From the AP, for once, comes
this absolutely awesome article on marijuana growers in Humboldt County, CA, and their "fearful" anticipation of the legalization of their crop in California:
If California legalizes marijuana, they say, it will drive down the price of their crop and damage not just their livelihoods but the entire economy along the state's rugged northern coast.
"The legalization of marijuana will be the single most devastating economic event in the long boom-and-bust history of Northern California," said Anna Hamilton, 62, a Humboldt County radio host and musician who said her involvement with marijuana has mostly been limited to smoking it for the past 40 years.
Local residents are so worried that pot farmers came together with officials in Humboldt County for a standing-room-only meeting Tuesday night where civic leaders, activists and growers brainstormed ideas for dealing with the threat. Among the ideas: turning the vast pot gardens of Humboldt County into a destination for marijuana aficionados, with tours and tastings — a sort of Napa Valley of pot.
Many were also enthusiastic about promoting the Humboldt brand of pot. Some discussed forming a cooperative that would enforce high standards for marijuana and stamp the county's finest weed with an official Humboldt seal of approval.
Pot growers are nervous because a measure that could make California the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational use will appear on the ballot in November. State officials certified Wednesday that the initiative got enough signatures.
The law, if approved, could have a profound effect on Humboldt County, which has long had a reputation for growing some of the world's best weed.
In recent years, law enforcement agents have seized millions of pot plants worth billions of dollars in Humboldt and neighboring counties. And that is believed to be only a fraction of the crop.
A few observations from this pull-out:
- Prohibition artificially restricts the supply of the prohibited good which arbitrarily raises the price. This is a result of both average people staying away from production of the prohibited good in general for fear of its illegal status, as well as the occasional successful law enforcement raid which further, temporarily restricts the supply after the conclusion of the raid.
- Entrepreneurs, when faced with a threat to their market, can and do respond to the threat without government assistance, subsidy or direction, by getting creative.
- Voluntary "consumer quality assurance" agencies and organizations, as this article details, are one creative response, which allows for the "regulation" of the quality and standards of a particular good for the benefit of consumers while offering producers the benefit of slightly higher prices for goods meeting that consumer-driven standard. (Of course, it's only a matter of time before this regulatory apparatus is co-opted by the government, at the behest of an uncompetitve future marijuana producer, and used as a bludgeon against free competition to enforce a monopoly. Think FDA, for weed.)
- Despite decades of continual enforcement and raids, drug laws remain so ineffective as to verge on absurdly pointless-- case in point, Humboldt County weed, grown in an area where there are strict laws against doing so, is not just famous in Humboldt County, it is WORLD FAMOUS.
- What uncreative, uncompetitive pot producers in California might lose in the legalization of marijuana in CA, world consumers of marijuana, especially consumers of the Humboldt County variety, will gain in lower prices and more abundant supply. This article tries to paint this development as an economic horror story but it only accomplishes its goal by being one-sided and ignoring the other side of the marijuana economy-- the consumer.
