California, Warehouse Über-Alles

Well the smoke still hasn’t settled after last night’s verdict in Oakland, leaving many adrift this foggy morning. There are many who will arise today, wake and bake and go, “WTF?” And it will really be for medicinal reasons. For many growers in Oakland and the adjacent areas, this was a stunning death knell to the little grower.

The gig for growing grass for Oakland was given to four multi-acre-warehouses to be the legitimate supplier to Oakland’s dispensaries.

This is huge because it shoots an arrow right into the heart of the Politics of Pot and Legalization. Do you want WEED to be legal, yes or no? If you answered yes, then the vote last night went to your side of thinking.

Let me once again give you, my two readers my view how POT is going to become legal this fall.

After the very hard work of activists, known and unknown, a very slow process was started by a group of people with similar interest in seeing that Marijuana was accessible to those that needed it, and truth be told, to those that wanted it. This started the Medical Marijuana movement.

Once dispensaries were set up and neighborhoods weren’t pillaged, the general public saw that there might be a place where Marijuana could be sold on the retail level. This led to the belief that there was a way of receiving revenue (taxes) without having to go to some beatnik’s crash pad to extract the government’s cash. All of a sudden, it was all very doable.

So other cities in California tried it too. Now, there are too many people doing things unrestricted while others are following what they believe to be the law, even though the whole industry is against the law according to the Feds.

So the movement goes slow until there are major breakthroughs, like last night in Oakland.

If you go below the scene a little, it is still all politics. The woman behind the four warehouses getting the contract is running for mayor. The Legalization of WEED is building little power bases behind the scenes that, I believe after November we will see coalesce into even greater power blocks.  

In the East Bay we have the start of the corporate take-over of Weed, even though this is how business GETS done. This is how the straights do it. But a lot of the freaks, the so-called citizen farmer, the mom and pop farmers, are being left out of the game.

Here in San Francisco, we have the Marijuana commission, made up of prominent dispensary owners and the like to form a Marijuana policy for the City and as it happens, for the rest of us who didn’t get a say in the way things are going.

It’s all happening. One way or another.

And it all gets us closer to the goal of the freedom to smoke dope without being busted. But we can’t talk like that. It’s about the compassion. Most will say it always has been. And that’s what is so troubling about the Oakland news.

You can’t talk WEED politics in Oakland without bringing in Richard Lee to the discussion. Richard Lee is a great man who has led a tireless campaign for getting Marijuana to the people that need it and want it. What Dennis Peron is to San Francisco, Richard Lee is to Oakland. You can’t have a real conversation about Oakland’s WEED issues without including Mr. Lee in some form or measure. Even if he’s in the background, he still has a say.

The biggest schism this industry is facing is an identity one. Is it about Compassion or Commerce? Is it about bringing a medicinal herb to individuals that benefit from its healing properties, or dare I say, is it about an adults desire to get high?

With what happened in Oakland last night I think this will shoot the ideological question to the forefront, if not today, then soon.

Who are we? People who want to nurture and massage the path to Legalization like a Meg Whitman commercial? Greed-herders dressed up in Compassion’s pelts? And remember, this isn’t even November when the unknown factors are going to metabolize like joints at a Dead show when the lights go out.

We have to get it together, but I’m not sure how. The reason everything is happening today, is because of people like Richard Lee. Are you going to tell the pioneering man in the wheelchair that he’s being led by the wrong people? How do you include the growers that have been bringing us WEED for about fifty years? What do you say to them, sorry. There are some foreign guys with lots of cash that we’re going with?   

It’s very complicated when you get down to the issues and have to take a stand.

Sadly, here’s the deal. The Dispensaries are running the show. It is a supply and demand business, just like they teach in the highest levels of Keynesian academia. And they are in control of the demand. I could give you reasons why having only four warehouses growing our WEED is bad, but you can read that in other blogs. The real deal is it went down. This is the way it’s going to be from now on.

Some are going to get lucky, and others are not. Some are going to make massive amounts of money, and others are not. Some are going to lose their soul, friends, and families in order to get rich and have a comfortable chair when the music stops.

We have now entered the Age of the Grass Barons.      

For what it is worth;

This is a really good blog for Info about the triangle…

http://kymk.wordpress.com/



Comments

[J. M. Keynes]

the real demand at large, is yet unkown because its still illegal. Early attempts to organize and control the supply side are understandable given one of the key pitches to the pubic is the pot (no pun) of gold (still no pun) that will be had by tax stamping the herb. The early legalized 'mass market' biz will be a mess. Especially if the demand explodes (which i think it will). The gov and bigger players (yes, there will be bud-weisers) will try and herd demand towards 'what they want', through a delivery 'system' and that will work for many.... but once the real demand, want, needs are better understood, it will be clear that diversity in supply will ensure the right biz model that secures optimal tax revenue. Certainly a rocky road for the current growers in the short term, but I suspect those that are reasonably well capitalize (gotta believe most aren't living hand to mouth) will find that the legal, chateau-ization of their biz will be most profitable.