Lack of Vertical Integration Will Kill the Basement Grower

[souf69]

Yeah for sure they do. Shit between the bugs and diseases that dispensaries give away with their clones its no surprise people are mostly growing a subpar product. The cali dispensaries have no intent on being medical at all, really they serve as a model of recreational pot clubs than anything else, no standards (except in the size of buds they are taking from you.......granted most places are no longer buying herb with pm but it is still out there. From what I have seen most clubs in cali are illlegitamate fronts for back door sales, fucking both the grower and consumer. Sure you can find some fire og or cookies at most any club, which is nice, but expect to pay over 55 and eigth for it. You guys are paying substantially lower rates in CO right?

Colo about 35 to 40 for a good one.

 

[souf69]

I wish coors and bud would quit wasting our precious colo mountain water on their shitty beers....

 

[organicozarks]

The real money made during the Gold Rush was from selling shovels.

I think most people are not seeing the forest for the trees.

 

[Texas Kid]

The Clinic and Fox Street have some fire IMO..and at a $255 self respecting price..

I was at a spot the other day and I heard someone out in the line complaining they didn't have any $125/zips left...I swear maing...lol..come on....I like the two tier pricing now $160-$180 for crap and $250-300 for top shelf, no in between

 

[souf69]

The Clinic and Fox Street have some fire IMO..and at a $255 self respecting price..

I was at a spot the other day and I heard someone out in the line complaining they didn't have any $125/zips left...I swear maing...lol..come on....I like the two tier pricing now $160-$180 for crap and $250-300 for top shelf, no in between

Crap should be 99 tax included then 250 and up

 

[Texas Kid]

Philip Morris buys tons and tons of tobacco from small local producers in the Carolinas and Tennessee

 

[souf69]

Tex, I think they do that for the right off and to look good to small communities

 

[Dorje]

squig, I think the issue here is that you are not questioning the assumptions made to form your analysis.

outwest is correct about the "big guys" not being able to supply top grade cannabis, it is possible some will learn, but right now it's not the case. This has been proven for many years now and there is still a demand for good indoor everywhere. Personally I believe some larger operations will be able to produce really good cannabis, just like some larger breweries can produce good beer. But I doubt your assumption that Phillip Morris can figure it out is likely to prove to be true in the future.

Grapes grow from the dirt too and not every winery can charge big bucks for their wines... there is an element of art to growing and processing plants for whatever purpose. That artistic element is valued by many people.

 

[ttystikk]

The real money made during the Gold Rush was from selling shovels.

I think most people are not seeing the forest for the trees.

Oh, now I wouldn't say that! But then, I think I'm lookin' to get into the shovel bidnezz, right?

 

[NaturalTherapy]

The real money made during the Gold Rush was from selling shovels.

I think most people are not seeing the forest for the trees.

I wouldn't say that exactly, but plenty of folks feeding their families on shovel money no doubt

 

[organicozarks]

The real money from the gold rush was indeed from selling equipment.

 

[NaturalTherapy]

I suppose Levi-Strauss is a pretty recognizable name.... And I can't think of one famous prospector

Edit. Apart from Sutter anyway, that fool died broke

 

[green punk]

The weed gold rush happened in 09 and lasted til mid 11, fueled after the Ogden memeo dropped. Indoor garden equip sales increased 350%. Look at Sunlight, BWGS, HydoFarm etc moving distribution hubs to CO.


The big business model will not be buying pallets of stuff thru any small merchant. They will go directly to GH or Roots or Age Old and buy direct. So unless you already are an owner of the "shovel factory" and have sourced the raw materials directly to produce the "shovels"... Good Luck

Also it wont be philip morris or glaxo, lilly or pfizer. It will be a massive agricultural company (dole, delmonte, chiquita,or a floraculture company that does the big ops.

 

[cctt]

I think the fallacy here is assuming that the big boys (beer, cannabis, or anything else) don't make connoisseur quality because they want to but haven't figured out how. This is not the case! Their goal is not to maximize quality, but to maximize profits, and in their position it makes more sense to cut costs wherever possible and offer something that enough people like.
As a beer snob I will absolutely agree - Shock top is an atrocity masquerading as a belgian style witbier. However, from a business perspective it is a success. It is making money. It is exactly what they wanted it to be.

 

[NaturalTherapy]

Also it wont be philip morris or glaxo, lilly or pfizer. It will be a massive agricultural company (dole, delmonte, chiquita,or a floraculture company that does the big ops.

I doubt very much the companies holding the cannabis patents would fully outsource their growing to AG companies. That is under the current legislation though, if things open up, you may very well be right... Another factor is the potentially hundreds of separate uses of this plants constituents - therefore specified genetic modifications and in that case patents- that I see many different types of companies benefitting from its being made legal....There is a lot of potential in terms of industrial applications... I wonder if a day is soon to come where certain hemp cultivars become more valuable than some of the highly psychoactive varietals because their use in energy/fuel production, or use as building materials...
So far it seems the only patents being granted are for medicinal properties

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/04/23/who-is-trying-to-patent-marijuana/

Phytocannabinoids in the treatment of cancer (Patent No. US20130059018)

The most recent patent filing on cannabinoids comes from none other than GW Pharmaceuticals – the UK-based company that manufactures Sativex (1). Sativex is an oral spray that contains cannabinoids derived from the cannabis plant itself, specifically THC and CBD. Although Sativex is not yet available in the U.S., it has already gained approval in Canada, the UK and eight other European countries.

GW Pharma has been quick to recognize the market potential of cannabis and their most recent patent application makes this more than clear. Just from the title of the patent, one gets a good sense of what GW Pharma has been trying to claim as their own. “Phytocannabinoids” simply means cannabinoids derived from plants, referring to the cannabis plant in this case.

Unsurprisingly, it appears as though GW Pharma encountered difficulties in trying to claim such a broad “invention”. In fact, the updated version of their patent application shows that more than half of their original patent claims were retracted, and for good reason too. Looking back in time, GW Pharma made claims to just the use of isolated cannabinoids in the treatment of cancer, which is no more of an invention than it is a theft from individuals who first proclaimed marijuana’s cancer-fighting abilities decades ago.



On the other hand, GW Pharma’s remaining claims might just pass through the Patent Office without further questioning. GW Pharma seems to be familiar with the pharmaceutical industry’s shrewd patent strategies, which involves modifying pre-existing compounds that have already been proven to work.

In this case, all GW Pharma had to do was claim that they invented a cannabis-based botanical drug substance for treating cancer – botanical drug substance meaning any form of marijuana prepared by methods as simple as aqueous or ethanolic extraction. There you have it. GW Pharma invented neither cannabis nor a method of extraction, but still consider themselves to be inventors of “phytocannabinoids in the treatment of cancer”.

Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants (Patent No. US6630507)

Perhaps the most infamous marijuana-related patent belongs to the U.S. federal government themselves. Indeed, while federal agents have been keeping busy trying to defend their stance on pot prohibition, they also made sure to file patents on the medical components of the very same Schedule I drug. The funny thing is, this particular patent dates all the way back to 1998 when Bill “didn’t inhale” Clinton was still president.

Although federal patent writers made sure to include a long list of synthetic cannabinoids within their claims, carefully tucked away is none other than cannabidiol, also known as CBD. Once again, the inventive step in this patent seems to be severely lacking, but maybe the federal government gets more flexibility with their patent filings.

Regardless, it seems as though the use of CBD for the treatment of “stroke and trauma”, “Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia” and a “wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases” all belongs to the White House, at least for the next 10 years until their patent expires.

Private funding matters more

It might be easy to blame an outdated patent system for what seems to be just another one of the many injustices that plague the private health care system. But the truth is, it’s not really the Patent Office’s fault that marijuana is being taken over by capital-backed corporations and government agencies.

Rather, the fault lies in the restrictive nature of medical marijuana research, which is overseen by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) – the only source of legal marijuana in the U.S.

According to researchers (2) who have attempted to conduct clinical trials on cannabis, the NIDA is simply uninterested in supplying cannabis for medical studies, in accordance with a mandate from Congress that limits NIDA researchers to investigating the marijuana’s dangers. And being the overwhelmingly benign substance (3) that it is, marijuana hasn’t been the subject of many NIDA studies for a while now.

But perhaps the worst outcome of this situation is not the fact that clinical research on medical marijuana is severely lacking. No, the worst part is that the gap in research is eagerly being filled by corporations like GW Pharma. Indeed, while there were a total 37 clinical studies (4) conducted on cannabinoids between 2005-2009, only 8 of them involved actual marijuana. On the other hand, 9 of the 37 studies involved Sativex, with the rest consisting of a variety of synthetic THC formulations, no doubt sponsored by their respective manufacturers as well.

So where does this leave the rest of us? Not too far from where we started off it seems, since it’s no surprise to anyone that healthcare will continue to be driven by privately funded research, even in the case of marijuana. But all that research money has to come from somewhere, and you can bet it’s not coming from the deep pockets of GW Pharma’s executive board.

As it turns out, a couple of shrewd businessmen with knowledge of medicine realized long ago that sick and dying individuals will pay almost any price for the promise of relief, even if it happens to be all of their life savings and then some. What happened to these businessmen? Oh, they’re still around. We just call them Big Pharma.

 

[NaturalTherapy]

The "cannabis to alcohol" comparison is inadequate and should no longer be argued. That we even associate the two is a fallacy

 

[ttystikk]

The "cannabis to alcohol" comparison is inadequate and should no longer be argued. That we even associate the two is a fallacy

We must continue to, for two reasons. One, the obvious social and economic parallels between today and the liquor prohibition era, and two, because Prop 64 enshrined it in legislative language, "...treat marijuana like alcohol".

The fact that otherwise the two are wholly dissimilar is a point upon which we agree, my friend!

 

[NaturalTherapy]

Alas...

 

[NaturalTherapy]

We must continue to, for two reasons. One, the obvious social and economic parallels between today and the liquor prohibition era, and two, because Prop 64 enshrined it in legislative language, "...treat marijuana like alcohol".

The fact that otherwise the two are wholly dissimilar is a point upon which we agree, my friend!

Still it bothers me that the crux of the argument for prohibition, the social ill factor of "marihuana"(why we compare it to alcohol), was at its inception a fallacious argument purported and driven home by major petrochemical industrialists... To continue on in the same manner doesn't get to the heart of the matter... Just shows we still think about this stuff in too narrow terms despite or perhaps because of our specific relationship with psychoactive strains of cannabis.

I think that is the real thing keeping the FEDS position so solid. If our government is beholden to corporate masters- then the best way to keep us from arguing for the full legalization of industrialized hemp, is to keep it 100% illegal and to keep the media discussion focused on the medical/recreational debate... Which keeps us arguing and fighting to legalize smoking it. I remember hearing a big argument against prop 215 back in the 90s when it was pushed through with so much financial backing, was that it took all the steam out the legal hemp movement by focusing all the attention on medical cannabis.

I think hemp and industrial farming of hemp/cannabis is the real issue. With the potential industrial exploits available in this plant, i think recreational cannabis is a pittance of the real profit that lies behind this plant. Two words: hemp plastic... does anyone really think high THC strains are more valuable than cultivars which produce the best plastic resins... Many markets to exploit

To compare an intoxicant to a plant with 100+ industrial uses- just because one of which is an intoxicant- will only serve to stifle our conception of what we are talking about.... Not that it has anything to do with the connoisseur market or basement growers' livlihood... So maybe my argument doesn't belong in this thread.

....and anyway, so long as there is Utah, Wyoming and Kansas and Nebraska, or even just the people you've been supplying the past decade who know what quality is....there will be basement growers in CO.

 

[organicozarks]

The weed gold rush happened in 09 and lasted til mid 11, fueled after the Ogden memeo dropped. Indoor garden equip sales increased 350%. Look at Sunlight, BWGS, HydoFarm etc moving distribution hubs to CO.


The big business model will not be buying pallets of stuff thru any small merchant. They will go directly to GH or Roots or Age Old and buy direct. So unless you already are an owner of the "shovel factory" and have sourced the raw materials directly to produce the "shovels"... Good Luck

Also it wont be philip morris or glaxo, lilly or pfizer. It will be a massive agricultural company (dole, delmonte, chiquita,or a floraculture company that does the big ops.

Pallets of stuff direct from the manufacturer. Exactly. You took what I said to literally. A shovel manufacturer sells shovels to anyone and everyone. Just like a nutrient, soil, fertilizers, etc..., etc.... sells to everyone. They also don't give a fuck about the laws either way. While all of the people on the boards are trying to grow bigger plants to stay within limits, or pay people to get recommendations, they are selling shit to everyone regardless of what State, and what law.

The real money is not in growing weed. Never has been. Growing weed is get rich quick, easy money that was never meant to last. Everyone should have been using their short term money to start making long money. If you got into this thinking it would be a life time thing then you had your head in the sand.

Perfect example. A guy in the Detroit area buys a cheap house. Grows in it until the house is paid for. Then remodels the house, and rents it out. He uses the equity from the first house to get another house. Then repeats this cycle 20 or more times. After the first couple he can pay people to do the remodels. Now he just maintains his properties, and grows for himself. He has now made long money that he can pass down to his grand kids if he wishes. Selling a couple pounds a month that you grew in your basement will not be something that you can do long enough that your grand kids could benefit from. The prices will only go lower, where as thing like real estate will go higher.

This is just but one example. there are many, many people doing long money things with their short money. The problem is that most people think short so when they get that short money they buy a new t.v., modify their car, buy video games, go clothes shopping, you get the idea. If you have some self control you can turn this short money into something long.

Or you can sit on forums, and bitch about how you won't be able to make any money selling a couple of pounds from your basement because of the new laws.:)