(Wall Street Journal) Still, at a time of deep recession, the med-pot business is attracting career switchers. Mr. Werner was the sales manager of a Chrysler dealership, and dismayed with the collapse of car sales. He had a doctor’s recommendation to smoke pot, for pain from a spinal condition. One day a car-dealer friend, Bill Shofner, who also had a pot recommendation (for migraines), suggested: Why not become pot vendors?
Each invested $40,000. Following state guidelines, they set up as a nonprofit, called Lake Forest Community Collective, from which they would draw salaries.
It is on the second floor of a strip mall in the Los Angeles suburb of Lake Forest that also houses Mexican restaurants and a Peet’s Coffee shop. A customer first encounters a brightly lit front room with a security window and an Obama poster, then is buzzed into a vestibule with an ATM. Beyond that is a spotless room with glass cases displaying pot in pill bottles.
Scribbled on a board are prices, from $10 to $25 a gram, for different strains: Sour Diesel, Purple Urkel, Bubba Hash. Sour Diesel is popular, says a volunteer, and “really potent.”
This still is a far cry from, say, Amsterdam, where pot remains illegal but authorities are so tolerant that pot is available in coffeehouses.
In California, pot sales, legal and illegal, are estimated to total $14 billion a year. Medical marijuana makes up maybe an eighth of that, says Dale Gieringer, director of the state’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He estimates the state has three million pot smokers, including 350,000 with doctors’ recommendations.
Hmm. Drawing salaries. Selling marijuana at $283.50 to $708.74 per ounce. Now, my old weed dealer used to tell me that the reason an ounce cost the same as gold (at the time) is because the guy growing it and selling it is risking his freedom. But these weed dealers aren’t facing that risk from state or local authorities and apparently now not from federal authorities. So now is the justification for ridiculously expensive plant material the overhead of the storefront and employee’s salaries and benefits?
We must legalize marijuana for everyone, even those of us deemed too healthy to smoke weed. Marijuana is becoming institutionalized in California as something you must pay a doctor to get a permission slip to overpay a dispensary to get. If you don’t play that game and grow your own or buy street weed, you might get to pay an attorney and a drug court. Oakland has set a precedent for 1.8% taxation on marijuana. Will these entrepreneurs and governments make more money on one-eighth of the consumers buying over-priced weed, or more on all of the consumers buying farmer’s market-priced weed?
Well, that’s exactly my point, is that with full legalization, bulk production and modern agriculture would drop the price of marijuana quite substantially. In that scenario I don’t see the feds putting too high a tax on it, or else people will just grow their own and subvert the tax. It needs to equalize out to where the tax is high enough to do good, but low enough people don’t mind paying it. What I do know is that $10-$25 per gram is ridiculous when hand-picked saffron, which yields three threads per flower and takes 75,000 flowers to produce a pound and must then be shipped overseas, costs less than $10 per gram.
I am a caregiver in Montana and if you think that marijuana should cost the same as cigs, you’re SORELY wrong.
I spend THOUSANDS of $ on lights, nutrients, c02, electric, water, sewer, etc… to provide medical marijuana to my patients.
The ONLY way it MIGHT ever be that cheap is if we were to COMPLETELY decriminalize Marijuana at both Federal and State level, but then you have to know that the Fed and States WILL put an excessive tax on purchasing it. I have read some states want 250.00 an OUNCE tax, that would make an ounze 500 bucks in my area – so don’t be so quick to assume something!
if for whatever reason I don’t grow my own it should not cost more than a pack of cigs it’s just a weed