Oregon has a year to write the detailed regulations, but the basic structure is outlined in their proposition. And it’s pretty dramatic.
First, there’s a flat tax on marijuana amounting to about 7-8%; contrast that with Colorado’s 20-something and Washington’s 30-something.
Residency is not required for a license, nor are there limits on how many licenses an individual may have for growing or selling. In other words, anyone from anywhere can start up a business in Oregon. This might be particularly interesting to those in California seeking legal cover, and those unable to meet the Colorado residency requirements. And those in states with prohibition.
I get the impression that the Oregon law is designed to encourage large-scale operations, which would only be successful if product was exported to other states, which is undesirable to the Feds.
While WA and CO have three types of licenses, producer, processor, and retailer, Oregon adds another type of wholesaler. In CO this is irrelevant because the retail outfits are vertically integrated, ie they must grow what they sell (that’s changing now). That role in Washington is not needed at the moment because the quantities and traffic is minimal.
Obviously they were looking ahead to moving a lot of product among many entities, intrastate and other.
Right now Vancouver stores sell mainly to Oregonians; deeply lower retail prices would reverse that flow, impacting a large number of retail outlets in WA.
Colorado is already attacking (that’s politician talk for “thinking about talking about it”) the issue of high taxes, Washington will be forced to do the same.
All three states share a common problem in that their own regulated medical marijuana systems are the direct competitors to their retail plans. Oregon’s wholesaler license might be a way to resolve this conflict.
So four states now (Alaska is in the list), all with dramatically different approaches in place. California is waiting until 2016 to show what they think, and learned.