S M O K E
S H O P
1958 Pacifi c Blvd SE, Albany, OR
(Next to Oregon Cannabis Co.
& House of Noodle)
541-791-7392
sumers to growers and distributors will continue to move weed on the down low. “I don’t
think you’re going to stop the black market growers from growing. They’ve been doing
it so far and haven’t gotten caught,” he says, adding that buyers as well will “continue to
use their same channels — one, it’s cheaper, and you’ve been smoking that weed for the
past 20 years.”
Not necessarily so, says Mark A. R. Kleiman, professor of public policy at New York
University's Marron’s Institute of Urban Management. Kleiman, one of the nation’s lead-
ing experts on the impact of legalization and co-author of the book Marijuana Legaliza-
tion: What Everyone Needs to Know, says that when it comes to legalization and the black
market, it helps to take the long view.
“The black market’s not going to disappear the day after legalization, and it’s not going
to exist five years later,” he says. He points out that in states that have had “wide-open
medical marijuana” such as California, “you already had the black market eaten away.”
Other factors eroding the black market, Kleiman says, are the increased productivity of
higher quality bud allowed by legal grows, which removes shortages in supply that states
like Oregon and Colorado suffered after pot first went legal. Also, he adds, “as illegal pro-
duction and retailing capacity comes on line, prices fall.”
When it comes to legal weed and the black market, Kleiman suggests drawing com-
parisons with the end of alcohol prohibition, and how that played out over time. “There’s
no moonshining,” he says, “and it’s not because we do enforcement.” Market factors are at
work here: First, it’s cheaper to make booze in breweries. There’s also the issue of brand-
ing.
“If people’s identity is bound up in the fact that they drink Coors instead of Bud, moon-
shining’s sort of irrelevant,” Kleiman says. “If the cannabis industry generates brands,
they create a generation of consumers.” And, like drinkers, weed smokers will have a
choice among a wide range of marijuana in terms of price, quality and quantity. For in-
stance, Kleiman points out Uncle Ike’s in Colorado, which offers a strong budget bud at
$95 an ounce — essentially, the malt liquor of weed.
“The budget bud is all outdoor grow,” he says. “That’s going to squeeze the market
pretty hard. The illicit dealers are basically whistling in the graveyard.”
On the legal side, Kleiman says, the idea that legalization would get law enforcement
out of the criminal market is “backwards” in terms of what it will take to eliminate the
black market. “If there are parallel licit and illicit markets, then arresting illegal dealers is
exactly how you grow the legal market,” he says. “The illicit cannabis market is a paper
tiger, but it won’t fall over unless somebody pushes.”
Overall, Kleiman says that “the illicit market is a transitional phenomenon,” though
so long as legalization remains a changing reality from state to state — federally, weed is
scheduled alongside heroin as a criminal substance — the black market in interstate trade
will exist. “There’s nothing about legalization that changes that,” he says. “My guess is
that most of the Oregon-grown was going out of state to start with, and that won’t change
at all.”
eugeneweekly.com • A ugust 18, 2016
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