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For some reason the state of Nevada underestimated the demand that would be generated by recreationally legal weed. Alcohol distributors appear to be at fault rather than it being an issue of cultivator supply. There are hundreds of growers with crops ready to go but due to an agreement with the state's alcohol distributors, for the first 18 months of legalization only they are allowed to transport weed from cultivation centers to stores. Since the law went into effect on July 1st the state has only received about half a dozen applications for a transport license.
Nevada officials have declared a state of emergency over marijuana: There's not enough of it.
Since recreational pot became legal two weeks ago, retail dispensaries have struggled to keep their shelves stocked and say they will soon run out if nothing is done to fix a broken supply chain.
"We didn't know the demand would be this intense," Al Fasano, cofounder of Las Vegas ReLeaf, said Tuesday. "All of a sudden you have like a thousand people at the door....We have to tell people we're limited in our products."
In declaring a state of emergency late last week, the state Department of Taxation warned that "this nascent industry could grind to a halt."
As bad as that would be for marijuana consumers and the pot shops, the state has another concern: tax revenue. A 10% tax on sales of recreational pot — along with a 15% tax on growers — is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for schools and the state's general fund reserves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:16PM (2 children)
I guess we have somewhat different ideas on what is a state of emergency. Running out of weed for your store probably wouldn't even qualify. After all it could have been something serious like running out of cookie-dough or icecream. That would be a real emergency, after you run out of weed ... or so I have heard.
That said a lot of these things seem to be results of really poor planning. "We didn't know the demand would be this intense", really? Who would have thought people would line to buy legal weed? If only there was about a handful of states that already tried that we could have checked with for data.
Seems like some savvy alcohol distributors didn't like the competition and got a fix in with the legislatures. A rival "pleasure drug creator and distributor" will be in charge of delivering the competing drug? Geee .. who could have guess that could go wrong.
Oh the lovely taxdollars are missing? Did they spend them before they had them? In that case they would have know there was going to be millions of sweet sweet tax bucks arriving, which makes that other statement about them being caught by surprise for the demand even stranger.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:40PM
There are some nuances to the whole distribution thing.
Bear in mind that in most of the states that have gone this route, the alcohol enforcement arm is being given the supervisory responsibility, and the model of dismantling prohibition is how they're doing it. In these models, distributors often had a specific and important role - to the point of sometimes even banning things like producer-to-consumer sales without a distributor's involvement. It looks as if what Nevada did was to just perpetuate and extend that process, without realising the outcome of having the distributors being de facto gatekeepers.
Live and learn ...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:53PM
But this isn't really about a shortage of marijuana. It's about a shortfall in projected tax revenue. And that is a budding emergency.