A Whole New World: Legal Pot Sales Pit Patients vs Consumers

And so it begins. On the first day of 2014, the cannabis policy battle lines decisively shift. No longer strictly a fight between drug warriors and POWs, policy pressures will striate new forks: between producer and consumer, and especially between recreational users and medical patients. The new year, opening with so much legitimate promise, may get ugly very quickly.

In Colorado, a fateful set of events was put in motion as soon as a winning coalition formed around the idea of regulating marijuana in a way similar to alcohol. The appeal of the the pitch was both rich and obvious – rather than getting bogged down in the admittedly depressing minutiae of drug policy, the SAFER group which passed the initiative assuaged the nervous fears of independent voters by signifying a familiar referent; after all, if everyone knows that marijuana is safer than alcohol, then treating it like alcohol appears a particularly moderate – restrictive even – form of legalization. And, of course, the strategy worked, so it’s hard to blame SAFER’s rationale.

Still, the tactic’s biggest flaw was that it failed to appreciate that, by almost any measure, the predominant US alcohol policy fails miserably: alcohol contributes to 10,000 traffic deaths and nearly 5 million violent crimes annually. States levy high excise taxes under the theory that they will reduce alcohol abuse, but such taxes rarely work. Nevertheless, the state’s Colorado Department of Revenue has faithfully executed its office, following the dictates of the electorate and regulating marijuana like wine.

There’s another problem with the plan: using marijuana to better one’s health is not remotely like drinking a glass of red wine with dinner. While research suggests that such moderate use of alcohol could have health benefits, the therapeutic effects of marijuana are on another order entirely: researchers have identified at least 66 unique chemicals in cannabis resin, capable of activating receptors in the body’s endocannabinoid system, yielding a dizzying array of benefits. Such chemicals – known as cannabinoids – have been shown to protect against neurodegenerative disease, diabetes and obesity, cancer, arthritis and Crohn’s disease.

Thus, a transfer of “medical” stocks to serve the adult retail market will likely not be as smooth at the end of this prohibition as at the end of the last one. Because January 1st is not only the first day retail stores can sell marijuana but also the first day that they may cultivate the marijuana to sell, the licensed clubs are expected to convert medical marijuana inventory to retail inventory in their first few months of operation, which could easily lead to a shortage of marijuana for medical patients. For the Colorado residents who rely on marijuana to treat their ailments, the results could be disastrous.

New recreational rules may hit the neediest patients the hardest.

The situation is made worse by taxes. Medical marijuana is lightly taxed – if at all – while the new retail marijuana authorized by Amendment 64 will be taxed by the state at a fixed rate of 15%, creating financial incentives for state bureaucrats to promulgate rules which will increase the cost of producing legal marijuana as the only constitutional way to increase tax receipts. And indeed, the state has done just that, announcing application fees up to $14,000 and requiring strict security measures which are the grower’s burden to fulfill. While such moves may enrich the general treasury, they risk pricing patients and low-income consumers out of the licit market – and putting them back in the very illicit market Amendment 64 was written to avoid.

Whether purposefully or not, such moves will have the effect of cushioning the stateside arrival of large firms like GW Pharmaceuticals, which has already received FDA approval to run human trials of its high-grade cannabis extracts. Such medicines, precisely titrated and enormously expensive, may well prove the new face of “medical marijuana” worldwide, relegating today’s paradigm of dried-flower therapeutics to the cobwebs of memory. A new future may be just around the corner, in which all buds, shake, hash and edibles sold will be subject to recreational rules, while the more generous medical regulations shall be reserved for the “neediest” patients paying for expensive aerosol spray extracts through Obamacare and HMOs. And maybe that is, on balance, the best policy. But if the view from the end of 2013 is any omen, the road to get there might prove very rough, indeed.

Republished with special permission from The Leaf Online.