The Business of Cannabis by D. J. Summers

Author:D. J. Summers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

CHAPTER SIX

State by State, Nation by Nation

The banking system is losing out on a fast-growing economic engine the entire nation and entire world is racing towards. Colorado and Washington got the cannabis fame for their trailblazing into the recreational wilderness, but they were only the latest. Internationally, the pot boom is expanding monthly, though it strays from the Colorado formula.

The classic steered vs. free market debate is already at work in the cannabis industry. Media and politicians overgeneralize when they say “legalize.” Deciding how the industry will run is more complex than a simple thumb up or down, and not all legalization schemes are created equal. There are countless ways a state or nation-state can make cannabis not illegal, countless market types to open, and countless regulatory schemes to put in place.

Virtually all cannabis industry is shaped and defined by its restrictions. Fundamentally, state and national governments can either let the market work as independently as possible or take a very active hand in restricting it. States can legalize only medical cannabis, limit the number of licenses in a given area, only allow nonprofits, set prices and control the supply, and take 100 other routes to keep the market under control.

The biggest commercial difference is medical vs. recreational. Most nations start with medical programs, and the U.S. states follow the same pattern. This not only takes some pressure off the black market, but establishes the groundwork for a more well-oiled recreational machine further down the line (though some states and nations deny they have any interest).

In recreationally legal states, medical programs can either be simply disguised recreational programs or be divorced heavily from them. Medical programs generally tightly control their cannabis providers, whereas recreational states have a much looser rein.

Even in two states of a kind, there are big differences. In recreational models like Colorado and Washington, the cannabis industry is not an open market by any sense, but a quasi-free market with infinite variations as to who can enter the industry, what kind of restrictions there are on commercial operations, consumers, and the products available on the market.

Medical programs do not create the same kind of roaring commercialism the recreational cannabis industry produces. More often, medical programs simply produce an array of oligopolies that are then poised to corner the recreational market when that state decides to go all the way with its policy. In terms of money, the recreational industry is king.

The United States is in a legal conundrum, unlike most other Western nations—its Puritanical drug laws war with the Puritan sense of work ethic and profit.

Because of the federal/state gap, the nation’s drug laws don’t synch cannabis with the American free market machine. Within those states, however, pockets of internationally rebellious policies spring up. The nation has some of the most restrictive federal laws in the developed world, whereas some of its states have the least restrictive cannabis environment in the developed world.

Medical programs have existed in the United States for 20 years, but U.S. states are choosing the souped-up, full-scale commercial legalization model more and more.

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