Cannabinoid Investor Note for Feb. 28/19Cannabists, when you are waiting for something to happen it can seem like an eternity for patience to pay off. The money puppets in Washington and elsewhere talk and talk and talk, but getting to action; well, that seems to take a lot of time on a lot of issues. That said, there has been some good forward momentum of late that these articles discuss.
New Hampshire, New Mexico, Hawaii and Vermont are the States that are showing the most promise of legalizing sooner than later. What happened to New York and New Jersey? From the sounds of it a bunch of infighting over how much excise tax or money the money puppets want to extract from the sale of cannabis. I mean the Governor of New Jersey wants something like a 25% excise tax on cannabis while the Senate thinks that 10% is a better number. Any money puppet that thinks he can slap a 25% excise tax on cannabis and eliminate the Black Market is dreaming. Very strange that some money puppets have not figured this out yet with the knowledge already garnered from those places that have already legalized.
It is common knowledge at this point that if you over tax the product people will source it from the Black Market instead of the over priced legal avenues. I mean you would really think that the learnings from the end of the prohibition of alcohol have been forgotten forever. The prohibition of alcohol ended on December 5, 1933. The US government at the time knew they were up against well financed bootleggers with excellent distribution channels. What did they do about it? They kept the price of legal alcohol low to incentivize consumers to buy legal over the bootlegged stuff they had been consuming. And guess what happened when the bootleggers supply chains broke and they were put out of business by legal sales? You guessed right; they start raising prices and based on my latest visit to the liquor store they have never stopped. And I can’t buy cheap bootlegged booze because to my knowledge no one bothers to make it. Cannabists, many of these money puppets lose IQ and EQ because they are so blinded by dollar bills, but the writing is on the wall in terms of effective taxation strategies to end prohibition.
Here is an article on how every single American Presidential contender now supports legalizing cannabis — including all the Republican hopefuls:
https://outline.com/2V7Wq4
And last but not least here is an advertisement from MedMen (I would take a position in MedMen, but the top management have been proven to be rather greedy which is a shame because MedMen is doing many things right…but if you can’t trust management to protect shareholder interests than investing in the company is just not an option). This ad is done very well and I expect there will be many more to come from many different companies. Shows how advertising will begin to win over more hearts and minds as the industry evolves. Here is a link to the ad:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90311755/spike-jonze-and-jesse-williams-made-a-totally-normal-weed-ad-for-medmen