Drug Dealers Unfazed By Legal Pot In Colorado

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shuri

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DENVER — There are two ways to buy marijuana legally in Colorado: Buy it from a licensed pot shop and suck up the high taxes, or register for a medical marijuana card to get much cheaper grow.

But some people like Mario, a 31-year-old graduate student who works part time at a restaurant, are still turning to the black market for their weed.

Sitting in a vegetarian café near his Denver apartment that has a bathroom covered in graffiti like “Urban Farming Is The Future!,” Mario said he feared being on a medical registry while still in school.

A lifelong Colorado resident, Mario, a slight man with glasses and a goatee, who asked that his last name be withheld, has yet to step foot in a dispensary. That’s because he can get an ounce of weed for $60 from a co-worker whose family member has a home grow. Granted, that’s an unusually low price, as high-quality green generally costs an average of $237 an ounce, according to priceofweed.com, a self-described “global price index for marijuana.”

Purchased legally, without a medical card, that same amount would put him out around $400.

Dispensary workers say Mario is not alone in his decision to stick with the black market.

Inside Denver’s massive Medicine Man dispensary, the shop’s business consultant Elan Nelson and general manager Pete Vasquez understand its appeal for some smokers.

“It’s human nature; nobody wants to be on a list,” said Nelson, a cheerful woman with a curly halo of light red hair and thin purple glasses. “So people have continued to foster the black market.”

[...]

But recreational marijuana comes at a hefty cost for consumers, partly because it now carries a 10% special state tax, plus the usual 2.9% state sales tax and whatever the city tax is, and sometimes even more, if the dispensary includes their own 15% wholesale tax — the recreational pot at Medicine Man was taxed at 36%.
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/drug-dealers-unfazed-by-legal-pot-in-colorado

I can't say I'm really surprised. You? But I do feel it's a bit too early to judge this. Maybe next year
 
That's a pretty dumb example to pluck out and spin the article around.

The legal market was just born, it's pretty early to attempt to draw conclusions about these things.
 
thabiz said:
O for 60? Dammmnnnnnnnnnn
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edit: Sounds like complete bullshit.
 
I read a thread on this elsewhere and EVERYONE was saying the legal prices (with taxes) are acceptable compared to the current black market prices. That's just price comparison and not the other details, like dealing with dirtbags.

Also it is legal to grow your own! 3 plants or something (and those plants can get huge with decent returns).

So what's to stop someone just buying off a friend? Police would have to prove your perfectly legal mary j was for selling purposes. Good luck with that cops.

This is just a propaganda article.
 
mcfrank said:
Guy gets cheap price from a friend is the real headline of this article.
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Yeah I'm wondering what the OP isn't surprised about. One dude lucky enough to have a friend? Pretty stupid article.

The real cost benefits of legalization won't happen until it's federally legal anyway. That's when the big cigarette companies come in and exercise economies of scale.
 
Valhelm said:
Is pot dealing illegal in Colorado? If so, why?
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They don't pay taxes, they don't have a license, and it's not verified to be safe for consumption...it's unregulated and the state doesn't get any money from it. You know, similar to bootleg alcohol.
 
Yeah well if you're getting an O of good stuff for $60 of course you're going to keep doing that.

Edit: hint: most people do not get that price
 
I have never heard of an ounce for $60....like that doesn't even make sense. Believe me there are not many people like Mario who can obtain that quantity for that price. I'm sure the dispensers do well.
 
I like how he doesn't want to be listed on the registry for MJ but then is featured in an article about how he buys pot from his friend who grows as a caregiver. Pretty sure it's illegal to buy from a medical caregiver if you aren't a mmj card holder.
 
knicks said:
I have never heard of an ounce for $60....like that doesn't even make sense. Believe me there are not many people like Mario who can obtain that quantity for that price. I'm sure the dispensers do well.
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The article is ridiculously stupid. 1 million in tax revenue in the first month for Colorado, yet some lucky dude who buys illegally from a friend with a grow op (probably legal ironically) is reason to write this sensational article.

There's gonna be so much click bait shit regarding this law in Colorado for a while.
 
A lifelong Colorado resident, Mario, a slight man with glasses and a goatee, who asked that his last name be withheld, has yet to step foot in a dispensary. That’s because he can get an ounce of weed for $60 from a co-worker whose family member has a home grow.
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The horror.

Pretty sure career drug dealers would not be thrilled if pot was really legal and everyone could do this.
 
knicks said:
I have never heard of an ounce for $60....like that doesn't even make sense. Believe me there are not many people like Mario who can obtain that quantity for that price. I'm sure the dispensers do well.
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Yeah that's like impossibly cheap. I pay about $400 an ounce right now for the good stuff and I can get the cheap stuff for about $160 an ounce.
 
I don't understand why they would go after drug dealers. Its no different than buying a tomato at Publix or getting a tomato from a guy selling them in the back of his truck near an intersection.
 
Zee-Row said:
I don't understand why they would go after drug dealers. Its no different than buying a tomato at Publix or getting a tomato from a guy selling them in the back of his truck near an intersection.
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Except that a tomato doesn't have a minimum age requirement?
 
speculawyer said:
Drug dealers unfazed?!?! Bullshit . . . drug dealers lost their big fat juicy profits and are barely making money now at that rate.
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That's not necessarily accurate. This isn't like prohibition, where you can tell the difference between expertly brewed liquor or beer, and homemade moonshine or where runners brought in stolen liquor. Weed is pretty much weed, is the average buyer going to be able to tell whether it was grown in some guys basement or at the store. Of course legalization is going to allow people to avoid the dangers of buying it from a dealer, is going to cut into some profits, but it's not going away anytime soon, not so long as Joe Nobody can text his dealer to meet up and get some for cash, as opposed to going to a store, possibly paying more showing ID, blah blah. It's going to be real interesting to note how things in Colorado change, what the rate of consumption is, rate of incarceration, how it affects minors, what's the revenue, has it drawn in more dealers because more people want it, or have they left the last State because it's affected profit.
 
Madness said:
Has it drawn in more dealers because more people want it, or have they left the last State because it's affected profit.
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I can't see how legally acquired reasonably priced MJ isn't a deterrent for drug dealers.

The fact that the seller in the article doesn't look like he's making a reasonable (for a drug-dealer or anyone actually) profit from his arrangement doesn't sound like a plus for the anti-legal MJ crowd.
 
mcfrank said:
Guy gets cheap price from a friend is the real headline of this article.
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Pretty much.

Some people will still prefer to get the best deal possible, and I guess if they are taking your name for legal purchases then a desire to remain more anonymous is a factor too.
 
Pretty much expected an underground trade to remain viable. People know people and people always want to save a buck. Smoking it ain't illegal, neither is having it, so really, it only makes it easier for drug dealers to operate. But it also makes tons of fucking cash for people who don't know people and just want to get blunted.
 
60 bucks an ounce is ridiculously cheap, but yeah all the legal places near me are ridiculously expensive. Cheapest I've seen it in a store is $65 for an eighth. Almost everyone I know still gets it from the same places they always got it before legalization. Also, all the weed stores close at 8pm or earlier, ain't nobody got time for that.
 
What's the law in CO re: growing your own? Is that taxed? Is there a limit on how many plants or how much harvested product one can possess, etc?
 
Anybody care to give some context to those that don't partake? I know an eighth is like the standard measurement. How many joints is that?
 
ZealousD said:
Anybody care to give some context to those that don't partake? I know an eighth is like the standard measurement. How many joints is that?
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An eighth is one-eighth of an ounce. 'How many joints' depends on how fat they are. Like asking 'how many jack and cokes can you make with a fifth of JD?"

I haven't smoked for almost 15 years, but when I did, an eighth would last me, all by my lonesome, about a week. Problem is with potheads, when you have some weed your friends magically appear at your house.
 
Article is about drug dealers being unfazed, lead in excerpt is about a dude getting ridiculously cheap weed from a friend.
 
Bodacious said:
An eighth is one-eighth of an ounce. 'How many joints' depends on how fat they are. Like asking 'how many jack and cokes can you make with a fifth of JD?"
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Just trying to get an idea of what the average user burns. I know smoking cigarettes can be a pretty expensive habit, as a lot of folks go through a pack a day. I didn't think pot was burned through quite that fast since it's not as addictive. Just trying to piece how expensive legal pot really is.
 
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