Growers struggle with glut of legal pot in Washington state

AP via finance.yahoo.com ^ | Jan 16, 2015 | Gene Johnson

[posterchild]

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington's legal marijuana market opened last summer to a dearth of weed. Some stores periodically closed because they didn't have pot to sell. Prices were through the roof.

Six months later, the equation has flipped, bringing serious growing pains to the new industry.

A big harvest of sun-grown marijuana from eastern Washington last fall flooded the market. Prices are starting to come down in the state's licensed pot shops, but due to the glut, growers are — surprisingly — struggling to sell their marijuana. Some are already worried about going belly-up, finding it tougher than expected to make a living in legal weed.

"It's an economic nightmare," says Andrew Seitz, general manager at Dutch Brothers Farms in Seattle.

[Moonman62]

That’s good. Maybe I can apply to get paid for NOT growing pot!

...

And get your own USDA agent like every other farmer.

[G Larry]

118 posts here on FR.

Most don’t like the impact on undermining the culture.

[DiogenesLamp]

Mankind has been using substances to alter consciousness since the dawn of time. Making certain substances illegal hasn’t ever once altered that behavior. Ever.

This is quite hilarious to people who actually know what they are talking about. We have in the case of China, an example of what happens when you *DON'T* make certain substances illegal. What came of it? A three thousand year old form of government overthrown, mass death and misery, and over 100 million dead from the upheaval.

What it has done is create an enormous black market run by murderous thugs in order to cater to an existing demand. A convenient byproduct is the destruction of the Bill of Rights and Federalism, something desired by statists on both the right and the left.

Which is somehow supposed to be worse than the enormous *legal* market ran by murderous thugs in order to cater to an exponentially increasing demand? Just how is the *FIRE* an improvement over the frying pan?

While we're at it, how about we look in on the little experiment that Switzerland tried in legalizing drugs in a specific park?

“The strange scene has been a fixture in Zurich for several years, tolerated by city officials who are convinced that drug use should be regarded as a sickness rather than a crime. Social and medical workers estimate that about 300 to 400 heavy drug users live in the park without shelter, toilets or showers, and that as many as 3,000 others pass through daily to buy and use drugs………..the midway of the grotesque carnival is a concrete path along the edge of the Limmat River, lined with makeshift counters covered with neatly arranged spoons, bottles of water and paper cups bristling with slender, disposable syringes. The crowd thickens as night falls and drug hustlers work their way through the sea of bodies clogging the path, calling out ''Sugar, sugar, fine sugar!'' when they mean heroin, and ''Cokay, cokay!'' for cocaine……..the other night, three men crouched under a park lamppost, dividing a white powdery pancake of heroin with a Swiss Army knife. Next to them, a woman lay in the dirt in a stupor. Four or five men were intensely working needles into their arms. A woman in a striped sweater probed for veins in one hand, blood streaming down her fingers, as a woman in leather pants and stained blouse wobbled past, a bloody syringe dangling from her neck.”

http://picturesandperspectives.blogspot.com/2009/04/switzerland-platzspitz-or-needle-park.html

Yeah, that worked out about like any sane person would have expected. It was such a disaster that even the Swiss figured out that it was a stupid idea.

[offwhite]

"Why is that the significant measure of being ingrained in the social fabric?

Because those are the marijuana users.

"Seems to me having used in one's youth and later quit counts toward being ingrained in the social fabric."

Someone who tried pot once at a college party is hardly an example of "ingrained in the social fabric". In my opinion, it's rebellion against the social fabric that rejected it. Smoking marijuana has always been part of the sub-culture.

[DiogenesLamp]

Most of the nation still is. Too many people cannot or will not see the damage to our freedoms that the WOD is.

Too Many people cannot or will not see the damage to our *EXISTENCE* that not having a WOD would be.

You can't have freedom in a collapsed state. Only a functional state can allow freedom.

[gdani]

Why do you people insist on presenting these false comparisons? We have....blah, blah, blah

It was but one example. I never said marijuana use, historically, was as widespread as alcohol. But marijuana is not without its own users, across multiple countries & cultures, for centuries. Despite your lies/claims.

Perhaps another drug - opium - that enjoyed widespread use centuries ago would be more to your liking as an example?

Half the people currently in the US? I thought you were trying to prove some sort of cultural acceptance?

Not that I care, but what sort of completely arbitrary number would be acceptable to you if not half a population?

To put it into context, you need to demonstrate that a large quantity of people have been using it since at least 1776

Only in your world do I need to do that. Nobody else really cares what a Big Government advocate on a conservative message board thinks.

And here we have the bad logic mixed with the ad hominem argument. Let me educate you.

Please do. I am in awe of your powers of persuasion & debate tactics.

They rightly note that when you alter the brain chemisty, you no longer have the ability to exercise free will, and so your argument to "let adults decide what to put into their bodies..." just falls apart.

They can't. It is impossible for most people under the influence of a narcotic to make such decisions. When they have become infected, it is the drug doing the talking at that point.

And ridiculous claims like this are exactly why people continue to tune out drug warriors.

Have you ever tried marijuana? Did you suffer from the "inability to exercise free will"? Neither have the 100 million+ Americans who have tried it.

And that's why people refuse to listen people who have no idea what they're talking about.

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

This is quite hilarious to people who actually know what they are talking about.

Have you ever smoked marijuana?

What makes you the expert on its effects?

[DiogenesLamp]

The stoners didn't enact the law nor will they make the arrests.

No, they are just making a bigger mess for everyone else to clean up because they insist on spreading their infection.

[ConservingFreedom]

Someone who tried pot once at a college party

I doubt that many of those lifetime-but-not-current users tried it only once - although I have no data on that.

[RinaseaofDs]

Of course, nobody saw it coming. It’s called ‘weed’. Did you think the barriers to entry were high?

[ConservingFreedom]

We have in the case of China, an example of what happens when you *DON'T* make certain substances illegal.

We have in the case of the first 150 or so years of the USA another example of what happens when you *DON'T* make certain substances illegal: not much.

[offwhite]

"You, yourself, pointed out that per capita alcohol consumption increased each year of prohibition."

Yes. Alcohol.

Not drugs. Not marijuana. After the Controlled Substance Act was passed, marijuana use dropped 50% and has remained at 6-7% for the last 20+ years. In my opinion, that's as low as it's going to go with current laws.

[DiogenesLamp]

Maybe prohibition creates more problems than it solves. Just a thought.

Maybe you should examine the alternative before you conclude the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. People simply do not understand how bad it would be to have legalized drugs.

"Drugging a Nation" by Samuel Merwin (1907)

Again, the fire is not an improvement over the frying pan.

[freepersup]

You must be genuinely proud of your ability to bombard threads with pictures of psychotic killers using your adept html skills? You do NOTHING for your cause. 55 million preborn babies have been aborted in this nation alone, and the number is climbing by the hour. THIS destruction of the most vulnerable of our society is a MASSIVE corrosive, eating away at our society. People smoking or eating pot, I repeat people smoking or eating pot- with emphasis this time- people ONLY eating or smoking pot hurt no one. Go FY you boring slug!!!

[GeronL]

tolerated by city officials who are convinced that drug use should be regarded as a sickness rather than a crime.

So their government encourages sickness?

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

Maybe you should examine the alternative before you conclude the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. People simply do not understand how bad it would be to have legalized drugs

So, your assertion is that the USA was a worse place to live before we banned illicit drugs and that banning them has made it a much better place to live.

[ConservingFreedom]

After the Controlled Substance Act was passed, marijuana use dropped 50%

As did tobacco use, while remaining legal.

[DiogenesLamp]

Because the controls were necessary to overcome the opposition of rabid pot criminalizers - so blame them.

It would seem that History has shown us that the users are more rabid than the opponents. Here's an example.

Michael D. Harris, reporting for UPI, wrote that years later his father would maintain that Richard was a "good boy" whose marijuana consumption "put him out of control," but it would be hard to pinpoint exactly what influences sent Richard Ramirez in the direction of devil worship

He is but one of MANY EXAMPLES of how this was not so far fetched.

[DiogenesLamp]

My initial assessment => marijuana prohibitionists have lost.

More like this is just another symptom of the degradation and collapse of what used to be a "Free Republic." It is no accident that Homosexuality is also getting stronger in this nation.

All the forces of darkness are gaining strength in these times. Drugs is just another one of their many foot soldiers.

[ConservingFreedom]

Casual marijuana use may damage your brain

The researchers said only "effects" and "changes" not damage - and since this was a one-time comparison of smokers versus nonsmokers there's no proof that pot caused the differences.