The dark reality of legal weed in California

[mahatmakanejeeves]

There was something about this on the NBC Nightly News on the TV last night.

CALIFORNIA

The dark reality of legal weed in California

BY DORANY PINEDA | STAFF WRITER
SEPT. 8, 2022 6:30 AM PT

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, Sept. 8. I’m Dorany Pineda, the Times’ books reporter, and I’m writing from Los Angeles.

When Proposition 64, California’s landmark cannabis initiative, passed in 2016, it had sold voters on the promise that a legal market would wipe out the drug’s outlaw business and the violence and environmental disaster associated with it.

Instead, it’s done the opposite.

A Los Angeles Times investigation by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Paige St. John has found that illegal weed farms are flooding parts of rural California on a scale never before witnessed, exacerbating violence, labor exploitation, environmental damage and more. Police are overwhelmed and can raid only a small percentage of the farms; even then, the growers are often back in business within days.

[Read “The reality of legal weed in California: Huge illegal grows, violence, worker exploitation and deaths,” in The Times.]

To better understand the issues, St. John reviewed state, county and court records and interviewed scores of legal and illegal weed growers, local residents, laborers, law enforcement, community activists, market analysts and public officials. Her reporting reveals that the explosive growth has had profound and extensive consequences:

• Illegal pot farms have exacerbated weed-related violence, occasionally including killings. Local residents described living in fear.
• Labor exploitation is rampant. Workers often toil in dangerous conditions and are frequently cheated of wages. Since cannabis was legalized, 15 workers have died from carbon monoxide poisoning from generators and charcoal braziers.
• Extreme cultivation is causing significant environmental damage. At a time of severe drought, millions of gallons of water are being taken from aquifers even as wells go dry. Banned, lethal pesticides and unchecked chemicals are being used.
• Illegal cultivation fed a surplus that crashed wholesale prices last year. Small farms operating legally are unable to sell their crops, pushing them closer to financial ruin. “I’m barely hanging on,” one licensed cannabis grower in Humboldt County told St. John.

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[SWBTATTReg]

1. Wow. I didn't know that things had gotten this bad. I'll have to ask my friend in Illinois (grows

pot too in IL) to see if things are like this in IL...I don't think so. They have a small operation, perhaps no more than six plants.

I wonder if sellers have any leeway in reducing prices for their produce, since there is an oversupply, or are prices strictly regulated?

[quaint]

7. Taxed by weight, not price.

[Mr.Bill]

2. California got way too greedy with taxes on legal marijuana.

That, couple with the fact that stores selling it have to do all their business in cash have made it hard to be profitable. They also underestimated the strength of a long established black market. Here in Northern California I can buy high quality weed for less than the taxes that are added to legal stuff.

[Juneboarder]

3. Here is San Diego

I've found it to be much cheaper to buy legal weed than the black market. The only way it would be lucrative in my opinion to get a better deal from the black market down here would be to buy by the QP or larger and sell it so you could smoke for free and/or make money, but that's a headache in and of itself.

[Unwind Your Mind]

5. I've found that too

You can walk out the door for about the same prices as we paid in high school in the 80’s

[Unwind Your Mind]

4. It's really not the tax on retail customers causing the problem

The real problem is how difficult it is to become a legal grower. And then once you do, the federal tax structure in particular puts those growers at a disadvantage to illegal grows.

I’ve been working in the hydro industry for years and growers are our customers. Legal or not, business is down right now.

[Mr.Bill]

6. You are correct.

That is also a problem.

[The Mouth]

8. Killed the goose that laid the golden eggs

Seriously.

The taxes and regulations are so ridiculously high that most are going back to underground.

The cost of permits and inspections have driven the few growers who have tried to do the right thing back underground. This I know for a fact. The ones who are doing everything legally and in an environmentally sensible way are losing their ass

The cost of a legal eighth is nearly twice the price of getting it from people I know.

They need to not tax it AT ALL for a couple of years, so that the people who want to be legal can start making a profit, and then tax it about 1/10th as much as they are now.

Both our state legislature and our local politicians have epitomized the stereotype of greedy, overtaxing politicians. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

It *HAS* to be significantly cheaper -AFTER ALL TAXES - than the illegal stuff or it's just a farce.

I don't care if they ARE mostly Democrats, we have a greedy, corrupt, and incompetent legislature and local governments.