It looks like small pot producers in Oakland might have a future after all. It depends on what the city council does to make room for them in their licensing scheme.
On Tuesday night, the council voted to create just four licenses for the manufacture of pot in industrial sections of the city. Those four indoor growing operations will be huge–they have to be, because the licenses will each cost $211,000 a year and operators will be required to take out $3 million in insurance.
But the council also said that it would come up with ways to let them keep operating. Precisely what that means, however, is still unclear.
Before and during the council meeting, small operators–there are hundreds of them in the city–loudly complained that the licensing scheme would put them out of business, or at least keep them illicit while also making it harder for them to sustain themselves. That, in fact, was one of the major reasons for the ordinance. The council said it wanted to be able to regulate the city's pot-growers, and many fly-by-night operations pose health and safety hazards. Several fires in the city have been blamed on pot growers, for instance. They are often housed in boarded-up homes, abandoned buildings, and private garages.
In the meantime, some smaller operators and their customers (medical marijuana businesses) are still complaining that the huge facilities will result in the "McDonalds-ization" or the "Wal-Mart-ization" of the pot business. Smaller businesses will be priced out of the market, they say, and the big outfits' weed might be inferior besides.
That last bit is pure theory. So, for that matter, is the rest of it, since, again, we don't know what the revamped licensing scheme will look like. But as long as the city allows smaller operators to continue and doesn't impose onerous restrictions or overly hefty fees on them, it's hard to see what the problem is. Steve DeAngelo, president of Harborside Health Center, the city's biggest medical marijuana facility, told a local TV news station that with the big pot farms, there would be "a big problem with the product. It would be the difference between a fine wine from a Napa vineyard and a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20."
Last I looked, there were plenty of high quality Napa wines (and Sonoma wines, and imported French wines) filling the shelves at my local grocery store. And if the smaller growers' product is really superior to that grown by the big farms, they'll do fine. This will be all the more true if the customer base widens, as it would if this fall's California voter initiative to legalize recreational pot use succeeds.
But no matter what the city does, the movement of big business into the pot industry is inevitable, and for that reason, there likely will be fewer mom and pop pot operations. But the best operations will survive just like neighborhood hardware stores. And meanwhile, pot smokers will be paying less for their weed. That's capitalism, for good and for ill.
NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Big Money
Author: Dan Mitchell
Contact: The Big Money
Copyright: 2010 WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Website: The Fate of Mom and Pop Pot Farms in Oakland
* Thanks to MedicalNeed for submitting this article
On Tuesday night, the council voted to create just four licenses for the manufacture of pot in industrial sections of the city. Those four indoor growing operations will be huge–they have to be, because the licenses will each cost $211,000 a year and operators will be required to take out $3 million in insurance.
But the council also said that it would come up with ways to let them keep operating. Precisely what that means, however, is still unclear.
Before and during the council meeting, small operators–there are hundreds of them in the city–loudly complained that the licensing scheme would put them out of business, or at least keep them illicit while also making it harder for them to sustain themselves. That, in fact, was one of the major reasons for the ordinance. The council said it wanted to be able to regulate the city's pot-growers, and many fly-by-night operations pose health and safety hazards. Several fires in the city have been blamed on pot growers, for instance. They are often housed in boarded-up homes, abandoned buildings, and private garages.
In the meantime, some smaller operators and their customers (medical marijuana businesses) are still complaining that the huge facilities will result in the "McDonalds-ization" or the "Wal-Mart-ization" of the pot business. Smaller businesses will be priced out of the market, they say, and the big outfits' weed might be inferior besides.
That last bit is pure theory. So, for that matter, is the rest of it, since, again, we don't know what the revamped licensing scheme will look like. But as long as the city allows smaller operators to continue and doesn't impose onerous restrictions or overly hefty fees on them, it's hard to see what the problem is. Steve DeAngelo, president of Harborside Health Center, the city's biggest medical marijuana facility, told a local TV news station that with the big pot farms, there would be "a big problem with the product. It would be the difference between a fine wine from a Napa vineyard and a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20."
Last I looked, there were plenty of high quality Napa wines (and Sonoma wines, and imported French wines) filling the shelves at my local grocery store. And if the smaller growers' product is really superior to that grown by the big farms, they'll do fine. This will be all the more true if the customer base widens, as it would if this fall's California voter initiative to legalize recreational pot use succeeds.
But no matter what the city does, the movement of big business into the pot industry is inevitable, and for that reason, there likely will be fewer mom and pop pot operations. But the best operations will survive just like neighborhood hardware stores. And meanwhile, pot smokers will be paying less for their weed. That's capitalism, for good and for ill.
NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Big Money
Author: Dan Mitchell
Contact: The Big Money
Copyright: 2010 WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Website: The Fate of Mom and Pop Pot Farms in Oakland
* Thanks to MedicalNeed for submitting this article
