I just heard a radio add that says "Government and private liquor stores have the best record of not selling to minors. We are already set up to sell safely." etc
I am pissed. Really pissed. Big money builds factory style farms that produce "standardized" pot. People wanting advice will be asking clerks who don't know and might not even care.
Really nice people with decades of expertise will close down. People who test everything and have always turned minors away. A network of dedicated growers who care about the plant will be driven underground. People will no longer have a reliable source of information.
This has to be stopped!
personally I think it can't really be stopped.
weed will become a legal market like all other. and current illegal growers simply aren't efficient enough to make it in such a market. it works currently because there are high margins due to illegality, but once the legal market matures there will be more and more competition, efficiency and keeping costs down will matter more, and margins go way down.
I also expect indoor will mostly disappear. the reason indoor is so common now is that you can easily hide it out of sight, but I expect indoorgrowing to mostly move into greenhouses once there's no reason to hide anymore. pretty big waste of money to keep supplying all light artificially and pay high electric bills, while there's a big free light in the sky.
and yes, we'll probably get brands of standardised weed too. that's were demand lies. so many stoners barely care what they smoke, as long as it looks ok and gets them high. people like us, reading/talking online about weed and caring about different kinds of highs etc, are a minority I think.
so it's only logical big weedbrands will take over, if they can supply a decent quality at a sharp price.
still, I don't think everything is going to be that market. there are always going to be people interesting in specific smells or highs, people who are willing to spend a little more on something that doesn't just get them high, but is a superior product overall. but it's a niche. like craft beer. no way a small craft brewery is going to compete on price with a big international brewery, but if they supply quality, there is still a market.
and it could even be better that way. there is already so much variation in weed, but what I find commercially available at a coffeeshop is all very similar.
I feel like for the coffeeshops, it wouldn't change that much if supply came from a few big standard brands.
there are a few excellent coffeeshops with a big variable menu, but the average coffeeshop here just has some standard names(amnesia, white widdow, powerplant, etc), which are probably bullshit too since they're never the same if you get it from another coffeeshop.
so not much to lose there, big brands are only helping that by finally insuring you know what you get if you're in another city where you never bought before.
however, (full) legalisation is also going to make it much easier acquiring new genetics, and the people growing for the craft-weed market will have to distinguish themselves more with something unique, so I think that will lead to way more unique and interesting weed being widely available, instead of the same smells and highs everywhere like now.
.. I would patent it, sell it off to some big cannabis corp for a very healthy life long royalty .. purchase myself a yacht .. and grow deck full o weed touring the ocean high !
