Posted on 09/15/2014 2:55:42 PM PDT by steve86
Retail sales of state-licensed weed in Washington topped $12 million by Sept. 8 … and sales keep climbing. The improvement of sales in recreational marijuana here mirrors the steep growth in sales in Colorado, where the recreational market out-sold medical for the first time in July (the latest numbers from that state).
The Cannabist reports: “In July 2014, customers purchased more than $29.7 million in recreational marijuana — up from $24.7 million in June. Medical marijuana patients spent more than $28.9 million on marijuana in July — comparable to June’s $28.6 million in sales.”
In Washington, there are now 55 fully licensed retail outlets with another five approved and waiting on final licensing payments, said Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board. (The stores licensed and published by the LCB are in the gallery above.)
The great mystery is why Seattle still has only one store licensed — Cannabis City. Carpenter said they’re all baffled by that but “they’re just not through the licensing process yet,” he said of Seattle applicants. “For whatever reason they’re just not getting through.”
State records show 388 applications active for Seattle. (… are you trying to get through the system and open a store? Call or email me … contact info below.) And, while the state’s system is very detailed and not a breeze by any stretch to get through (some say illegally difficult), business owners have to do their part, too.
One big reason for the dearth of I-502 stores in Seattle, we’ve speculated here at The Pot Blog, is that Seattle is basically an open market for marijuana and the pressure is low for growers and sellers to leave what they’re doing now — medical or black market — and attempt to get over the high bar of state licensing.
Supply side …
Licenses to growers has hit the state’s target of 2 million square feet of canopy, with 217 growers given the green light. That’s a recipe for growing 40 tons of marijuana. And, Carpenter said, the state continues and will continue to license growers.
The LCB “set the limit at 2 million square feet to start the market and can expand, and we fully expect to do so,” he said.
No big surprise for those of us who expected Oregon’s pot-cursious to cross the river and buy legal weed, stores in Vancouver are leading the way in sales.
Carpenter said sales at those stores show up on the state tracking system as outstripping, by far, sales in Seattle’s store and every where else in the state. Hmmmm … might be a solid reason for Oregon voters to go ahead this November and legalize it themselves.
You can argue that legalizing it better than prosecuting it. I won’t argue that point.
What I will say is that you can’t build and sustain a republic with druggies as your raw material.
Whenever a repressed activity is allowed, it's overdone. Wait until some time has passed and it settles down before making a judgement as to whether the population is more debilitated than it was before.
Bingo. It will be a "fad" that will die down to a fixed percentage of the population and a lot of these stores will go belly-up.
In the mean time, I'm all for states legalizing it and taxing it SO LONG AS it is "Revenue Neutral." Make them reduce property or sales taxes an equal amount for every dollar they take in. The commies love to use that term when someone proposes tax cuts, backhand them with their own glove!
By "overdone" do you mean just more than what it will settle down to? Because although the statewide totals sound big - as would the comparable figures for alcoholic beverages - I don't know that it amounts to all that large a proportion of the population using all that much pot per person. Particularly when compared to the same numbers pre-legalization.
Yep. Some things are adopted slowly. Others, especially when previously suppressed, may experience a transient burst of popularity before dying down to a steady state level.
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