Preview
You want to uncover how much cannatax is possible in a legal, regulated landscape. Basic searches turn up a few sentences here, a few sentences there, and, maybe, if you’re lucky, a couple of sound bites on YouTube.
The detective work begins in earnest. You search for economists’ white papers, download them, and pore through them. They’re written by academics for academics. The reports are missing the human touch. You start getting the wild idea you might be able to provide it — but you’ll have to match the relentlessness of doctoral candidates composing longish, fact-filled, heavily researched theses. It’s an insane thought. You commit to it anyway.
You think you’re being compulsive enough … but then, just when you’re starting to draw what seem like sensible conclusions, doubt creeps in. You begin asking yourself, “How is it that I, someone who bypassed Economics 101 for arcane liberal arts fare like Love And The Secular Spirit, have identified potential taxation streams unmentioned anywhere else?”
Doubt has crept in because there’s one important step you haven’t taken: you haven’t talked with the nation’s top poteconomists. You want to make sure you haven’t missed any points, or misinterpreted something they said or hadn’t said in their papers.
You take one economist, one poteconomist, and one phenom. After interviewing them, you find yourself with over three hours worth of nonstop talk. You personally transcribe their long interviews, word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence, page-by-page, over the course of about thirty hours, bitching every second. You thought it would be easy to hire a virtual assistant from “a third-world country” to do that for you. It wasn’t. There’s a reward: now you actually understand what the heck they were talking about!
You find that you’re able, within limits, to process the same data — and draw entirely different conclusions. Ones that you don’t doubt.
Then you get another crazy idea. You may be able to show other people how to predict cannatax, too — using the words of the economists themselves.
What do you have when you’re done? Cannabis Commerce in the USA, presented here for your consideration. Comments invited. —Lory Kohn, May 2010
Table of Contents:
PreviewPart 1: Learning to Love Economists, Surveys, and Statistics
Part 2: The Enigma
Part 3: A Poteconomist Plays The Game
Part 4: The Wunderkind
Part 5: What We've Learned So Far — And Who Can Tell Us More
Part 6: Obvious Pot Tax Opportunities Oddly Unaccounted For
Part 7: The Retail Explosion
Part 8: Hollywood, Inc.: Cannabis Commerce's Champion
Part 8: The Internet and Traditional Media Light Up
Part 10: Political Implications of Cannabis Commerce
Part 11: Smile, You're On Cannabis Camera
Part 12: Miron Redux
3 comments
Some people enjoy taking drugs - Drug WarRant says:
Jul 25, 2010
[…] a narrow range of the effects of legalizing cannabis in California, it is interesting to check out Cannabis Commerce in the U.S.A.. Author Lory Kohn, who describes himself as someone who “bypassed Economics 101 for obscure […]
Rain Web says:
Nov 3, 2010
Though we’d love to see our medicine decriminalized,taxed and regulated (really), smaller Northern California growers rejected the prop because of the prohibitive restrictions that would have put “mom&pop” growers out of business. Next time, please gear the formulae toward us, not tooled-up-&-ready tobacco companies and Oaksterdam. (5 feet of grow-space?!)Also, framing the proposition toward “decriminalization” rather than “legalization” will be more palliative to voters. That said.. thanks for the good intentions.
Lory Kohn says:
Nov 3, 2010
Thanks for taking the time and caring enough to post.
Let me be “abundantly clear” (I forgot who was always prefacing their remarks with that phrase): I’m a complete, unfettered, unrestricted, full-on legalization kinda guy, medical marijuana really does nothing for me, as it allows local regulators to endlessly spin their wheels writing and rewriting restrictive ordinances. I’m talking about on the federal level, complete repeal of prohibition. That’s what’s worth fighting for to me, not propositions so you can carry one big ounce – excuse the sarcasm, but hip, hip hooray for one ounce when you can back a semi up to any liquor store in Oakland, fill the whole thing up with booze, and drive away. Same for cancer sticks.
I was just in the little town of Loveland, CO today, where the town voted to force its four dispensaries out of business. I just hate (not a word I overuse) that soooooooo much. Get the towns, counties, and states out of the game and go for federal legalization. Mr. Obama and his party might not be in the perilous position they find themselves in if they did the right thing and restored the one glaring civil liberty missing in our land.
I certainly care about the fate of growers everywhere, but I care about it more in the context of total free enterprise, not the nanny state as it exists today. I believe if you reread the section about the tobacco companies (Part 6), you’ll see I never said word one about recommending that they replace growers, who I consider heroic, who have been merrily raising Humboldt holy buds for 20 years. I was just visualizing about what the future landscape will look like – which hotshot economists fail to consider in their taxation projections. Ideally growers would still make out well, albeit somewhat less well, coexisting with tobacco companies that like it or not will join the fray . . .