Pakistani Brad Pitt posted:

I seriously think the backlash would bring Denver to its knees but maybe I'm just projecting and everyone will march around the block and then forget about it.

TapTheForwardAssist posted:

TapTheForwardAssist posted:

This is bizarre: I went to check to see if VT is getting any closer to legalizing finally, and apparently they're seriously considering a DC-style "legal but no sales" legislation where they'd allow home-growing but no stores. DC got stuck with that by Congress, but VT wants to actually make it a plan. Weird strategy, but apparently it placates some conservatives who don't want to see a "pot industry" or worry the Feds will crack down, so just going laissez-faire is easier.

http://www.weednews.co/vermont-house-leaders-say-they-will-move-forward-with-marijuana-legalization-bill/

Aging Millenial posted:

The United States no longer has any ground to tell any nation how conduct its business re cannabis.

quote:

The move gives U.S. Attorneys wide latitude to develop district-specific strategies and deploy department resources without Washington, D.C. artificially declaring some cases off limits.

quote:

Oregon has a massive marijuana overproduction problem. In 2017 alone, postal agents in Oregon seized 2,644 pounds of marijuana in outbound parcels and over $1.2 million in cash. For comparison, postal agents in Colorado seized just 984 pounds of marijuana during a four-year period beginning in 2013.

quote:

We also know that even recreational marijuana permitted under state law carries ill-effects on public health and safety, as Colorado's experience shows. Since 2013, marijuana-related traffic deaths have doubled in Colorado. Marijuana-related emergency and hospital admissions have increased 35 percent. And youth marijuana use is up 12 percent, 55 percent higher than the national average. We must do everything in our power to avoid similar trends here in Oregon.

quote:

Rural communities simply do not have the resources to fund the additional police and sheriff deputies needed to address these issues.

TapTheForwardAssist posted:

A question about "diversion".

Okay, so you have states like Oregon that are allegedly producing three times what the state market buys, if you combine legal and illegal grows. Just anecdotally, it seems from the news and forums that at least in some percentage of cases, people are buying *legal* weed in official packaging and sending/carrying it to other states.

So why are people not just mostly/entirely buying from Oregon's illegal output (same for other states) and exporting that, so they can get a lower wholesale price without taxes and fees, etc and not have to deal with daily purchase limits? Is packaged legal product so much more prestigious than "it's in an unmarked plastic vacuum-sealed bag, but it's from Oregon" weed that it's still more profitable to buy legal weed and sell it at a markup?

Or (just to spitball here) is it the case that a large number of people illegally shipping/carrying weed out of state are very casual "smugglers" and basically the kind of people who don't even know people who own a grow and would sell them a 10lb sack of weed, so it's just easier to walk into a series of stores and buy your limit and drive back to Texas as opposed to establish underworld connections?

Related question: are legal weed folks broadly in support of cracking down on the black market? Like if someone owns a legal weed store in Portland, do they not resent folks who are growing product on free National Forest land in the interior, paying no taxes, and passing it off to dealers in Portland that pay no taxes on weed or wages? If somehow Congress succeeds in passing a "leave legal weed alone" bill, and Sessions' DOJ goes after the illegal grows throughout Oregon, would pro-weed people be generally positive about that because it would drive yet more of the market into the legal, taxed economy?