Tuesday, February 01, 2011

The pot Economy.

I've been trying to figure out how to talk about this topic because it isn't my typical content. Still, it's a big part of the California economy now. And - it is interesting. Especially for someone who grew up in the 70's and 80's and remember the war on drugs.

Everything is all different now. The paranoid days are over. Pot shops are sprouting up everywhere. Even in nice technology business parks. Not skeeby ones. You will be driving to get to a mega fortune 500 business. You'll pass a semiconductor company. Light manufacturing. Then bam - a collective.

And, you'd never know it was there unless you had a keen eye on the armed security guards standing out front. Which is not normal in a technology park.

Even this weekend when I took the train to SF, you go through this dead zone area of Oakland. Which is normally shuttered on the weekends. Up sprouts a brightly green colored hydro shop bustling with business. From what I could see from the time it took for the train to pass through.

So I've taken to going to the conventions. I was at hempcon this weekend, and I saw some notable things. A booth for the city of San Jose right in the convention. Extremely limited police patrolling. Especially since they were making sales right at the conference this time. (With medical verification) And people smoke right outside.

Most people think potheads are watching porn and eating Cheetos on the sofa all day long. Most enjoyable is the entrepreneurial side of whats going on. Specially made vending machines. Other stuff I just don't want to talk about. Still, it makes me smile how crafty these people are becoming now that threat of being pinched is minimised.

2 comments:

  1. It will be interesting to see whether this supports or disproves the idea that legalizing drugs will actually reduce demand, making them "safer" through regulation, etc.

    California is its own little world...

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  2. Oh - I don't think it will reduce demand. There are certainly a lot of experiments with this whole thing. It is about as decriminalized as it gets right now.

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