Who seriously thought that this would work? From Politico:
California’s legal weed industry can’t compete with illicit market
California’s cannabis market is booming nearly five years after voters legalized recreational weed. But there’s a catch: the vast majority of pot sales are still underground.
Rather than make cannabis a Main Street fixture, California’s strict regulations have led most industry operators to close shop, flee the state or sell in the state’s illegal market that approaches $8 billion annually, twice the volume of legal sales.
Local government opposition, high taxes and competition from unlicensed businesses are complicating California’s push to build a thriving legal market. Many of those factors are baked into California law, including rules allowing city leaders to shut out licensed cannabis enterprises. Meanwhile, the state has relaxed penalties against illegal operations in the name of racial justice.
Absolutley - they thought they were going to make a bundle by taxing it so high. They only priced it out of the marketplace. An interesting source of illegal sales:
Many of today’s unlicensed businesses legally served customers for decades under the state’s medical marijuana laws that passed in 1996 but went underground after voters approved the recreational pot initiative Proposition 64 passed in 2016.
Yeah - provide a Laissez-faire business environment and prosper or tax it to death and drive it underground. No happy medium. Clueless. Did they even bother to ask a medical marijuana provider or did they just listen to some high-priced "consultant" with a dubiously burnished resume.
And California wonders why people are streaming out of the state.
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