GN's Best and Worst of Cannabis Laws

Hello GN community,

As I begin this semester at UCI’s Center for the Study of Cannabis I am also taking a separate class on Cannabis and the Law and the class will be dividing up into teams and producing research papers on solving various problems in the cannabis industry and given that it is law school there will likely be a focus on how to solve many of these issues through the legislative process.

To that end I would love to hear about anyone’s favorite or least favorite laws and if you could speak to the state or other jurisdiction you operate in that would be great. What works, what doesn’t work, what would you improve, throw out, or keep? In addition, please feel free to mention some of the larger issues you’re facing and hopefully we can get some law students to percolate a few ideas and strategies over the next several months.

Thanks for anyone who is willing to share and I look forward to learning from everyone about their pain points in the industry.

V/R,

~Pacifico

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@memberdirectory,

Hello GN community,

@Pacifico, has asked some great questions. Will you please provide some answers @mastergrowers.

I can show how to access the public data for the USA, we publish an incredible amount of data. Not just on cannabis, but all of Floricultural! Find your USDA district :shushing_face:

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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Try California’s tightass regime…

CannabisManifestoofError2.docx (25.5 KB)

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That would be great, looking forward to it. Thanks Ethan!

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Absolutely. The more people who see deeper into this
excessive and destructive regulatory regime that enforces the
fake-legalization of Cannabis, the better for all of us.

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Alex this is just the kind of insider critique I was looking for. Thank you very much, this is great.

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The canopy size vs plant count laws affect a growers ability to produce the the most return on space. I am going to do a utilization cuve on the two different methods. It should be fast looking at a different post on 2 Ibs flower?
giant plants or small plants.

The problem is utilization of space. Just like general floricultue. It is almost a fruit orchard in some grows. There is an optimal size even in low plant count states.

From the voices in my head Ethan :thinking:

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Where do I start. When it comes to licensed regulated industry. Lots of laws for states allow locals to completely opt out which leaves patients in those areas without access. Specifically in States like Mass the community host agreement that are allowed by law are pretty much pay to play and require massive payouts to special interests. State laws also allow cities to pretty much “zone out” the industry. Meaning they are allowed restrict zoning so badly ( not near churches, daycares, arcades,parks, playgrounds, schools, rehab facilities etc… only a few parcels qualify. A lot of times times this artificially inflates real estate prices where people pay a trillion times what the property is worth. I guess that’s ok if the value is truly there and your backed by multimillion dollar group. But a lot of times I see people taken advantage of, or they just have the cannabis gold rush blinders on end up being put in a bad position.
Also in my opinion, I’ve been arrested for personal amounts of cannabis atleast a dozen times. As a minority I dont use cannabis anymore than a non minority. But why is it I’ve been arrested for possession a dozen times and most of my non minority friends haven’t. We get pulled over and searched all the time thats why. Its simply just a numbers game. If me and my friend consume and possess the same amount of cannabis he has no interactions with police I have 20. Naturally Im going to be arrested for cannabis more times. Which ends up costing me thousands of dollars in fees, useless rehab, financial aid assistance for school, jobs I can no longer get.
Its not a fair system. Now some of you think that we are some kind of criminals or we wouldn’t be pulled over or searched all the time. That could be further then the truth. I’ve been stopped and frisked for literally just standing outside because someone said I looked suspicious, pulled over for no reason at all, or something like going 5 miles over the speed limit, supposedly swerving within my own lane, etc… I literally got pulled over guns drawn on me right in front of a job interview. Because we supposedly matched the description of some people who committed a crime. I had to explain to the potential employer that the reason the cops pulled me out of my car had me lie on the ground searched and cuffed me was just a misunderstanding and they had the wrong suspect. I think the laws around allowing cops to search and arrest us over the supposed smell of cannabis has to be repealed. How many times have they used that excuse to violate our rights even if we know good well there is no smell.
Now states and cities are creating laws to supposedly allow more diversity and give minorities a fair shot at being able to open cannabis businesses. The only problems is none of these laws actually work. As good intentioned as they may seem. Its really just smoke and mirrors. Just look at the social equity programs in places like Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Even in the Midwest and Eastcoast like Ohio, Pennyslvannia, Massachusetts, Maryland. None of them have actually done anything significant to increase diversity in OWNERSHIP of licensed cannabis businesses.
Then you have all of this Multimillion dollar companies putting together these elaborate applications claiming how diverse they are going to be and all the stuff they are going to do for the local communities blah, blah, blah. But once they get those coveted licenses all of that goes by wayside.
I’m tired of hearing that people dont go to jail for pot and getting arrested for it doesnt ruin peoples lives. Even getting arrested for small possession of cannabis can completely turn someones life upside down. Sorry if this sounds like a rant but I think people like you can make difference and change unjust cannabis laws even after it becomes legal there is still plenty of work thst needs be done.

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Criminal justice reform is a whole different issue. But, I see your point. Of pointing it out.

Diversity is good I don’t care how much it costs.

Lisences I have a lot of issues.

First by limiting the numbers we create some false economic values. Is a license really worth X. The same thing happened in some retail liquor license in post proabition states, counties and or cities. Thay put in short term start up fixes. Like limiting the number of license in one city but not the one next door. Few restaurants in limited lic cities. And the transfer values are crazy. I Duluth, MN had a crazy limited license by parts of the city. One area lakeside was dry until January this year. When the city voted to remove liquor license caps in the last 10 years. The value of a license went from 100K to 200k depending on location. Today one of my permits to open a restaurant with a bar is a $500 liquor license.

Duluth use have one of the lowest restaurants per capita numbers in the country. For cities of a 100k. With above average per capita discriminational spending. Finally Duluth is learn about restaurants.

Regulations yes. Around quality and purity and regular greenhouse rules. And nuisances rules are fine. I don’t want to live next to a grow. It is as bad as pig finishing lots. I don’t want either as neighbors. Sorry. And I am pro pot.

Should it be tightly controled on distribution to end consumers and taxed to death. Hell yah. I view it as the states trying to cleanup after tobacco. This also removes a lot of the liability around smoking and long term heath risk potentials, that could be a burden on our children. We still don’t recover in most states the public health cost increase in your cost to the community by by your choice to smoke. Just pay your insurance tax now. Don’t make me pay it in 30 years when you can’t breath…

So there is good and bad to regulation. The food purity act that most our end product test are justified are public and at the nih in two data sets. Valuable metric to compare your Grow to. I am growing x cultivar and in I can already see same cultivar same labs numbers all over the place. The data needs to be mined monthly and published. It is public record let make it the pot index. OCP search is a child’s attempt at a toy. It need public agrogates sites think stock page or box scores.

Enough examples.

But, if field is level we all can play at the same time. There will always be a diversity in size to market customer disposable income. The money will be in the boutique grows will control 20% of the market. There a lot of budwiser drinkers, a $2 but some asshole, me, buys the $16 a glass because I like a different style of pale wheat beers. :upside_down_face:. How many glasses of budwiser could I have purchased. Does a 16$ glass of beer cost 8 times as much to produce as a 2 Buck. No problemly the the same in the grow. Plus big growers have a lot more hand out wanting some. The economy of scale does not equal ROI.

I liked your rant because I understand the frustration and and your ability to articulate the problem as you see it. I just see it through a longer lense. 55years vs what are you?

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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Deschedule cannabis and also let states vote as a whole not just pick and choose jurisdictions or cities. The states give way to much power to local jurisdictions to choose if they want cannabis. A city like San Francisco can’t and won’t ban say caffeine so they shouldn’t get to ban cannabis.
ONCE AGAIN WE SHOULD NOT BE BALANCING BUDGETS WITH CANNABIS TAXES

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Given that even states as progressive as California are 2/3rds dry, I don’t envision the more conservative states being more friendly at the local level out of the goodness of their hearts. We need to develop incentives for local adoption.

Off the top of my head let’s say a state taxes every cannabis transaction at 10%, then they could use half of that to incentivize municipalities to open up their laws.

You could give 1% for allowing dispensaries, 1% for allowing another segment of the supply chain, 1% for allowing cannabis social spaces, 1% for allowing delivery services, and 1% for keeping local tax under X%.

That way you could utilize state level taxation to drive certain outcomes rather than just allowing every other jurisdiction to re-stigmatize it.

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Alex,

Wow. May I share this?

From the voices in my head

Ethan Kayes

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