OAKLAND — A fire at a former fortune cookie factory Monday afternoon led to the discovery of at least 1,000 marijuana plants worth about $500,000, police said.
Let’s see, half a million in retail sales would have generated over $40,000 in tax revenue if the product were legal…
Police Sgt. Rich Vierra said there is no sign that the 7,000-square-foot building is a working fortune cookie factory, bakery or retail outlet. The sign for Kar Mee Fortune Cookie Factory, however, remains on the building in the 200 block of Seventh Street in the Chinatown district of Oakland.
…and there are these huge abandoned factory buildings in Oakland generating no economic benefit whatsoever…
Police said the person or people who were growing the plants also were pirating electricity to power the lights, ventilation and irrigation systems.
…which never seems to be the case for tobacco farms, vineyards, hops farms, or breweries…
Police said those who were growing the plants were extremely security conscious, with iron gates on the front of the building and something police described as an “iron cage” protecting the roof and skylights.
…because they can’t really call a commercial security company for their clandestine pot grow.
American demand for marijuana always ensures that someone will take the risks to provide the supply. Unless we can convince 22,000,000 Americans to stop smoking pot every year, you’ll read stories like this week after week. Prohibition is the insanity that believes the laws of supply and demand can be rendered null and void by simple decree.
Yet there are some prohibitionists who recognize the supply and demand angle and still support prohibition. They say that prohibition’s one success is keeping the price of marijuana so high that it’s out of the reach of most kids. OK, sure, that high price also creates massive profits for criminal gangs, enabling bribing of officials and purchase of military-grade weapons. And that high price leads to turf wars which lead to drive-by shootings and murders and the occasional stray bullet killing an inner city child. But isn’t it all worth it to keep the price of weed so high that it’s a luxury and unaffordable for most kids? My God, What About The Children?!?™
Well, no. 80% of teens find weed easy to get and easier to get than beer and one out of eight are using marijuana at least once this year. It doesn’t look like the high price keeps kids away from weed. I’d argue it actually entices them toward weed. “Gosh, it costs how much? Wow, it must be really cool!” If it’s seen as a luxury item, kids will want to have it to be cool. That $40, $50, or $60 eighth-ounce baggie makes every bit of leaf and speck of trichome something to be carefully tended. I recall those days when dropping the slightest crumb while rolling a joint is the ultimate party foul (well, maybe not as ultimate as sneezing away the cocaine, a la Woody Allen in Annie Hall, but close).
But when marijuana is relegalized, and the price drops, and weed is just some common item adults can buy like a chardonnay or a microbrew, it’s less enticing to the kids. We saw teen rates of marijuana use drop in medical marijuana states at a rate greater than the national average, I think, because the “super dope diggity dank chronic kush” because grandma’s glaucoma remedy or uncle’s PTSD relief or mom’s migraine medicine. You know, boring old people stuff.
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Hey Russ. You don’t have to print this as a comment; just delete it. Change the second “because” in the second sentence of the last paragraph to “became”, and it’ll make sense.
I’m sure that’s what you meant to say, anyway.