As someone from SoCal, and from as a PoC from a rough neighborhood affected by the war on drugs. I remember when legalization began, the law said they would have a place for for those affected by the war on drugs to get into the cannabis market. It has been the exact opposite it's still inaccessible!
In order to get the license which is like a liquor license, you have to front over $10K then if you qualify for the waiver the state will reimburse you. No one from these hoods has $10K+ lying around yo do this. Hence why the cannabis market is so white and bourgeois.
And then to read this, it just angers me.
Virginia did this too. Their appeasement was those who got arrested and put in jail have first priority in getting the insanely expensive license lmao
Yeah I just got out of prison for a bullshit charge I totally have the money to start a small business and pay you guys thousands of dollars.
It's literally only a way to say sorry to rich white kids who got made examples of
To be real in California it's not set up for anyone to make money. It's setup to squeeze out small farms. The ordinances, the taxes, they act like these ppl are making prelegalization money. But they're just farmers now. The state let the alcohol industry set up the rules. It's rigged and I don't see it being very profitable for the foreseeable future.
The whole industry is fucked. I used to work on farms and it was always completely whites only. It was always kept somewhat hush from the normal workers but pretty obvious that every single farm owner had someone smuggling out to states that we're still illegal, because that was really the only way to turn a good profit (not that I gave a shit).
After legalization many dropped out due to competition, the rest essentially started using migrant field workers to remain competitive. The only room left for people before was to manage said workers.
Obviously the whole problem with licensing and farming is that the legal rigamarole leaves it impossible for anyone without decent capital to get their skin in the game, and we all know which races in this country tend to have that capital and which don't. So yeah, it's still dominated by white people. I miss the days working out in fields and the sun but honestly even back then it was fairly problematic.
Also the problematic shit went deep. There were tons of libertarian types who saw the wealth they made as an opportunity to exploit farm hands in super gross ways. Like hiring only women to trim half naked and shit. These things happened all over the place and was always targeted at the really desperate people who would flock to nearby towns from farming hubs to the money.
The disgusting misogyny turned me off so fast. I will not put up with that and really enjoyed watching those ppl fail.
:maybe-later-honey: "What? 10k isn't that much sweaty. That's totally affordable. Who doesn't have at least 10k saved up? Maybe you should cut down on the avocado toast, sweaty."
"we give these people food stamps and healthcare why can't they save up 10k?!"
Weed being legal has only been shitty here. You can't pick spend a couple hundred of your last paycheck on weed to sell and be able to keep yourself afloat, if you buy in quantity you either buy an ounce of a single strain or spend a fortune buying a little of this and that, you can even fucking look at the product before buying so you can get home and end out with a sack of crispy trash. It was just enough to fuck over smaller dealers and now you gotta get it in the mail in bulk and in a quantity that is still illegal cause you still can't have over an ounce at a time per household. Also the government run weed shops that get a monopoly look like apple stores. It sucks.
not very familiar with Cali weed market but why did all the big name weed stocks fell off?
Turns out weed is still plauged by small margins that is large scale ag operations.
