CBS– After weathering the fear of federal prosecution
and competition from drug cartels, California’s medical marijuana
growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the “Wal-Marting”
of weed.
The Oakland City Council on Tuesday will look at licensing four
production plants where pot would be grown, packaged and processed into
items ranging from baked goods to body oil. Winning applicants would
have to pay $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of
liability insurance and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross
sales to taxes.
The move, and fledgling efforts in other California cities to
sanction cannabis cultivation for the first time, has some marijuana
advocates worried that regulations intended to bring order to the outlaw
industry and new revenues to cash-strapped local governments could
drive small “mom and pop” growers out of business. They complain that
industrial-scale gardens would harm the environment, reduce quality and
leave consumers with fewer strains from which to choose.
“Nobody wants to see the McDonald’s-ization of cannabis,” Dan
Scully, one of the 400 “patient-growers” who supply Oakland’s largest
retail medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center, grumbled
after a City Council committee gave the blueprint preliminary approval
last week. “I would compare it to how a small business feels about
shutting down its business and going to work at Wal-Mart. Who would be
attracted to that?”
The proposal’s supporters, including entrepreneurs more disposed to
neckties than tie-dye, counter that unregulated growers working in
covert warehouses or houses are tax scofflaws more likely to wreak
environmental havoc, be motivated purely by profit and produce inferior
products.
“The large-scale grow facilities that are being proposed with this
ordinance will create hundreds of jobs for the city,” said Ryan Indigo
Warman, who teaches pot-growing techniques at iGrow, a hydroponics store
whose owners plan to apply for one of the four permits. “The ordinance
is good for Oakland, and anyone who says otherwise is only protecting
their own interests.”
Study: Marijuana Prices to Crater If Legalized.
Read full article about the Wal-Martization of Marijuana.
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