Yet another of my not-quite-famous “shocking, yet unsurprising both at once” moments.
There are many great movies on the drug trade, but my personal favorite is Blow. The film stars Johnny Depp as George Jung (aka Boston George), a real-life drug smuggler who was sentenced to 70 years in prison in 1994.
Like most drug movies, Blow depicts the highs of the drug trade—parties, mansions, and rooms full of cash—as well as the lows: addiction, paranoia, and a loss of control. One thing that made Blow so good is it showed the incredible demand for drugs.
Whether they are dealing pot or cocaine, George and his partners can’t keep up with the huge demand no matter how much supply they get.
I bring up Blow in light of news that California’s legislature approved a $100-million plan to boost California’s struggling legal marijuana industry.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, the industry is in serious trouble. The growth of licensed cannabis shops has been dismal and far below state projections. Just 1,086 retail and delivery firms have been permitted to date—about 82 percent lower than the 6,000 cannabis shops the government anticipated.
How is this possible?
Three guesses. First two don’t etc. You guys know the drill.
Well, shortly after California legalized pot in 2016, lawmakers began burdening the industry with so many regulations—particularly myriad compliance orders associated with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—that businesses are drowning under paperwork, fees, and delays.
“Many cannabis growers, retailers and manufacturers have struggled to make the transition from a provisional, temporary license to a permanent one renewed on an annual basis — a process that requires a costly, complicated and time-consuming review of the negative environmental effects involved in a business and a plan for reducing those harms,” the Times reports.
So let’s review then, shall we? Government at every level is so fucking inept, so fucking incompetent, and so fucking hopelessly retarded that it can find a way to lose its collective ass…even in the fucking drug-slinger game.
Feel free to take a minute or two to let all that soak in, people.
This, mind, while enjoying the otherwise-unavailable benefit of being able to make its own rules and regulations for how said drug-slinging must be conducted. The deck is decidedly stacked in government’s favor, but the flailing lackwits STILL can’t make a go of it. Oh, and lest anybody think this is merely a California thang? Don’t. Just…don’t.
The Ontario government lost $42M selling cannabis in the last year
And there you have it.
To recap once more, so as to drive the point on home: the goddamned goobermint, at all levels, can’t keep from losing scads upon scads of money in a business so effortlessly lucrative that…well, as Chris Rock says in Bring The Pain:
The drug dealers don’t really sell drugs. The drug dealers…OFFER drugs! I’m thirty years old, ain’t nobody ever sold me drugs. Nobody has ever sold nobody in this room some drugs! You ever in your life not thinking about getting high and somebody sold you some fucking drugs? Hell, no! The drug dealers offer: “Hey man, you want some smoke, you want some smoke?” You say “No”, that’s it! Now, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand…Shit!
No, man, drug dealers don’t sell drugs. Drugs sell themselves. Crack is not an encyclopedia, not a fucking vacuum cleaner! You know, you don’t really gotta try to sell crack, OK? I never heard a crack dealer go, “Man, how am I gonna get rid of all this crack? It’s just pilin’ up in my house!”
And some way, somehow, we see it’s just another damned thing government can’t get right.
(Via Ed Driscoll)
Having lived in Ontario for a decade, I can offer first hand experience with the government there. It was actually pretty decent at the standard interactions most people need for daily life, such as getting a driver’s license or forms for your car, home, business, etc. Public-facing bureaucrats were no more surly or inefficient than those I have dealt with in multiple US states, and better than most.
That said, I completely believe they are losing money on legal weed. It is still government, and all the incentives are wrong for anything resembling competence and efficiency. Now consider that the Ontario government runs health care in the province…and US leftists want the same here. As badly as Obamacare has screwed things up, care in the US is head and shoulders above the situation in Canada.
With the history of Prohibition and now legalized weed, consider what would happen if the government legalized prostitution….
Surely that cannot be so. Why, practically everyone subject to socialized medicine cannot sings its praises loudly enough, especially when American medical care is waved in front of them.
I recall looking up the state of Italian health care when the fake Chinese Virus hit the scene. WHO ranked the Italians as having the 2nd best health care in the world… Behind the French IIRC.
Funny how Milan and NYC collapsed in the face of WuFlu healthcare.
Well, not really, if you understood how similar they are.
The vast majority of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border…and they cross it for medical care when they need treatment they can not get in Canada. That says everything needed about the two systems.
Leftists love to talk about how wonderful Canadian health care supposedly is. But they come to the US for care when their condition is serious. It is only the little people who are stuck without options.
“Leftists love to talk about how wonderful Canadian health care supposedly is.”
It is pretty damn good for the wealthy ones, as they come to the US for their healthcare.
Put the government in charge of the Garage Desert and there would be a sand shortage.
Milton Friedman IIRC
A sand shortage? The world is running out of a crucial — but under-appreciated — commodity
Kamala?
I think we should legalize prostitution. That way, California could show how they can go broke running a whorehouse.
Too late. England beat ’em to it. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15290464/red-light-district-leeds-shuts-covid-sex-workers/
So, I guess that if you wanted to get rid of porn, you’d just nationalize it and put the Democrats or Labour in charge of the studios, huh?