Black Friday Becomes 'Green Friday' Where Pot Is Legal

This headline caught my eye: "Va. ABC stores to offer Black Friday discounts." The AP story, posted on the web site of ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV, explains that customers who buy more liquor worth $50 or more will get a ten percent discount, and that customers will also be offered an opportunity today to enter a drawing for a gift card worth $80 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.


What is the difference between a government-owned monopoly on liquor sales offering special discounts and free booze and privately owned marijuana stores in Colorado offering similar discounts on pot?

The first obvious difference is that Virginia's ABC is a residue of 1930s socialism and prohibitionism, while the Colorado weed stores represent American entrepreneurship at its best.

State-owned liquor stores offer all the innovative thinking that one usually associates with government bureaucracies. Marijuana retailers in Colorado (and Washington state and soon in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.) have met both their newfound freedom and remaining restrictions with creativity and genuine innovation.

Bloomberg News reporters Duane D. Stanford and Kevin Orland note under the headline "Marijuana Shops Seek Holiday Surge With ‘Green Friday’" that

The legalized pot industry in the U.S. will be worth about $2.3 billion this year and may grow to more than $10 billion by about 2018, according to the San Francisco-based ArcView Group, which invests in the industry.

This “green rush” generated $207 million in recreational pot sales in Colorado during the first nine months of the year, according to the state Revenue Department. In that period, recreational and medical marijuana combined to raise $52.5 million in revenue for the state through taxes, licenses and fees.

CBS News had its own report on "Green Friday," titled "Pot merchants cash in on Christmas cannabis."

In an accompanying story, CBS Moneywatch correspondent Kim Peterson reported:

Black Friday is almost here, and some shoppers are preparing to rush out and buy family and friends a stocking full of marijuana....

Americans freely give each other buzz-inducing gifts of wine or Scotch over the holidays, but buying someone a gift box full of bud? That idea is just sinking in across the state. "People are just starting to consider the notion of, 'Well hey, I can give this,'" Fox added....

Other dispensaries are planning similar Black Friday promotions, and many are taking out ads in local newspapers or promoting their sales online. An edible-pot maker in the state is offering a miniature pumpkin pie laced with marijuana, according to The Associated Press. Stores will also be selling spiced holiday teas, marijuana mint cookies and creams for sore muscles.

Marketing "Green Friday" specials on Black Friday is just one sign of the maturing of the marijuana industry. Matt Ferner and Ryan J. Reilly noted in The Huffington Post earlier this week that

Colorado and Washington state illustrate how cannabis is shedding its stoner image and entering mainstream culture. Marijuana products have been featured prominently in gourmet dinners and in cooking seminars in both states. The drug has become a fashionable substance to offer as a celebratory toast at weddings. Yoga enthusiasts can seek zen at marijuana-fueled classes.

Earlier this year, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra held a “Classically Cannabis” fundraiser, where well-heeled attendees sipped drinks, shook hands and smoked pot from joints, vaporizers and glass pipes, while a brass quintet played Debussy, Bach, Wagner and Puccini.

"Cannabis is being elevated into the pantheon of refined and urbane inebriants, no different than boutique rye or fine wine," said Matt Gray, the publisher of a new gourmet marijuana cookbook.

Could marijuana become legal in Virginia, a state where liqueurs are sold by a government-owned and -operated monopoly?

Bart Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch thinks it can and should.
"Instead of trying to shake more money out of Virginians’ pockets," he wrote on Tuesday,

the commonwealth should follow Washington’s lead and sell off its liquor business. But it should not adopt Washington’s deceptive practice of trying to claw back its money through hidden fees. So how can Virginia lawmakers scrape up the revenue that would be lost?

Simple: Legalize recreational marijuana, as four other states have. Washington did, and expects to collect $637 million in licenses and taxes by 2019. Colorado hopes to reap $174.5 million over the next three years. By one estimate, legalizing weed in Virginia could raise as much as $500 million for the commonwealth. But even half that would more than make up for ending the liquor monopoly

True, there are many arguments against the state letting people smoke pot. But those same arguments work just as well against the state letting people drink booze — let alone selling the stuff itself.

State Senator Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) has introduced a bill for the 2015 session of the General Assembly that takes the first step: decriminalizing personal possession of marijuana within Virginia. SB 656

Decriminalizes marijuana possession and changes the current $500 criminal fine for simple marijuana possession to a maximum $100 civil penalty payable to the Literary Fund and eliminates the 30-day jail sentence. The bill reduces the criminal penalties for distribution and possession with intent to distribute etc. of marijuana. The bill creates a rebuttable presumption that a person who grows no more than six marijuana plants grows marijuana for personal use and not for distribution and provides that the suspended sentence/substance abuse screening provisions apply only to criminal violations or to civil violations by a minor. Marijuana is removed from a statute making it a Class 1 misdemeanor to distribute or display advertisements, etc., for instruments used for marijuana and from the common nuisance statute. The distribution of paraphernalia statute will apply only to an adult who distributes to a minor at least three years his junior. The bill also limits forfeiture of property from sale or distribution of marijuana to quantities of more than one pound; currently there is no minimum amount. The penalty for possession of marijuana by a prisoner is reduced from a Class 5 felony to a Class 6 felony.

So far the bill has one co-patron, Delegate Kaye Kory (D-Falls Church). It has been referred to the Courts of Justice committee. When similar legislation was introduced by former Delegate Harvey Morgan, a Republican, it was killed in committee despite not a single person testifying against it.

While Virginia won't be celebrating Green Friday this year, we know that politicians here and elsewhere across the country are watching Colorado closely to see what happens in a regime of regularized, taxable marijuana sales.

Interview with Morgan Griffith about medicinal marijuana

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA9)

Although he voted against a budget amendment designed to circumscribe federal interference in the production and distribution of medical marijuana in states that have legalized it, U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA9) has introduced his own legislation to address implications for federalism and individual liberty by reforming the nation's drug laws.

Griffith's bill, the “Legitimate Use of Medicinal Marijuana Act” or the “LUMMA,” would allow physicians to prescribe marijuana for various ailments and provide for experimentation and research by universities and pharmaceutical companies. Prescription of cannabis is currently prohibited under federal law and research is severely limited.

Congressman Griffith explained the aims of his bill in an interview with me on the sidelines of the Republican Party of Virginia's state convention in Roanoke on June 7.

Most of the states that have legalized medicinal marijuana “haven't adopted a policy that I would advocate,” Griffith said. “That is a policy that says that you have doctors involved with a prescription, not just a note that says it might be good for you but a prescription so that we can actually see what we're doing.”


'Loosey-goosey'
Griffith's bill “would also allow for universities and pharmaceutical companies and whomever to start doing experiments with the levels of the THC,” he explained, “because one of the problems you have is, even where people want to use it for medical reasons, whether it be epilepsy or glaucoma and cancer – which is authorized [by law] in Virginia – we don't really know what the right mix of THC and cannabinoid oils are to make the most effective for particular patients.”

Currently, he continued, “because it's a Schedule One drug and the DEA won't reduce it to Schedule Two, you really can't get the research that you need to use it for real medicinal purposes.”

Griffith was critical of the way medical marijuana is regulated in those states where it's legal.

“A lot of the states have a loosey-goosey plan,” he said.

“What we need is to have marijuana treated like any other serious drug, like we treat hydrocodone, like we treat barbiturates, like we treat morphine – treat it seriously, [because] it's a serious medication.”

Once the law treats it that way, he said, then the federal government should “step back and let the states decide whether their doctors can make the prescription. Right now they can't because it's against the federal law and you lose your DEA license to prescribe any drug if you do it.”

Now there are “22 states where the federal government looks the other way and doesn't enforce the law [while] we have a federal law that actually makes it a felony for a hospital or a doctor to actually use it in any kind of an efficacious way.”


Rescheduling
Under the terms of Griffith's bill, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would reschedule marijuana from Schedule One to Schedule Two. “Some would argue it ought to be Schedule Three, or maybe even lower but Schedule Two gets us the research and allows doctors to use it,” he explained.

While Dana Rohrabacher's amendment to a budget bill last month would have ended DEA and Department of Justice interference in states with legal medical marijuana, that approach does not go far enough for Griffith.

“I think a lot of folks feel that voting for these budget amendments is solving the problem,” he said, adding that it “actually makes the problem more complex because then you have a patchwork set of rules across the nation and it's still a violation of federal law.”

As a result, “whenever a new president comes in, they say to the DEA, 'Go get those people, they're in violation of federal law.' I don't want to do that. I want there to be a respect for the law but let's get the law right.”

The right way to reform the law, he explained, is to “have our doctors, our trained medical professionals, prescribing it, and have our universities and our pharmaceutical companies testing it to get the dosage right.”

Griffith's bill, designated HR 4498, currently has two cosponsors: Rep. James Moran (D-VA8) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA47). It has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by Michigan Republican Fred Upton, where it awaits action.

Reason magazine this month posted two informative articles about legalize marijuana. In "Weed Isn't All That Scary," syndicated columnist Steve Chapman reports on his experience visiting legal pot shops in Colorado. Elizabeth Nolan Brown published "FAQ: All About Legal Pot," to answer readers' burning questions.

(This article appeared in slightly different form on Examiner.com.)

It's 4/20: Time for a Marijuana News Round-up

Easter falls on 4/20 this year, which means in addition to bunnies and chocolate eggs, Americans are thinking about marijuana.

Here's a brief round-up of marijuana-related news in celebration of the dual holiday.

First, where did the "420" tradition come from?

An Phung offers this explanation on the NBC Los Angeles web site:

While there are no shortages of theories about how the “high" holiday came to be, several published reports give the credit for 4/20's creation to a group of Northern California high school students. The friends say they started using the term as code for pot-smoking in 1971, after planning to meet at 4:20 p.m. one day to smoke and search out a rumored pot crop.

The term spread, eventually reaching, through mutual acquaintances, members of the Greatful Dead [sic] rock band, the friends claim. The lingo was picked up by High Times magazine in 1990, according to BBC News, after an editor saw the term on a Grateful Dead concert flyer.

While others have also come forward to claim they are parents of the pot phrase, the friends, who call themselves the Waldos, say they have letters and other documents to back their story.

What about the weed business?

While he cautions that too much optimism may be premature, Andrew Bender reports in Forbes that Colorado is seeing a boom in the tourist industry since recreational pot was legalized earlier this year:

In the first quarter of the year, Denver International Airport saw record traffic, online searches for Denver hotels were up 25 percent, the real estate market has boomed, and the nation’s first cannabis-themed tour operator has sold out all its tours. That’s a lot to cheer about going into the 420 Rally this weekend, itself newly expanded and set to bring in record numbers of visitors.

Bender offers details such as this:

Cannabis tour operator My 420 Tours has sold out all six of its tours so far this year, at rates of $1,399 to $1,699 for 5 days. CEO and founder J. J. Walker says that the tours let visitors “see the industry from inside and out” with visits to dispensaries and growers, cannabis cooking classes, hashish-preparing lessons and plenty of product samples. Oh, yes, and snacks.

And this:

[Ricardo] Baca and [J.J.] Walker also credit pot with new real estate construction, sales and rentals. “There’s tons and tons of construction starting and apartments being built,” Walker says.

Baca has heard from apartment search services that there’s been a huge influx of people, especially those in their twenties, moving to the state for the marijuana. “They don’t want to have to be looking over their shoulder or for it to be illegal just to have some in their refrigerator.”

Meanwhile, Walker says, commercial rental rates for potential dispensaries or growers’ warehouses have skyrocketed.

“People are moving here for the industry and the opportunity and freedom it represents,” Walker says. Talk about all-American values.

Hunter Stuart offers these four statistics (and nine more equally compelling) at The Huffington Post:

$1.53 billion: The amount the national legal marijuana market is worth, according to a Nov. 2013 report from ArcView Market Research, a San Francisco-based investor group focused on the marijuana industry.

$10.2 billion: The estimated amount the national legal marijuana market will be worth in five years, according to that same ArcView report.

$6.17 million: The amount of tax revenue collected in Colorado on legal marijuana sales in just the first two months of 2014.

$98 million: The total tax revenue that Colorado could reap in the fiscal year that begins in July, according to a recent budget proposal from Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Another economic benefit of pot legalization is that it is usually accompanied by the legalization of industrial hemp production. According to a report in the Post Independent:

“Hemp can fix every problem in the world if we just let it, so let’s get to work finding out the hundreds of thousands of uses for hemp,” said Sen. David Balmer, R-Centennial.

In 2011, the U.S. imported $11.5 million worth of hemp products, largely from China and Canada, compared to $1.4 million in imports in 2000. Most of that was hemp seed and hemp oil, used in granola bars, soaps, lotions and cooking oil.

Colorado authorized hemp cultivation in 2012 when it legalized marijuana for recreational use. Farmers must apply for permits with the state Department of Agriculture, which are being issued for the first time this year, though a few growers didn’t wait and brought in sparse and scraggly experimental crops last year.

Twelve other states have removed barriers to hemp production — California, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia, according to the Vote Hemp advocacy group.

As for those who worry that legalizing marijuana (for medical or recreational purposes) will lead to an increase in violent crime, Erin Delmore of MSNBC reports:

[E]ven after Colorado legalized the sale of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use on Jan. 1 of this year, violent and property crime rates in the city are actually falling.

According to data from the Denver Police Department, violent crime (including homicide, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault) fell by 6.9% in the first quarter of 2014, compared with the same period in 2013. Property crime (including burglary, larceny, auto theft, theft from motor vehicle and arson) dropped by 11.1%.

Delmore cites a study, "The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on Crime: Evidence from State Panel Data, 1990-2006," by four criminologists at the University of Texas at Dallas ( Robert G. Morris, Michael TenEyck, J. C. Barnes, and Tomislav V. Kovandzic), which concludes (references omitted):

The central finding gleaned from the present study was that MML [medical marijuana legalization] is not predictive of higher crime rates and may be related to reductions in rates of homicide and assault. Interestingly, robbery and burglary rates were unaffected by medicinal marijuana legislation, which runs counter to the claim that dispensaries and grow houses lead to an increase in victimization due to the opportunity structures linked to the amount of drugs and cash that are present. Although, this is in line with prior research suggesting that medical marijuana dispensaries may actually reduce crime in the immediate vicinity.

In sum, these findings run counter to arguments suggesting the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes poses a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crimes. To be sure, medical marijuana laws were not found to have a crime exacerbating effect on any of the seven crime types. On the contrary, our findings indicated that MML precedes a reduction in homicide and assault. While it is important to remain cautious when interpreting these findings as evidence that MML reduces crime, these results do fall in line with recent evidence and they conform to the longstanding notion that marijuana legalization may lead to a reduction in alcohol use due to individuals substituting marijuana for alcohol. Given the relationship between alcohol and violent crime, it may turn out that substituting marijuana for alcohol leads to minor reductions in violent crimes that can be detected at the state level.

With these advantages -- reductions in crime, economic growth, increased tax revenues -- it should come as no surprise that Americans have become more open to the idea of marijuana legalization in recent years.

Writing in The Weed Blog earlier this month on a survey of Americans about pot laws, Paul Armentano of NORML reported:

Seventy-five percent of Americans believe that the sale and use of cannabis will eventually be legal for adults, according to national polling data released this week by the Pew Research Center. Pew pollsters have been surveying public opinion on the marijuana legalization issue since 1973, when only 12 percent of Americans supported regulating the substance.

Fifty-four percent of respondents say that marijuana ought to be legal now, according to the poll. The total is the highest percentage of support ever reported by Pew and marks an increase of 2 percent since 2013. Forty-two percent of respondents said that they opposed legalizing marijuana for non-therapeutic purposes. Only 16 percent of Americans said that the plant should not be legalized for any reason.

Pew reported its findings like this:

The survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 14-23 among 1,821 adults, finds that support for the legalization of marijuana use continues to increase. And fully 75% of the public –including majorities of those who favor and oppose the legal use of marijuana – think that the sale and use of marijuana will eventually be legal nationwide.

By wide margins, the public views marijuana as less harmful than alcohol, both to personal health and to society more generally. Moreover, just as most Americans prefer a less punitive approach to the use of drugs such as heroin and cocaine, an even larger majority (76% of the public) – including 69% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats – think that people convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana should not have to serve time in jail.

(The same survey also showed Americans' preference for medical treatment rather than criminal penalties for users of harder drugs like heroin and cocaine.)

However you slice it, the news is good for proponents of ending the drug war, at least as far as marijuana is concerned. People are beginning to understand that prohibition doesn't work, it is unable to overcome the economic laws of supply-and-demand, it encourages the growth of illegal enterprises, and it punishes -- sometimes with death -- otherwise innocent Americans.