Generating tax revenue and saving money on prosecutions—what’s not to love?
The numbers for the first year of legal cannabis sales in Washington are in, and it’s a bong-half-full situation. Headlines about the tax revenue from weed have ranged from “Rakes in Millions” to “predicted bonanza not materializing.” The fact is, sales brought $70 million dollars to the state’s coffers (off $260 million in sales, through June), which, while perhaps not what analysts had hoped for, isn’t a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, either.
Fact is, legalization in the Evergreen State is a ground-breaking experiment, with absolutely no prior information on what the hell retail marijuana looks like. “Forecasters” (including campaigners originally hyping Initiative 502) made predictions because lawmakers and the public wanted some idea of what we were getting into. Estimates ranged from $75 to $500 million in sales, and the state’s original cannabis tax revenue forecast was $35 million for the first year—which we doubled. If ya had your allowance or salary doubled, you’d be jumping for joy. Here’s what we do know:
It took the Liquor Control Board a helluva long time to begin licensing stores, and even longer to get its own name right (now the Liquor and Cannabis Board). While 161 recreational stores are now open, that’s less than half the number that should be operational by now.
The licensed retailers that are open also had competition from medical dispensaries—though the legislature recently wiped out that competition with the ignorant and oppressive Bill 5052. First-year sales also weren’t helped by hundreds of right-wing local jurisdictions that put moratoriums and overly restrictive zoning rules on our legally approved pot businesses.
What has been proven is that, once we know where to buy our legal herb, we head there in droves and buy the place out. The first month of legal pot, July 2014, saw $3.3 million in sales and $840,000 in taxes; by June 2015, we had $43 million ringing into the cash registers (average $1.5 million a day), and $10.8 mil in taxes. In the end, Washington collected $20 million more in taxes from our rec weed than Colorado did in its first year. Green. Rush.
The price of (legal) marijuana has also jumped all over the board. At first, there was barely any supply (go figure, the weed needed to grow before we could smoke it), so prices were sky high, hitting $30 a gram. As expected, as more retailers got the green light and more ganja hit the shelves, prices dropped significantly, to about $13 a gram. Businesses sold more than 22,000 pounds of cannabis in the first 12 months, as well as 700,000 marijuana-infused cookies and elixirs and suckers and taffy. The harvest was six million square feet of plant canopy, producing almost 60,000 pounds. And that’s just the legal stuff—which experts estimate is only 10 to 15 percent of what’s actually grown. (Damn black market . . . we just can’t quit you.)
Another factor has been the tax structure—previously a brutal three-tiered excise-tax sandwich that hit farmers, processors, and retailers with a 25 percent tax for each transaction, making it hard for any of them to make a profit (especially after Uncle Sam takes his cut at the federal level, while still claiming that drug money is a felony). The legislature just changed the law to a still-high-but-not-deadly 37 percent tax upon purchase, which takes effect this month. With the customer paying the entire tax, stores get a break by not having to claim revenue as income on federal filings.
The true tale of legalization, though, isn’t illustrated by dollars and cents, but by the public’s well-being. According to a survey of more than 25,000 students, teen drug use did not rise in 2014, nor did the number of teens killed in car crashes. Violent crime is down (at a 40-year low). Arrests in pot cases are plummeting (down 98 percent!), because it’s legal (duh) and—more important—possession bookings aren’t taking cops off the beat or their eyes off more serious crimes. We’re also saving a boatload that used to go toward weed prosecutions. Oh, and we like the new law: While the same percentage that voted for legalization support it after a year (56 percent), only 37 percent now oppose the idea—a decrease of seven points since the election. Seventy-seven percent of us think marijuana’s legalization has had no impact or a positive one. In other words: It’s all good (man).
The Federal government did not crash the party. The sky did not fall—it revealed a green rainbow which grew into the fastest-growing industry in the entire country. Our citizens weren’t running around “hopped up on dope,” and legalization didn’t ruin lives or the economy, which may be part of the reason Oregon, Alaska, and D.C. have since followed our lead and legalized ganja themselves.
Given 100 years of reefer madness and fear-mongering on the subject, the headlines should have read “First Year of Legal Devil’s Weed Leads to Zero Deaths and Minimal Mayhem or Drug-Crazed Abandon.” Maybe we’ll get to all that in Year Two.
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An Introduction, Marijuana Machines, and Our Top Doc Goes Green
The Feds finally hint that weed is not evil.Michael Stusser’s column appears weekly on HigherGroundtv.com as well as the Seattle Weekly and other newspapers around the country.
Many of us seek an elevated state of mind. Our jobs stress us out, our relationships are challenging, world news is depressing, and we just want something to take the edge off. A glass of wine. A Valium. Or, in my case, a few hits of this funny weed called cannabis. I’m not apologizing; I’m overjoyed. Shockingly, the citizens of my fair state voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use, and, in addition to the massive tax revenue it’s generating for our political pinheads to spend wildly, it’s giving the rest of us yet another way to ease the pain—and occasionally burst out in uncontrollable laughter.
The prohibition on marijuana will come to an end. That’s a fact. While Washington is ahead of the curve, nationally a majority of our citizens support legalization of both recreational (54 percent) and medicinal (78 percent) marijuana. The real question will be what side you were on when the pot leaves came tumbling down. As with civil rights, gay marriage, and gun control, there are resistant, plodding, dimwitted late adopters who will oppose legalization just as the Temperance Movement (know as “drys” in their time) did while propping up the 18th Amendment. I try and be nice to these modern teetotaling crusaders. Maybe they just need a hug. Or a push. Or a puff.
Wonderful things are happening in the world of legal kush. Cartels are losing money and splitting town, domestic violence and teen drug rates are plummeting in legal states, and in places like New York that have decriminalized cannabis, arrests are down 75 percent. Best of all, as I write this, I am stoned to the bejesus on legal herb.
And while it’s great that Washington got the ball rolling with Initiative 502, our weed laws have serious deficiencies. Unlike the other four jurisdictions that legalized ganja—Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia—our stupid-ass statute doesn’t allow citizens to grow their own. While you and I may not want to devote our entire basements to grow lights and stinky Mary Jane plants, if we’re going to legalize an herb, we might as well allow citizens to be poticulturists. (DIY home brews got nuthin’ on the ganja-thumbs!)
Initiative 502 also did not address the medical-marijuana system that has been in place since passage of the Medical Use of Marijuana initiative in 1998. The resulting unregulated collection of dispensaries and collective gardens not only helped thousands of citizens cope with a wide variety of ailments, but opened the door to fly-by-night operators who don’t card, don’t pay taxes, and don’t look any different than the black market we’re attempting to snuff out.
Hearings intended clean up this Wild Weedy West are underway in our dysfunctional state legislature, with proposals ranging from the ridiculous (Sen. Ann Rivers originally wanted to eliminate smokeable pot) to the moderate (Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Wells envisions a single tax structure, home grows for all, and allowing well-established, rule-abiding dispensaries to get licenses). It’s looking as though the medical market will be folded into the recreational system (read: screwed), and patients may not only have to join a mandatory registry (I can see the NSA drooling now), but pay taxes on their meds.
In addition to addressing these ongoing issues, this column will ponder what it means to be high. It will explore the ways people are getting high (Weed-of-the-Month Club!), making money on people getting high (Marley Natural), and using cannabis for medicinal purposes, as well as an occasional rant about how hundreds of thousands of (mostly African-) American citizens are still being arrested every year for marijuana-related offenses. In short, I hope to elevate the dialogue on the legalization movement.
Let’s start with the latest on the weed watch.
• Last week the new Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said that for certain medical conditions, marijuana may be helpful. The reason this is noteworthy is that marijuana’s therapeutic properties are news to the federal government, which still believes cannabis has zero medicinal value, listing it as a Schedule 1 narcotic along with meth and LSD.
• Washington got its first pot vending machine! Located in the Seattle Caregivers medical dispensary, the ZaZZZ machine contains edibles as well as bags of weed (but no Doritos). The high-tech contraption scans not only your medical-marijuana card (the automats are not yet in recreational stores), but also your driver’s license, then cross-checks the data with the biometrics from the machine’s camera. According to ZaZZZ’s maker, American Green, they’ll soon add security that will require customers to provide fingerprints or retinal scans, and track all purchases. Intrusive databases and speedy, anonymous, machine-distributed weed? Yeah, that’s not gonna set off any pothead paranoia alarms.
But what does the ZaZZZ portend? I worry that as we move from bud-tenders selling organic flowers to machines spitting out disposable vape pens, THC-infused energy drinks, and GummyBear edibles, the more this new era will look like fast food, Big Pharma, and cigarette machines of old.
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The High End: The Most Expensive, Outrageous, Over-the-Top Cannabis Products in the World
With mad props to the free-lovin, long-haired Bohemian hippies who paved the way for the progressive-potheads of my own era, if we’re ever going to make the last push toward national legalization (and more importantly, decriminalization), we’re going to need to appeal to mainstream America. Get the marijuana moms and cannabis-closeted executives on board. Appeal to the stiletto stoners and ganjapreneurs. Make pot smoking as appealing to the masses as mixology and martini shakers were in the Mad Men era. (Without the part where everyone drinks themselves to death…). #CannabisIsSafer
Point is, we’re kicking it up a notch. Crappy bongs and aluminum-can pipes will no longer fit in with our terrific new townhouse. That gunked-up grinder needs to be swapped out for gold! Zig Zags and Zippos? Replaced by vaporizers and Tiffany torches!
Legal cannabis is the fastest-growing market in the country (posting $6.7 billion in revenue last year—a 30 percent increase). This Green Rush has created amazing innovation and glorious gadgets for the upscale cannabis clientele. Indeed, we’ve upgraded the hardware. Introducing: The High End. (Check out the video version here.)
If we all had these bongs, we’d get along
Blackened, slimy, swamp water-filled plastic bongs are no longer how we roll. Gorgeous glass is now available at every price level from an impressive array of artists. If budget’s not an issue (make sure ya save something to buy weed), nothing’s classier than a stunning piece from the artisans at Mothership Glass (below).
For pure spectacle, I’m partial to the Grav Labs Menorah—an eight-bowl bubbler that can be used on Hanukkah, or any day you want to make a high holiday.
In the event you’re interested in the most expensive bong in history, it’s this gold-encrusted skull from Scott Deppe. This show piece runs more than $100,000, so yer gonna want to be careful with that thing…
Coming back down to earth, a new breed of American-made ceramic pipes have sparked major interest, including individually crafted gems from Stonedware and Summerland that would just as easily fit into a museum as your nightstand.
While you can still rock a vintage Bob Marley t-shirt or hemp bracelet, canna-fashion is again cutting edge. Alexander Wang’s current designs bring cannabis motifs to the runway on bags and mini-skirts.
High-end designer Jacquie Aiche has created a Sweet Leaf collection inspired by marijuana leaves and worn by Rihanna, Kate Mara and Gigi Hadid. Her Sweet Hoops are also all the rage; they better be sweet for five grand.
Need bigger bling? Fashion maven Vetements, known for couture collections, is selling a gold ganja grinder that can be worn as a necklace or pocket watch.
When it comes to high-fashion, my personal preference is the (fake) Rolex. Notice the green band?!
The Cannabis Connoisseur can clear the counter of clutter and freshen the space with the CannaCloud—essentially the “Keurig of Cannabis!” Made by CannaKorp, this high-end vaporizing system uses single-smoke pods, but unlike those java machines, pours a perfect plume. The CannaCloud is cheap ($150), but they get ya with the individual cPods (at around $7 per unit), which come in various flavors including sativa, hybrid, indica and CBD only strains.
Fully automated infusers like the LEVO will soon be joining the juicer and Cuisinart on countertops. The LEVO is a sophisticated kitchen appliance that makes infused butters and oil. And while the LEVO will infuse butter with herbs and fruits and nutrients, the main purpose is to put your weed in there! Even if, like me, you couldn’t cook your way out of a paper bag, the copper LEVO will still look lovely on your countertop.
Along with sun-grown, small batch, all-organic cannabis, consumers are looking for healthier ways to inhale. The style and sophistication of top of the line vaporizers like the DaVinci IQ, PAX and PuffCo fit right alongside high tech laptops and digital devices, and avoid traditional smoke via convection heat.
The most expensive vaporizer around ($600) was created by former NASA engineers, and while it won’t shoot you to the Moon, the Herbalizer is like having an alien in your living room. These limited edition machines are futuristic and allow users to enjoy herb in a variety of ways, including Aromatherapy, Vaportherapy and the traditional balloon method.
For those of us not chowing elegant edibles or using an electronic vape, we’re in need of FIRE! Hempwick is fab, as are vintage matchbooks (hell—anything but those blowtorches the kids are dabbing with). The S.T. Dupont Prestige Collection Diamond Nights lighter is beyond belief and frankly ridiculous—which is why we’re highlighting it. Inspired by Persian architecture, the $30,000 limited edition is stunning, sophisticated, and, unlike your disposable Bic, not to be left at a friend’s house. If you’d prefer to upgrade from the $30,000 Nights edition, ya can kick it up a notch to the S.T. Dupont Prestige Collection Diamond Rain version—containing 1098 diamonds. Make it rain, bee-otch.
Frenchy fashion house Hermès has been making smoke accessories since Louis XVI’s head rolled into the Seine. This porcelain Hermès Mosiac Ashtray is only $830. Priceless? Hardly! ($830) Senseless? Indeed!
Whether it’s sweet or spicy or has hints of lavender (or Labrador), maintaining aroma and freshness for our flower requires a quality humidor. The best stash box designed for dope is the Cannador… but our over-the-top fave is the Imperiali (below). The Swiss-made Imperiali Geneve dials in constant humidity and perfect self-regulating temperature. The hand-made humidor has 2,675 components (including an internal gas lighter and tourbillion watch) and costs one million Swiss francs. How much is that, you may ask? More than you have… and since only twelve Imperialies are being made a year, forgetaboutit.
The Imperiali comes with Cubans, but I suggest swapping ‘em out with the CannaGar, the World’s highest-end cannabis cigar! Using fine cannabis (from Seattle grower Gold Leaf), each cigar is hand-rolled and cured. Chock full of 9.5 ounces of bud, the CannaGar is then covered in three grams of rosin oil and wrapped in at least two layers of gorgeous, pure cannabis leaves. Cost? $420, of course!
For the organic gardening types who like to make their own home-brewed Kombucha, there are great grow systems for cannabis, including the Supercloset, Yofumo and BloomBox. The Leaf advertises itself as a “Plug-n-Plant” home growing system that fits into a small apartment and still leaves room for the flatscreen. With a high-tech monitoring system that puts baby monitors to shame, the Leaf supposedly handles it all: light, ventilation, even nutrient levels! The size of a mini-fridge, the Leaf only fits two plants (yielding between four and five ounces of pot). At $3000 for the machine, that’s some spendy weed.
If you’re super tight on space, the Root Indoor Garden is a counter-top sized gadget that can grow lettuce, tomatoes, culinary herbs… oh, and clones (or auto flowers)! The Root includes an LED grow light and a hydroponic system that infuses nutrient-rich water directly at the roots, letting you grow in as tiny a space as a micro-flat.
Of course, anyone wanting to grow their own will need a guide on gardening, so why not blow $500 on a lovely coffee-table book! Three A Light is beautifully illustrated and leads readers from seed to harvest, though, frankly, we’d save $475 and buy something from master gardener Ed Rosenthal.
Some of us are too lazy to get out of the house, much less grow our own ganja. Luckily, in many markets there’s home delivery! A company called Club M does subscription service, delivering a luxury box full of curated cannabis products and accessories each month. Their limited-edition gift box is the M1K (see below), and the K stands for the cool grand a month you’ll be paying for your ganja goodies. They’ve also got $100 subscriptions if you want to dial it down a notch. The AuBox is another upscale option, with specialized categories including edibles, intimates, beauty and even pet boxes.
So long as we’re upping the ante, there’s no reason the Donald Trump crowd can’t get in on the action. (Seniors are, in fact, the fastest growing cannabis-using population, not to mention the legalization of cannabis is a states’ rights issue which the Republican-minded should appreciate.) Palm Angels have some comfy Italian-made slippers that would make Hef proud, and come with embroidered golf leafs.
For high society tee-time, you’ll also need the Jane West golf tees that double as one-hitters or the Pitch n’ Putt containers from Puffingtons that allow you to store your stash in a golf ball. After all, if you ARE having to spend time with a right-winger, something needs to make those 18 holes more tolerable…
Don’t forget to ditch the golf cart and ride the Hemp Roadster! The so-called Cannabis Car has a hemp body and is made by Renew, a Key West car designer. The high-performance roadster features a Mazda chassis and a composite shell made from interwoven industrial hemp fibers and resin that are lighter and more durable than fiberglass. Though the green machine doesn’t run on cannabis—it uses a feel-good fuel called BioButanol—made from recycled agricultural waste, with a carbon footprint that’s 20 percent cleaner than electric cars. Currently in the prototype stage, you can get on the list for this gorgeous two-seat convertible, but you have to put down the full price: $42,000.
In the end, of course, you don’t need a little red convertible or $100,000 bong to make you happy. You need good cannabis and a loving community (SEE! The Counter Culture is alive and well!). Still, it’s fun to have fancy gadgets, and my personal favorite is a vape pen called the Grasshopper. Made out of sturdy titanium, this elegant device fits right inside my jacket pocket and alongside my journal. Problem is, sometimes I forget my real pen. #Stoner.
Find your own elevated bliss, and enjoy the High Life!
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Fire Fears and Frankenbud
Answering questions from the mail baggie.
We asked you to send in your canna-questions, and now it’s time to answer some reader mail! (The Higher Ground legal staff has asked me to remind readers that answers provided herein should be taken with a grain of hempseed; I am, after all, a marijuana columnist.)
With wildfires all over the state, I’m worried a nearby marijuana field may catch on fire and get me and my family stoned. Can burning weed farms get people high? Lance, Chelan
Does Smokey the Bear crap in the woods? Yes! Look, if you are standing right next to a giant burning pile of ganja and you inhale the smoke, you will be stoned to the bejesus. A town in Indonesia got seriously baked after police there burned a three-ton mound of confiscated marijuana in March. Dozens of residents of Tangerang (about 20 miles from Jakarta) complained of severe headaches and dizziness after inhaling smoke from the bud barbecue.In the event, however, you’re not standing right next to giant bales of burning herb, it’s unlikely your family will catch a contact high from wildfires of marijuana plants. According to a study in Drug and Alcohol Dependence (great centerfold last month, btw!), secondhand smoke can get people feeling stoned, but it takes a huge amount of THC for that to happen.
“We evaluated the conditions under which you’d need to be to get intoxicated from secondhand smoke exposure,” noted Ryan Vandrey, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, “and it needs to be very extreme.” In their study, researchers put a dozen students in a small Plexiglas chamber without ventilation and gave three-quarters of them joints to smoke. “Enough smoke from the room filtered out so that the nonsmokers stuck in the ‘hot box’ didn’t experience a buzz,” Vandrey said. “Outside, where there is a constant circulation of air, it’s hard to imagine that a person could breathe in enough marijuana smoke to feel the effects of the drug.” (Bummer—though I am enrolling next semester at John Hopkins!)
Ultimately, if you’re worried about that kind of fire getting the wife and kids high, you’re worrying about the wrong thing: Get the hell outta Dodge, man! Smoke inhalation of any kind is serious in mega-quantities, and fumes from burning gas, plastics, pesticides, household products, and clouds of soot and ash can also do serious damage to your lungs.
I read somewhere that they’re starting to make GMO marijuana! Is that true, and how can I make sure I’m not smoking Frankenbud from Monsanto! Erin, Wallingford
While rumors of genetically modified weed have been around for decades, at least for the moment it’s a paranoid fantasy. “Genetic modification or genetic engineering involves altering a substance’s DNA at the molecular level,” the website PolitiFact explains. “Producers of marijuana on the illicit market don’t have the ability to pull off those kinds of lab-based modifications.”Modern-day Reefer Madness proponents like Patrick Kennedy are also feeding the Frankenbud fires, claiming that GMO pot is being used to hard-wire megadoses of THC into the plant. While many growers (both legal and black-market) are selecting and breeding the best plants and coming up with high-potency strains of cannabis, thus far Big Ag players like Monsanto and company have yet to get their hands on seeds (one of the very few advantages of marijuana not being legal at the federal level).
Of course, given that cannabis is a cash cow (estimated to be a $15 billion market by 2020), the corporate agro-bastards at Monsanto will jump in at some point. It’s part of the reason the independent-grower model in early-legalization states like Washington, Oregon, and Colorado is so important—local, non-corporate farmers have got a headstart and a fighting chance!
You constantly mention how much in taxes legal pot is bringing in for the state, but obviously it also means there’s a ton more weed out there. So now all our kids are going to be getting their hands on the stuff and smoking up nonstop. Great job, Stoner-Dickwad . Derrick, Des Moines
I’m not sure there’s a question in there, Derrick, but I’d like to refute the statement.According to data from the Washington Institute for Public Policy, the use of cannabis by youngsters in our state has remained unchanged over the past decade. “Cannabis use and access among students in sixth through 12th grades have changed little from 2002 through the most recent survey in 2014.” The report went on to state that all the groups surveyed—sixth graders, eighth graders, 10th graders, 12th graders—demonstrated static use over time, with the oldest group actually reporting slight declines in lifetime use since 2002.
Of course, Initiative 502 passed in 2012 and retail sales didn’t start until July 2014, so those numbers may change. However, eighth graders who were asked about their use of pot in the past month (as well as lifetime use) reported that they’d not only smoked less since legalization, but that it was harder to get. Unlike black-market dealers (who’ve been around for decades), our new crop of legal recreational cannabis stores actually checks IDs.
Last but not least, Derrick, I can tell you who is getting their hands on more reefer—full-grown adults. Since it became legal here, self-reported use is up 17 percent between 2012 and 2014. So yes, great job stoner-dickwads, indeed!
