I’m watching closely the development of rules and regulations for legalized cannabis products in Washington and Colorado. Washington revised it’s rules today, changing the annual production limit from 120 tons to 40 tons,a rather significant change.
Neither state has any good facts on it’s production and consumption, which would be most helpful to design the rules. Colorado is starting with data from existing medical marijuana dispensaries, Washington is starting from estimates of the number of users. Neither could be regarded as a good number, but you take what you’ve got.
When you start with an acknowledged bad assumption (but the best there is), you must be prepared for dramatic surprises when “real” numbers start coming in, and have a way to respond. There’s no time to develop these response plans so we will be subject to watching clueless bureaucrats frantically fumbling to fix the problems they themselves created. By no means a new situation.
Back to the Washington 140 tons number. I thought this was a little high for the number of guessed-at users. But then you must allow for out-of-state visitors, and if the object is to wipe out the black market, encourage enough legal taxed quantity to beat it. If a black market thrives on prohibition, it can get along quite well, thank you, with a constrained legal market.
While Washington announced the reduction from 120 to 40 tons, there was no mention of a corresponding reduction in state revenue. The tax on 40 tons is, oh, about 1/3 of that on 120 tons. This change in flaky guesses is where Washington is going wrong.