California's Pot Experience - Not Good The article below clearly illustrates why Canada needs to allow LPs to advertise and governments to stop taxing the hell out of cannabis. You can't compete against the black market if you can't distinquish your product versus the black market or be price competitive. California has a population slightly larger than Canada.
In the Toronto area, most people are paying $5-6/gram right now in the black market so why would they pay over $8 all in. They also know the product because they have been buying from the same person/place for a long time. They may not know what's exactly in the product and that the LPs meet stringent quality control HC guidelines, but it has worked for them so far so why switch? So the only net result may be that only new rec. users will buy from an LP?
The other interesting point is over supply in California. Right now it's under supply that's the problem here, but give it a year and it will also happen. The maximum amount of 800,000 kg has been estimated to be the amount for Canada. Just Canopy and Aurora can easily meet that amount so what happens to the other 100+ LPs as they all compete for market share and financial survival? The result will be much cheaper price/gram and the big boys will survive and all the small LPs will get eaten by others or die off. The big boys will use their profits from medical here and their global operations to help subsidize rec. here, but for how long and at what cost?