Besides, growing for personal use is undetectable and any laws against it would be unenforceable. If the government’s aim is to tax the hell out of it to increase revenues, personal growing will become even more commonplace.”
Yet these medical marijuana dispensaries are doing huge business selling expensive pot to people who could legally grow their own. The government is already collecting at least $11 million in sales taxes from marijuana sales and believes the actual total could be a lot more because a lot of these dispensaries are reporting their income as proceeds from sales of other products because they don't want to admit marijuana sales on their federal tax returns. It's still illegal under federal law and only a small percentage of California's pot smokers have medical marijuana cards. If marijuana was actually legal under state and federal law corporate farmers would be growing it on huge farms and the costs would go way down. Tobacco costs less than $2 a pound in bulk wholesale to companies like Phillip Morris. Pot shouldn't be that much more expensive, certainly not hundreds or even thousands of dollars a pound. The only way the government will keep the cost to consumers anywhere close to what they pay today is with high taxes. There would be licensed shops all over selling it for reasonable prices and I bet a lot more people would go to the shops to by it just because it would be easier and they'd enjoy the variety they'd have to select from and would appreciate the fact that the product they are buying has been produced in a regulated environment and would not have toxic chemicals on it or dangerous molds or anything like that. There might be a lot of home growing, but I bet an awful lot would be sold through the shops too, even with high taxes. It's not that expensive today on a per use basis, and it could easily be cheaper in a legal environment even with high taxes.
You signed up today to post this, which suggests you’re part of the pot lobby, probably NORML. These are the same talking points, using the same language, that another new sign-up from the pot lobby threw around a few weeks ago... feel free to check my posting history to see my responses.
I’m not going to respond to these same talking points endlessly just because you guys think inundating message boards with them is an effective strategy. Sorry, I don’t do this for a living, so I don’t have that kind of time to piss away.
But I will tell you, as I told the last NORML lobbyist, that in all my years of smoking pot and living in Southern California (and knowing LOTS of other stoners), I saw product from the dispensaries maybe twice. I don’t know anyone who buys their pot from them, mainly because they’re ridiculously expensive. Everybody I knew, in both Los Angeles and San Diego, got their stuff from home growers with grow cards. And the stuff was every bit as potent as the stuff we’d sampled from the dispensaries (which sells for $400 an ounce, minimum).
As far as it being cheaper, even with high taxes, that’s a pipe dream. Anyone who think this government getting into the pot-dealing business expressly for the money is going to make pot cheaper is either being willfully dishonest, or they’re living in a dream world. They’ll have a mandate from the non-pot smoking majority to tax the hell out of it and that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The cost will double, instantly. Guaranteed.