperson for Proposition 19, the initiative that will ask Californians to vote on a very limited form of marijuana legalization. We discussed the latest polling on the initiative from SurveyUSA, showing a 50%-to-40% lead for the measure.
We dug through the demographics to find that older and more conservative people are the only groups more likely to oppose the measure (no, really?), support is greatest among the young and in the Bay Area (who knew?), and support among comedians named “Cheech” or “Chong” is approaching 100% (OK, I made the last one up.)
But there is one growing demographic group that no poll has begun to track: medical marijuana dispensary owners.
Since the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Initiative was mercifully truncated to a headline-friendly “Prop 19″ by virtue of making it on the California ballot, I have been tracking on our NORML Stash Blog the stories of dispensary owners who are publicly opposing the legalization of the product they sell, even shelling out money they’ve made from selling marijuana to oppose its legalization!
Paul Jury just posted Legalize It? Ask a Guy Who Runs a Medicinal Marijuana Dispensary in which he speaks to Craig, a dispensary owner in Venice Beach, who is also opposed to Prop 19:
“I’ll give you two reasons,” Craig said. “One is big tobacco. Did you know that Phillip Morris just bought 400 acres of land up in Northern California? The minute marijuana becomes legal, they’ll mass produce and flood the market. And of course, they’ll add the same toxins they put in regular cigarettes to get you addicted, and very little THC, so you’ll have to buy more… In short, they’re going to ruin weed.” He gestured around his beloved shop, with every flavor of every strain, in its purist form, selling for at-cost prices. “I like the way things are now.”
Gee, there seems to be a whole lot of different "strains" of beer, even in Los Angeles!
Remember how alcohol prohibition ended in the 1930′s (probably not, but indulge me) and Anheuser, Busch, Coors, and Miller flooded the market with 3.2 beer and ruined alcohol? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go to shops with every flavor of every micro-brew, in its purest form… oh, wait, I live in Portland, Oregon, the micro-brew capital of America and that’s what we have right now under alcohol legalization!
We have every flavor and potency of beer you can imagine plus people can go buy a kit and brew their own beer if they like. And there is wine, too, with a huge tourist industry that depends on people checking out vineyards and tasting endless varieties of vino. And there is whiskey, rum, tequila, vodka, brandy, and even super-potent Everclear in some states, all in their purest form, which is to say that used responsibly they won’t make you blind like a tub of Prohibition moonshine might.
The “Philip Morris / RJ Reynolds Toxic Addictive High-less Marijuana Market Flood” scare has been floating around the cannabis community like a stale hit of schwag for decades now. It’s a form of conspiracy theory thinking embraced by the kind of people who think you could plant 40,000 lbs. of explosives surreptitiously in a busy World Trade Center or convince all the world’s scientists and a very large soundstage crew to keep quiet about that faked moon landing for four decades. Here’s why it’s stupid:
- Prop 19 allows you to grow your own. If Philip Morris’ weed sucks, you’ll smoke your own or your friend’s.
- Prop 19 allows cities to consider sales. Bad toxic Philip Morris weed is the kind of competition a purveyor of hand-trimmed, non-keifed*, organic high-potency bud would want, wouldn’t she?
- Prop 19 allows cities to regulate production. They can dictate exactly what is or isn’t added to cannabis, how much is produced, by whom, and where.
- In order for Philip Morris to sell their weed, somebody has to want to smoke it. Nothing about Prop 19 makes Prop 215 or the dispensaries go away. In fact, it gives the existing dispensaries the potential to serve even more customers. So who’s buying this toxic addictive high-less marijuana?
Actually, it worked quite well if your goal is to build large profitable murderous criminal enterprises...
No, if you want to really understand what is going on here, look back to that alcohol prohibition and ask yourself how excited Al Capone was reading the headlines trumpeting its imminent repeal. It’s not a perfect analogy, as Capone was a murderous criminal thug and these dispensary owners are law-abiding businesspeople. And yes, dispensary owners, like Craig, often help destitute cancer patients for free, though one could counter that Capone and his gangs gave out free turkeys on Thanksgiving. My main point is that both are businesspeople dealing in a prohibited product.
Or just look back to the article on Craig:
He gestured around his beloved shop, with every flavor of every strain, in its purist form, selling for at-cost prices. “I like the way things are now.”
“Last month,” Craig explained proudly, “there were 24 operating marijuana collectives in Venice. A month from now, there will only be two. And we’ll be one of them.” With that, he opened the door to the inner sanctum. The “product” room.
Discount Relief Collective at this year's "Spring Gathering" in San Bernardino, advertising "Nothing over $45 / eighth. $15 for all grams."
Now, if you ran a business where you could sell your product for $5-$15 per GRAM or $200 to $800 per OUNCE, and you only had to compete with one other business in your local area, would you be excited about the prospect of many more competitors and prices dropping as much as 80%? Most of your customers already got their Prop 215 recommendation, so it isn’t as if legalization is going to bring you enough additional customers to offset the change in business margins.
Prop 19 means that marijuana retailers become more like other retail businesses, instead of the loosely-regulated turnkey goldmines they have been. That’s what Craig doesn’t like. Well, that and kids smoking pot:
“Two, legalization will mean more fifteen-year-old kids smoking pot. … If they legalize marijuana, there’s no chance that fewer 15-year-olds will smoke. And there’s a good chance that more will. Anything that will probably make more 15-year-olds put substances in their bodies, in my opinion, is a bad thing.”
Really, the “What About the Children?!?” argument? Right now, under prohibition, 85% of high school seniors and 69% of sophomores (a.k.a. fifteen-year-olds) find it easy to get weed. Right now, under prohibition, kids say it is easier to buy marijuana than alcohol. So it appears to me that locking up healthy adults for their marijuana use hasn’t really done much to stop teens from getting and using pot. How about we try letting adults smoke a joint, and when they go to buy it, they buy it from a regulated shop where only adults are let in and all IDs are rigorously checked, you know, like that alcohol kids find harder to buy.
More 15-year-olds smoke pot than tobacco... because we've really succeeded in preventing tobacco use among teens... and we didn't lock up a single adult to achieve this!
Besides, there is no reason to believe that youth use will increase. Since California passed Prop 215 in 1996, the regime Craig likes now, teen use of marijuana has decreased. Prop 19 makes the penalty for supplying weed to those under 21 as stringent as supplying alcohol to those under 21. And we’ve seen teen use of tobacco, a legal substance far cheaper and more addictive than marijuana, plummet in the past ten years through education, advertising restriction, social disapproval (no indoor smoking, for example) and strict ID requirements.
Craig and the other dispensary owners who oppose Prop 19 are the “I Gots Mine” element of the anti-legalization campaign. They’ve got the corner on a retail market worth billions, one that is only worth billions if you arrest 850,000 mostly-black-and-brown adults a year for participating in it. They’ve got their doctors happy to take a Benjamin or two to give you permission to use a drug safer than the aspirin you need no permission for. I wouldn’t want people to vote to change that, either…
…except that I think it’s just immoral to arrest people for smoking weed if we’re going to leave them alone when drinking alcohol. I don’t care if it is profitable to the state or detrimental to the dispensary industry – arrests for marijuana are wrong, period.
*”Kiefed” means to shake loose the crystals of THC from the product before packaging for sale. The crystals, or “kief” are collected and smoked or vaporized, and, being THC crystals, are very effective. Philip Morris will certainly need to use huge machines to process weed, which will certainly shake loose a lot of kief. One grower friend of mine says he will advertise for his prized buds with the slogan “Don’t let ‘em thief the kief!”
Contact your elected representatives and urge them to 'Stop Arresting Marijuana Smokers'. 
What an intelligent and well written article! I agree 1,000% It’s just really sad to see that dispensaries who claim to be an aid to the sick are really just out to get their money. It’s even more sad that it doesn’t surprise me…
fuck the ripoff uncompassionate dispensaires…
I got a better idea…30 years ago i was given real thc capsules which was refined into 100% thc from lo grade pot …to “test out” for my cancer…later they invented marinol …which does not work…. marinol is suppose to be molecule by molecule the same as thc…
So the fda can “fast track” the approval of thc capsules as the generic version of marinol…
without spending milllions of $ and years of testing… once fda approves thc any pharmacy can stock it
and any doctor anywhere in the usa can write a script for it….and my insurance would pay for it… no pot drs, dispensaries, medical cards none of that crap… just 100% thc. (note 100% capsules are 5 times more powerful than the 20% swag they sell in dispensaires)…
my pharrmacy does not have armed guards or double their prices to prevent reselling…also my pharmacy certifies its purity as 100% and drug manufactures are subject to regulations. I don’t buy 20 or 10% vicodin pills.
Would you pay $6,400 for a one lb head of lettuce? thats what my dispensary here in ca would sell
me retail for a pound of pot….. Corn is sold by the ton..not by the 1/8 of a ounce, ounce
or gram.. Pot is a weed …….it doesn’t cost thousands to grow…
When they looked for gold here in ca they didn’t just look for 2lb rocks … instead they took
grains to nuggets and REFINED it into 2 lb bars of gold….
Pot has been refined for thousands of years to push the thc content so that you can get
high…usually it is made into hash…
REFINE POT into 100% certified 100 mg thc capsules that i can buy at any pharmacy in the
country with a s8imple script that any dr can write in the country…
I am on disability with als symptoms ..i cannot afford my drs letter, card, or $ to buy my pot
[...] rips dispensary operators who oppose the legalization measure. And he lambastes conspiracy theorists’ insistence that Phillip Morris has its eyes fixed on [...]
[...] have been blogging recently about dispensaries in California that are hostile to Prop 19 – California’s marijuana legalization initiative. What I suspect are sock puppet fronts [...]
I suffer from chronic pain at a level few can fathom. 17 fused,broken,or compressed vertabrae,not to mention more ruptured and bulging disks than I can keep up with at any given time time. I get a ton of Rx meds that only allow me to not want to scream most of the time. I am virtually bedridden.
I want medical marijuana more than be imagined. I think of moving to a state that has a more enlightened view on releavable pain. I hate them but Cannot imagine life without the other drugs i get.
I am not seeking sympathy i hope this letter motivates people to keep up the fight, many others have diseases worse than mine. If I was allowed one gram a week without fear of losing my other drugs due to drug testingwold be a blessing.
Do not feel sorry for me I have many good things in my life many do not.I have had a great life and done many things others wish about. Atleast I can afford what I need and a lot I just want
Russ, thanks for the article, but more importantly thank you for taking the time to address some of the hysteria responses on the main blog.
I’m really starting to wonder if the cannabis culture (not meaning the magazine) just loves a good myth. It certainly seems like the fairly plain language used in Prop 19 is being easily misunderstood and confused with so many other proposed bills. If any of this delusion propagation of misinformation is some sort of grand conspiracy, I have to at least tip my hat to them for knowing how gullible their target appears to be. Though I am leaning towards the blind leading the blind.
BTW- JW, I still have your pink lighter! And.. I love your place! Looking good!
When we get less busy, we’ll try on a seed shop. I do so love seeds. =)-~
I’ll bring the lighter back, and drop off the quote for custom t-shirts this weekend hopefully!
Much love!
This link will work better.
http://slu2.com/MA
We started a group on facebook not long ago titled:
“Dispensaries, if you don’t support legalization I wont support you”
I was surprised of the popularity, despite not advertising it much.
This is not about the farmers, or the collectives, or the dispensaries. No. This is about freedom and liberty!
Here is the link:
http://www.facebook.com/ThCompassion#!/group.php?gid=113104435390931&ref=ts
Cannibis should be the medicine of first resort, one of the things you do BEFORE you spend a lot of money and time with so called conventional medicine. Doesn’t it make sense to start with the least harmful and most likely remedy?
And now to address the greed portion of tonites entertainment. Some of you are aware that we started a dispensary a few months ago. We started this insane endeavour because we could see that it is about to explode on the American experience like few phenomena have in the past. Yes I believe that this will pay off and I fully intend to be standing in the first doorway that opens. I have waited patiently for over forty years for this specific opportunity to arrive. I could have made a shitload of money the whole time but I had things more valuable than money to concern myself with, They could take your kids back then for just being a consumer(and they tried).
So I waited and I worked and I learned. One of the things I learned was that there are a VAST number of things more valuable than money, not the least of which is self respect.
Few ever leave our establishment without at least cruising thru the “samples” and NO sick person was ever turned away over money(and yes, anger is an illness we can and will cure for free). Soon we will have an informal meeting/medicating area for our members that we hope will evolve eventually into a cannabis cafe modeled after the one in Portland.
While our business is 100% concerned with our medical members, those members’ primary concern is that 95% of their loved ones still face prison for demonstrating more intellect than alcoholics.
Sorry if I rambled a bit but we’re not ALL, all about the money and it’s starting to sting a little for those of us in the trenches.
I agree with Patrick, it can either be legal or not. This garbage about how cannabis is only for people as a last resort remains ignorant to the fact that it is the safest therapeutic substance known to man! Even if prop 19 doesn’t pass, I have a feeling that it will only be a matter of years before it’s finally legal. Obama may be dragging his feet now, but come his second term, he won’t have anything to lose anymore.
Kudos Russ on the great rant.
Legal or Not!!! – It can’t be both! – Preachers, teachers, white collar, blue collar… All kinds of people are entering this emerging marketplace! – For more Cannabis- Marijuana- Hemp news and gossip, find me on Twitter: HempNetworker
Just say mo. These greedy bastards putting $$$ b-4 ppl are nothing but cut throats. ??????
Spot on once again Russ. I never thought I’d see the day when there would be growers and dealers against legalization. Shame on any greedy person who puts profits before people. Think of how much momentum our movement will lose if Prop 19 is defeated. How goes OCTA in OR? Also, give Ganja Jon our best from the High Times family!
Yes indeed xcannabis.com . Get
and have a little day dream of him on video with the judge. I think that might be impressive also. 
Also, knowing the plant don’t you believe that hemp laws are proof of the crime of hatred of all mankind ? 
As always, nicely done Russ! Thank you for putting the references and graphics up, you do a fine job!
http://slu2.com/Cuh