https://mjbizdaily.com/washington-state-cannabis-supply-hits-new-low-spurs-calls-change/#comment-211373 Russ Belville on January 10th, 2018 - 2:42pm I'm trying to reimagine this worrisome text, but instead of "$40," "ounce," "cannabis," "shop owners," and "producers," the subjects were "40c," "gallon," "gasoline," "gas stations," and "oil companies." Then would a story about oversupply consider what customers feel? Would anybody filling their gas tank for $6 shed a tear for ExxonMobil or their local gas station? Would that be a serious problem in need of a market correction? I read this and imagined rich (white) men rending garments and gnashing teeth. "Damn it, if this goes on, those stoners will begin to think pot ought to cost on par with other dried vegetable matter, not what 80 years of locking up black kids made them think it should cost!" "Correct the market," they call it, as if $300 ounces were the *proper* setting and somehow we've bollixed up things by legalizing it too much too fast. Ironically, I hear this from both legit and underground marketeers. They thought legalization meant "same profits, no arrests." While every (non-dealing) consumer I know understood legalization meant, "I don't have to wait in a parking lot for a $300 bag of unknown, untested 'Got Some' that's 2 grams short, dealt by 'the guy' who's thirty minutes late and expects you to share, while you scan for the 5-0." Now that growers don't have to recreate the sun and the wind indoors and need not fear raids and imprisonment by the sheriff, there's too much marijuana and prices are too low? So let's set canopy limits and reduce the number of growing licenses, because if we don't keep the price high, it'll get diverted to the black market? The maddening thing from the perspective of an activist consumer, aside from being told I should support making my weed purchases more expensive, is that $40/legal ounces flooding the black market should be exactly what we want. It's not the marijuana, it's the artificial scarcity of it due to prohibition that ever caused any problems with it. A bunch of Moscow stoners want to loop up $40 ounces at Spokane shops and sell them back at University of Idaho? Great! Do you think they'll sell for $300/oz for very long before some other entrepreneurial Vandals go do the same thing and beat their price, unleashing a black market price war in Idaho? How much do you suppose Idaho weed dealers and Mexican cartel-linked gangs would like that? "Overgrow the government," we said. The goal of every person in the marijuana movement, no matter which side of the budshelf, should be fighting for the end of prohibition and every attempt at artificially restricting the supply of cannabis. It ought to cost no more than cigars (fine tobacco = $3.75/ounce) and less than saffron ($140/ounce for a spice it takes 70,000 flowers to grow a pound, where humans must pick the three stamens - the saffron - from the flower by hand during a strict two-week growing period, that is mostly cultivated in Spain and Iran). Ironically, under legalization, now legit cannabusiness joins government, Mexican cartels, & weed dealers in wanting to keep the price of marijuana high through artificial scarcity. Only government now pivots from "high prices deter child use!" false reasoning to protecting a price-based marijuana tax cash cow. I'm betting those lawmakers in Olympia who set a 37% tax rate on what got as high as $26/g marijuana - that's $9.62 tax for every gram sold - are very eager to fix a problem where their 37% tax is only netting them 52c tax for every gram sold.