Our mission statement

We ceaselessly promote unchained poteconomic opportunity for everyone who wants it, everywhere on Planet Earth.

Our target demographic

We’re not looking for the most stoners, we’re looking for the most intelligent stoners — or people who want to do business with them.

Why our articles are so long

If things continue along the present trajectory, someday the triumph of Twitterature over literature will be complete. That day is not today. For the present, they coexist … though the writing is literally “on the wall.”

In 2013, the world is not hurting for quick briefings on current events. They’re everywhere you look or listen. However, if you, your company, or your government agency is seriously considering a major investment in cannabis commerce, you’re going to want to study the situation inside and out. You’re going to want cannanalysis that’s carefully considered, solidly constructed, and meticulously crafted. And that’s exactly what you’re going to get from Cannabis Commerce.

Poteconomics: why we invented a new discipline

  • To the best of our knowledge, no storied institution of higher learning, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, prepares economics majors to analyze the potential profitability of illicit commodities.
  • We are unaware of any university which trains economics majors to accurately forecast trends for quadruple-threat commodities. One in particular has the capability to rack up enormous sales as a medicine, a food for man and a feed for cattle, an industrial jack-of-all-trades including biofuel, and a psychoactive “drug.”
  • Traditional economists are bewildered by the fact that the illicit, quadruple-threat commodity in question is a simple, yet plentiful herb, which somehow sells for a thousand times the price of oranges at wholesale pricing, [$3,500/lb. to $3.50/lb] and two thousand times the price of oranges at retail pricing.

The cannabis plant’s multifaceted nature cries out for a new breed of specialist, a cross between an economist and a botanist, self-trained to evaluate the economic firepower of a magical herb. We’ve coined a term for one: poteconomist, and another, for the study itself: poteconomics.

Our home field advantage

At Cannabis Commerce, our resident poteconomists observe a living, breathing, biosphere from an optimum vantage point: the front lines of the medical marijuana phenomenon rooted here in Denver, Colorado, USA.

Denver is to Cannabis Commerce what Galapagos was to Darwin.

The former Queen City of the Plains may as well be the Weed City of the Plains; it’s arguably the most pot-friendly spot on God’s Green Earth.

We see with our own eyes the rejuvenating effects of retail marijuana sales radiating out into the community.

To cite an example, which would never cross the brain screens of traditional economists, commercial grow facilities’ insatiable demands for ever more dialed-in climate control keeps HVAC contractors busier than they’ve ever been before. Where are they busier than they’ve ever been before? Working in formerly abandoned warehouses, now leased for years at top rates, because the MMJ industry’s unending need for cultivation space has made it springtime for commercial realtors.

There’s a big difference between the Denver City Council and the Los Angeles City Council: the ka-ching of cash registers strikes a resonant chord in the Mile High City. Tax revenues generated from the cannabis industry in 2011 paid for more than 98% of the funds the city needed for Parks and Recreation Administration [$2,278,100] and Mountain Parks [$755,500].

Of course, one city council member with an ax to grind could change the whole dynamic. Or the recently passed Amendment 64 could bring initial euphoria — only to be followed by a succession of stepped-up federal reprisals.

Anything can and will happen in the future.

But right here, right now, Denver is basically a test market for a new product launch, and that new product — cannabis the commodity — is a huge hit.

Herbal rights vs. patients’ rights and state-by-state initiatives

  • What we’re not into: patients’ rights and whining about perceived  slights by the DEA, US Attorneys, The Department of Justice, etc. That’s not our thing. We don’t believe for a second that only arbitrarily designated “patients” deserve rights, so we don’t concern ourselves with their “plight.”
  • What we’re also not into: state-by-state legalization. We’re not celebrating the so-called “victory” for recreational pot here in Colorado as long as equally deserving people across the state lines in Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, and New Mexico remain SOL.
  • What we’re totally into: herbal rights. Herbal rights is the cause, as in all herbal rights — medical, recreational, industrial — for everyone everywhere.

Us in a nutshell

Stripped down to the bone:

  • We don’t hide our enthusiasm for cannabis commerce.
  • Because we’re so enthusiastic , we’re stumped why people settle for crippled medical marijuana amendments and state-by-state initiatives when repealing prohibition leads to infinitely more cannajobs, cannatax, and cannabiz. We’ve been known to vent a bit about that.
  • When we’re not venting, we envision pot’s bright future, cannanalyze the obstacles interfering with it, and offer simple, time-honored solutions for circumventing those obstacles.

That’s Cannabis Commerce in broad brush strokes.

You may want to start reading some articles already! Alternatively, if you’re a glutton for details, like us …

What can you get from Cannabis Commerce that you can’t get anywhere else?

  • The real lowdown on how much cannatax hasn’t been collected this year and every year since 1937, and why that needs to change like yesterday. If you don’t know how much of it there is, then how do you know how much of it your community, city, state, and nation is missing? According to Harvard’s Dr. Jeffrey Miron, the most-quoted man in poteconomics, “It’s true that you [Cannabis Commerce resident poteconomist Lory Kohn] are deeper into cannatax than anyone else.”
  • A believable ballpark estimate of all the cannajobs the US could support — we’ll train our guns on The Rest Of The World’s pot-ential cannajobs next go-round.
  • Conviction that the “wacky weed” as economic savior is no hallucination.  Pot as economic savior, or at the very least pot-ent economic force, is our favorite subject. You may or may not have noticed that bursts of enthusiasm about cannabis commerce are conspicuous in their absence from contemporary economics literature and discourse. We certainly have. Our viewpoint is a little different: we view cannabis commerce as the shining star twinkling on the economic horizon. There’s massive pot-ential in unshackling a quadruple-threat commodity ninety-nine percent of PhD. economists discount entirely. You can scan the business pages of great metropolitan newspapers, watch thousands of channels on cable TV, or scour your local library’s economics section [that would be the 3300s] without ever encountering the words pot, hemp, marijuana, or cannabis — even as commentators highly compensated to know better bemoan the sorry state of the world economy. They haven’t seen cannabis commerce in action. We have. We’re surrounded by it — every day. And we report what we see, hear, feel, touch, and smell directly to you.
  • A comprehensive compilation of all the known cannajobs and entrepreneurial opportunities in the cannabis fieldCannabis Commerce has set out to compile cannajobs and potentrepreneurial opportunities like James Audobon cataloged North American birds. Keep an eye on the expanding Cannajobs section.

  • A focus squarely trained on repealing prohibition.  Prohibition in the USA is the keystone supporting draconian pot regulations in countries all over the globe. When prohibition falls here, the model becomes unsupportable elsewhere. But toppling prohibition will never come from passing endless amendments state-by-state for the benefit of “the sick and dying alone.” Settling for diluted herbal rights condemns the industry to a pale imitation of what it could be, wants to be, and needs to be in a dormant economy desperate for a bold and determined commodity to stand up, beat its chest, and bellow, “Here I come to save the day!”
  • Rebellion against the unholy matrimony between “medical” and “marijuana,” and all that conjoined “medical marijuana”‘ has come to represent: regulations that won’t stand still, businesses shut down, even after they jumped through every regulatory hoop, because they were within 1,000 feet of a school; cities and counties voting out dispensaries even in MMJ states which voted to permit them; clashes between state and federal law; posturing by patient rights groups and US Attorneys; and so on.
  • Belief in recreational, industrial, and medical use for everyone, not just medicinal use for persons arbitrarily designated “the patients.”
  • Exposés which point out, in no uncertain terms, that medical marijuana “for the sole benefit of the sick and dying” is an elitist concept, with no precedence in the history of American rights struggles. Can you imagine civil rights for the sick and dying alone? Women’s rights for the sick and dying alone? Gay rights for the sick and dying alone? You can’t, because it’s unimaginable.
  • Articles about poteconomics that aren’t dry at all.  Our knack for translating economics-speak into plain English that anyone can not only follow but actually sink their teeth into is one reason that you’ll visit here again and again.
  • We take into account that at least half the readers attracted by articles about poteconomics are sampling from the vast pot-pourri of available THC-based products while they’re reading.  Traditional media has been a little slow to figure this out. People in activated states don’t mind a little entertainment value. They like a few yuks sprinkled in with their cold, hard facts. Adding a pinch of sex appeal to raw data doesn’t hurt, either. There’s so much hypocrisy swirling round the controversial herb, the punch lines practically write themselves.
  • “Slow journalism,” as in articles that are actually longer than two paragraphs.  You may have already noticed that Cannabis Commerce tackles controversial issues in far greater depth than other sources.

If you don’t like to read, well, you’re on the wrong site.

  • High-level “cannanalysis.”  If you do love to read, it’s unlikely you’ve found much more than surface-level analysis of the pot phenomenon elsewhere. Or maybe you’ve stumbled upon articles written by academics for academics, white papers loaded with trippy calculus equations, mind-numbing footnotes, and inscrutable charts. Perhaps you’ve been searching for cannanalysis targeted at the educated, not the overeducated? In that case, you just landed on the right site for you. Welcome!
  • Articles that may contain more than one quote.  Disclaimer: we’re not responsible if you overdose on quotes.
  • Articles which recognize that herbal rights is a planetary issue, not a national, state, or local issue. We didn’t get the memo stating that the USA is the only country that matters.
  • Articles that actually offer opposing viewpoints, without mocking them. This used to be known as “fair reporting.”
  • Certainty that the choices we make about “pot” are life and death decisions.  Will the human race continue the dysfunctional, warlike, anti-pot patterns that surely condemn the species to extinction? Or will we wake up from the nightmare and start living the dream, staying on the functional, peaceful, pro-pot path leading to a golden age of progress, cooperation, and prosperity? We’ll take the functional approach.

That’s us.

And you? Please add your voice and let us know more about you!