… is that a lot of the people growing weed are suddenly finding they can’t sell it, even at bargain-basement bulk rates, thanks to the easing of access provided by medical marijuana laws in the state [via MetaFilter].
“Outdoor growers are having a hard time unloading their fall harvest,” Custer says. “And this is six months later and when some people do move it, they don’t get nearly the price they were hoping for.”
That goes for both legal growers who cultivate limited quantities of pot under the medical marijuana laws and illegal operators who often grow larger amounts.
Prices are now much less than $2,000 a pound, according to interviews with more than a dozen growers and dealers. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman says some growers can’t get rid of their processed pot at any price.
“We arrested a man who had … 800 pounds of processed,” Allman says. “Eight hundred pounds of processed. And we asked him: ‘What are you going to do with 800 pounds of processed?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.'”
Who’d have imagined that opening up a quasi-legal channel for supply would have driven prices down hugely, eh? I wonder what on earth they’ll manage to spend all the drug war money on if the state votes to legalise… there’s plenty to choose from, after all.
One of the most curious aspects of the United States for an outsider like myself is the way that different states – and even counties, so I believe – can have their own legal framework in supplement to the one that governs the whole country. It makes a lot of sense from a sociological point of view, though; different regions will inevitably have different political characters, and the law should logically accommodate that.
Sounds a bit topsy-turvy, doesn’t it? But it’s quite true –