Replacing the Black Market

Interesting survey at Marijuana Business Daily: Chart of the Week: Black Market Marijuana Taking Big Hit in States With Operating Dispensaries, Rec Shops

COTW09-08-15_final

Of course, we always said that most consumers, when given a choice, would prefer to buy legally, as long it was available without going through too many hoops or being ridiculously expensive.

It’s certainly not a surprise, but it’s nice to see it happening visibly in data, even if it is from survey information (obviously, there’s no real way to accurately track levels of black market sales).

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9 Responses to Replacing the Black Market

  1. darkcycle says:

    Surprisingly, had some guy ask me for weed on the street downtown the other day (that never happens, I don’t look at all like a typical stoner). I laughed and told him where the nearest legal shop was. He actually looked confused.

  2. Servetus says:

    In the minds of prohibitionists, the typical marijuana smoker resembles a total sleazebucket, a hazy visage preferring to trip through dark back alleys in order to inject pot into their collapsing veins.

    It never occurs to prohibs that marijuana consumers are human, that they might desire a clean, convenient, well lit place to buy high quality cannabinoid products, even though taxes are included. That’s why we need a Chart of the Week telling people black markets aren’t all that attractive to consumers. Prohibitionists wouldn’t believe it otherwise. Some may never believe it.

  3. DdC says:

    It’s not “marijuana” and it doesn’t sell on any “black” market.

    The Color of Sin–
    Why the Good Guys Wear White

    Why would this intrinsic association exist? One possibility is that the metaphor is more complex, embodying not just right and wrong but purity and contagion, too. Think of the metaphor “new-fallen snow.” It is not only white, it is also virginal and unadulterated, like a wedding dress. And blackness not only discolors it, it stains it, taints its purity.

    Ancient fears of filth and contagion may explain why we think of morality in black and white

    contagion, of feeling morally “dirty.”

    The idea was that people who were feeling morally dirty would be quicker to make the connection between immorality and blackness on the moral Stroop test

    In other words, those primed for misbehavior linked blackness not only with crime and cheating but with being irresponsible, unreliable, self-centered slackers.

    They add chemicals to cigarettes that make the smoke white, pure as a cloud. Rolled in a white paper with a nipple. The concept of evil portrayed as black is as old as the hills. “Black” markets are considered evil, in spite of reality pitted against prohibition, the other “white”meat. Bad guys wear black hats. Not sure about Have Gun – Will Travel Paladin or Adam Cartwright.

    The “white” market of prohibitionists is clearly evil. Liars, human cagers and killers keeping patients from their meds. For some it is a sacrament, no different than the “white” market church’s red wine. Kevin has black hair. He leaves sick people feeling dark and gloomy. Yet he hides behind the “white” curtain spending tax donations. Dispensaries for the overwhelming majority are a success. All self governing, competition providing quality. All outside of the “white” market with cops and drug companies.

    No concern-able problems. Big bucks and taxes in some places building schools. All “black” market regardless of how civilized it is over the “white” market of eCB deficient proud obedient loyal true blue believers, and they fetch things. We are “The Cannabis Market”, customers and servants supplying a quality product to stay in business and meet the demands of the citizens. In spite of the “white” market’s unprecedented obstacles unheard of for any other business. Still hiring and beating the mean nasty ugly filthy system. Remove it as a controlled substance and we can do it everywhere. Kill the buzzwords and reason it out.
    No victims… DoH! No crime…

    • DdC says:

      …and the ignorant keep it alive.
      Hopefully they have no children to pass on their ignorance.

      “… the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”
      ~ Harry J. Anslinger

      Marijuana Prohibition Was Racist From The Start. Not Much Has Changed.

      “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.” huffpost

      “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”

      A study published in the journal Crime & Delinquency this month found that by the age of 23, nearly 50 percent of black males have been arrested, compared to 44 percent of Hispanic males and 38 percent of white males.

      The Racist Ganjawar
      ☛ Thank you Miss Rosa
      ☛ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and MMJ Prohibition
      ☛ Nixon’s Drug War –
      Re-Inventing Jim Crow, Targeting The Counter Culture
      ☛ JIM CROW 2012
      ☛ The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment & Linx
      ☛ Using the drug war to keep blacks from voting
      ☛ Another Win For Civil Rights
      ☛ Scientist: Trayvon Martin’s Marijuana Use
      Had Nothing to Do with the Night He Died
      ☛ White Supremacy: Its Source and Uses

      • DdC says:

        In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the vast majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence.
        Kurt Nimmo

        Those who demonize the growers for supplying us with Ganja the past 40 years are the true evil ones. Growers commit no sins. They are for all intent and purposes, public servants selling a product we gladly purchase. Those who believe the incremental government laws are good are properly brainwashed into acquiescence. There are no black markets growing Ganja. Only unregistered citizens keeping it from extinction. The good guys. Thank You Ganja Growers, for all of your years of service.

        Her princes in the midst of her are like wolves tearing prey in shedding blood, in destroying souls for the purpose of making unjust gain. And her prophets have plastered for them with whitewash, visioning an unreality and divining for them a lie, saying: ‘This is what the Lord God has said,’ when God himself has not spoken. The people of the land have carried on a scheme of defrauding and have done a tearing away in robbery, and the afflicted one and the poor one they have maltreated, and the alien resident they have defrauded without justice.
        — Ezekiel 22:27

        My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. — Hosea 4:6

        In later times, some shall … speak lies in hypocrisy… commanding to abstain from that which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
        — Paul: 1 Tim. 4:1

    • Windy says:

      We need to distinguish between the regulated Cannabis market (as implemented in CO, WA, OR, AK, and yes even the most lenient law that allows a lot more cannabis freedom than the other 4, in D.C.) and the unregulated Cannabis FREE-MARKET (the one THEY call the “black market”).

      • DdC says:

        CO, WA, OR, AK and D.C. are temporary oasis’ that will not live through a GOP election. At best the newbie pres. will not enforce the CSA. Still trumped by Raich unless cannabis is removed as a controlled substance. It is a nonbinding piece of legislation with no balls. CA still has the least restrictive law over all of the other states with piss tests and limits. Until the tweakers change it and no one opposes because they have profits to consider. That’s reality.

        The “free market” has provided Ganja to users for 4 decades and the only violence is that from prohibition. I’m not saying the Oasis isn’t the best thing that has happened since roller coasters. I’m saying it is made of smoke and fog and just as fragile. We need to deal with science and not politics when it comes to measuring things. Cannabis harm or benefits should not be political fairy tales to win or lose initiatives. Ganja is or it isn’t. Without human victims of Ganja use there is no isn’t. Why would we want to compromise on that?

  4. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .

    Every single out of State resident who travels to another State to make a regulated purchase has most certainly deprived the black market of revenue.

    It would be nice if we didn’t have such a fluid definition of exactly what makes a black market transaction a black market transaction. Earlier this morning I read some hogwash from a pundit trying to claim that because growers ship “medical marijuana” out of State it means all “medical marijuana” is a black market product. Obviously that’s hogwash. Cannabis growers masquerading as “medical marijuana” growers product produced for export from Colorado never qualified as “medical marijuana.” Yes sweetness, black market and valid medicinal cannabis can not only be grown side by side, the two can literally come from the same plant.

    I still disagree with the notion that cigarettes purchased legally in one State for resale in another State with the intention of evading excise and sales tax are black market transactions. The tobacco was legal for the vendor to sell, legal for the middleman to buy and possess, and legal for the end user to purchase and possess. The only “crime” committed in the entire distribution chain is tax evasion by the seller. In Maryland, the onus of making sure that the State excise and sales taxes is on the end user. We can download and print the form at the Comptroller of Maryland’s web site and get the address to mail in the check. I’ve always wondered if they ever get even a single voluntary payment. They do catch people and send them bills. I’ve never heard of a prosecution. Of course that doesn’t mean that prosecutions don’t occur. But it would seem to me to be in the State’s financial interest to publicize those prosecutions.

    To my thinking legalizing personal cultivation obviously takes revenue away from the black market. It doesn’t even matter if the grower is growing part of his crop for sale to his friends. I’ll admit that it’s arguably a black market transaction if he does that. I think it depends how much weight you give Federal law. Unlike smoking tobacco it is criminal to grow, possess, or sell. If you give Federal law any weight then it’s all black market no matter State law. But the reality is that there are black markets, and then there are black markets.

    In Georgia USA, there are still a few vestigial bootleggers of drinking alcohol. In that State modern day bootlegging leads to the scourge of stripper poles and the tragedy of illegal buffets:

    Gainesville men charged with illegally selling alcohol
    1/3/2011

    /snip/
    Though the squads focus on drugs and gangs, they address a few bootlegging cases each year.
    “They pop up every now and then. People want to make a little extra money,” Ware said. “They’ll buy beers and then sell it for two or three times more.”
    In early November, three people were arrested and accused of selling alcohol illegally out of a home on Brown Street. The suspects allegedly were selling beer, wine, mixed drinks and shots of moonshine.
    There was also a buffet and a stripper pole set up at the house, Ware said.

  5. DdC says:

    DeWine is another old relic of prohibitionism. Another Incrementally Retarded state law tweaker keeping the Underground Market in business. Avoiding reality that only removing cannabis from the feds jurisdiction will stop these tweakers from over regulating. Changing the initiatives in the name of being too wordy. Preying on the desperate grasping for their piece of the pie and to hell with the rest who can’t.

    DeWine Supports Ballot Board Over Summary
    http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread28668.shtml

    Ohio — Attorney General Mike DeWine defended the Ohio Ballot Board summary of a marijuana legalization proposal, saying it gave voters a “plain speak” description of a “supersized amendment.”

    DeWine’s filing with the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday said the board took ResponsibleOhio’s complicated and lengthy amendment and fairly condensed it to “a digestible, comprehensible format.” The overall amendment is so wordy, DeWine said, that it would increase the total length of the Ohio Constitution by more than 10 percent.

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