House votes to decriminalize marijuana as GOP resists national shift on pot

[Winehole23]

decriminalization messed up their business model

[Winehole23]

Legal weed is the fifth most lucrative crop in the US

“Legal cannabis sales have gone through the roof in the US, yet the Department of Agriculture refuses to acknowledge or track the value of annual harvests like it does for all other crops. To fill this data gap, Leafly has just published its inaugural Cannabis Harvest Report, revealing that the crop now pulls in more money than cotton and is the fifth most valuable agricultural product in the US. According to the report, American growers produced and sold 2,278 metric tons of weed in 2020. The authors explain that this is enough pot to roll more than 2 billion joints or fill 57 Olympic-size swimming pools. For lovers of ridiculous units of measurement, that’s also around 1.7 million washing machines’ worth of weed. It’s worth noting, however, that this doesn’t even take into account the entire cannabis crop produced in the US last year. For simplicity, the researchers only included data from the 11 states where adult-use cannabis is available to purchase at licensed dispensaries. Combined sales from these states amounted to $6.2 billion, and supported a total of 13,042 licensed farms in 2020. To put that into perspective, this makes cannabis the fifth most valuable crop in the US, ahead of rice and peanuts and behind only wheat, hay, soybeans and corn. In Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Oregon, cannabis was the single most valuable crop on the market last year, and it ranked second in Arizona and third in Michigan and Illinois. Amazingly, the year’s cannabis harvest in Alaska was worth more than double the combined value of all other agricultural products

https://blog.seedsman.com/cannabis-i...rop-in-the-us/

[Winehole23]

Watch Brandon resist it now. I'd be surprised if it went anywhere, but this is tactically savvy.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation on Monday that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and eliminate legal hazards facing many cannabis-related businesses while regulating its use like alcohol.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...el-2021-11-15/

[Winehole23]

Ah, I had missed this. The GOP bill is a minimization of the Schumer/Booker/Wyden CAOA discussion draft from July, lowers the excise tax to 3%, and gives it to the cops.

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/se...wyden-1167488/

[RandomGuy]

Ah, I had missed this. The GOP bill is a minimization of the Schumer/Booker/Wyden CAOA discussion draft from July, lowers the excise tax to 3%, and gives it to the cops.

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/se...wyden-1167488/

The bill diverges in several important ways from draft legislation proposed in July by Senate Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Mace's bill would impose a 3% excise tax on cannabis, compared to an increasing Senate tax proposal that would top out at around 25%.

Where the Senate proposal would give the Food and Drug Administration a primary oversight role, the Republican legislation limits FDA involvement to medical marijuana and makes the Treasury's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau the primary regulator for interstate commerce.

Hmm. Interesting arguments both ways. Not fully sure which would be more appropriate, but given the level of woo around the medical benefits of THC and other products, it would seem to tip in the balance of the FDA, which has scientific chops when it comes to health issues, rather than what amounts to law enforcement at the ATF.

[MultiTroll]

[CosmicCowboy]

The Schumer/Booker bill is ing ignorant. Total Decriminalization while adding a 25% tax on "legal" growers (plus the additional state and local taxes) is pure Drug Cartel Welfare. There is no way the legal US growers will be able to compete. The states that have legalized have already set up "seed to sale" tracking of pot sales in order to regulate purity, allowable pesticides and herbicides, etc.

[CosmicCowboy]

head Schumer just announced legislation in the Senate that he promised would be released in April has been moved to "later in the summer".

[Winehole23]

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/31/e...bis/index.html

[Winehole23]

[CosmicCowboy]

Ah, I had missed this. The GOP bill is a minimization of the Schumer/Booker/Wyden CAOA discussion draft from July, lowers the excise tax to 3%, and gives it to the cops.

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/se...wyden-1167488/

Schumers 25% tax was ridiculous. It guaranteed legal weed couldn't compete with the black market.

[boutons_deux]

Overdosing on weed is becoming more common as growers breeds stronger and stronger strains

I haven't read that anybody dies from overdosing on weed but they can get really ed up sick and it's not always short-term

[CosmicCowboy]

Overdosing on weed is becoming more common as growers breeds stronger and stronger strains

I haven't read that anybody dies from overdosing on weed but they can get really ed up sick and it's not always short-term

Agreed. Some of the new stuff can really get you really ed up.

[SnakeBoy]

Agreed. Some of the new stuff can really get you really ed up.

It's also much more addictive

[CosmicCowboy]

It's also much more addictive

Everything in moderation. Doubt it's physically addictive. In the old days with Mexico dirt weed you could stay stoned 24/7 and still function. This new stuff is something else.

[koriwhat]

It's also much more addictive

Mental addiction, yes. Physical addiction, not at all.

[koriwhat]

Overdosing on weed is becoming more common as growers breeds stronger and stronger strains

I haven't read that anybody dies from overdosing on weed but they can get really ed up sick and it's not always short-term

[CosmicCowboy]

I realize my tolerance is way down from college days but I burned a cookies hybrid bud a couple weeks ago in Colorado about the size of a pinto bean and got way too ed up.

[ElNono]

You won't OD on cannabis alone. The problem is what they mix it with to make all these other products, and whether you have other health issues like cardiac problems, etc.

This is exactly why we should have a regulated market for these products.

I haven't touched weed in years (despite you can grow and consume your own legally here in California), but the plant hasn't changed.

[CosmicCowboy]

You won't OD on cannabis alone. The problem is what they mix it with to make all these other products, and whether you have other health issues like cardiac problems, etc.

This is exactly why we should have a regulated market for these products.

I haven't touched weed in years (despite you can grow and consume your own legally here in California), but the plant hasn't changed.

Thats the whole point of having legal cannabis. The states doing it right have seed to sale tracking so you can be sure you aren't getting product laced with fentanol or sprayed with some nasty insecticide.

[ElNono]

Thats the whole point of having legal cannabis. The states doing it right have seed to sale tracking so you can be sure you aren't getting product laced with fentanol or sprayed with some nasty insecticide.

Technically, it's not the whole point. There's money in taxes to be made as well. But agree that should be the primary reason.

[CosmicCowboy]

Technically, it's not the whole point. There's money in taxes to be made as well. But agree that should be the primary reason.

Its ok to have a reasonable sin tax but Schumer's 25% was bull .

[ElNono]

Its ok to have a reasonable sin tax but Schumer's 25% was bull .

Well, I dunno about that. Take cigarette taxes. They are at ~50% average across the nation.

But it is a different market, and more specifically, there's a wide black market for cannabis, so the calculation should be different.

The issue here is tax stacking. Whatever is the federal, you have to add state tax as well.

[baseline bum]

I haven't touched weed in years (despite you can grow and consume your own legally here in California), but the plant hasn't changed.

Carolina reaper and habanero are technically the same plant, just selective breeding makes the reaper worlds hotter. Same with weed, even the stuff I used to smoke 15 years ago in Cali blew the away I smoked in the 90s in Texas.

[ElNono]

Carolina reaper and habanero are technically the same plant, just selective breeding makes the reaper worlds hotter. Same with weed, even the stuff I used to smoke 15 years ago in Cali blew the away I smoked in the 90s in Texas.

There has always been better/worse weed, more/less concentrated THC. The fact is a plant will give you ~10mg of THC, and there has been cases of people injecting up to 330mg of pure THC on them and still didn't die (ie: here).

The point being that smoking the plant will likely never cause you to OD on it, regardless of how 'strong' is it. But once you hit commercialization, there's all sorts of additives and that gets added to these products (who can forget tar and a bunch of carcinogens in tobacco?), but then you're not smoking the plant anymore, you're ingesting a tail of .