Who are we talking about when we talk about black-market marijuana?Posted by On

(This reporter can attest: A suburban Portland dispensary turned back time in my mind, sending me out the door with four pre-rolled, mid-only-in-Oregon joints, and they cost just $20. It felt like Carter was president again.)

Prospective Pacific Northwest customers had to ask: Why meet up with Cooper—not his real name—to buy his untested, unremarkable bud when Oregon flower that costs marginally more with tax can be delivered to your door? It was when he tried to move a pound over Facebook earlier this year and found no one from either Vancouver or Portland interested that Cooper realized his own marketplace irrelevance. “The day of the weed man is over,” he lamented.

That bag still sits in a closet, unsold and unsmoked.
 


In the 15 states with adult use cannabis, overly ambitious state and local taxes are the wind beneath the unlicensed market’s wings.


 
In this traditionally cultivated, or “black” market heyday, unlicensed cannabis brokers from Illinois to Florida can be heard laughing aloud at Cooper’s assertion. They’re richer than ever off this gift from the land.

We’re a nation awash in weed. Along with whatever random cannabis y’all be smoking back East, fresh from the West Coast, Colorado, and now Oklahoma comes brilliant and untested bud. Tax-free for your local cash economy.

Not all dealers in the traditional market are chuckling at Cooper. And not because a healthy lot of them are cartel members, and chuckling isn’t…

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(This reporter can attest: A suburban Portland dispensary turned back time in my mind, sending me out the door with four pre-rolled, mid-only-in-Oregon joints, and they cost just $20. It felt like Carter was president again.)

Prospective Pacific Northwest customers had to ask: Why meet up with Cooper—not his real name—to buy his untested, unremarkable bud when Oregon flower that costs marginally more with tax can be delivered to your door? It was when he tried to move a pound over Facebook earlier this year and found no one from either Vancouver or Portland interested that Cooper realized his own marketplace irrelevance. “The day of the weed man is over,” he lamented.

That bag still sits in a closet, unsold and unsmoked.
 


In the 15 states with adult use cannabis, overly ambitious state and local taxes are the wind beneath the unlicensed market’s wings.


 
In this traditionally cultivated, or “black” market heyday, unlicensed cannabis brokers from Illinois to Florida can be heard laughing aloud at Cooper’s assertion. They’re richer than ever off this gift from the land.

We’re a nation awash in weed. Along with whatever random cannabis y’all be smoking back East, fresh from the West Coast, Colorado, and now Oklahoma comes brilliant and untested bud. Tax-free for your local cash economy.

Not all dealers in the traditional market are chuckling at Cooper. And not because a healthy lot of them are cartel members, and chuckling isn’t…



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