After a full year of government legalized and regulated marijuana sales, nobody is making money other than the criminal element that has been in the business all along. These people know their market, look after their market and have no problem with undercutting government pricing.
What the police and politicos, who planned this failed legal pot operation, across Canada do not understand is that it is a service business. When you build barriers to providing service, your business goes to those who can provide service. Your friendly pot purveyor down the street is there for you. This person is making substantial profits up and down the supply chain in a commodity that is no longer illegal for you to have in your possession.
The first mistake, the politicos made was to give the challenge of planning a legalized marijuana market to a cop. And, to make matters worse, this is a cop with a dubious reputation when it comes to human rights. Former Toronto police chief Bill Blair’s officers kettled Canadian citizens out for an evening stroll during the G20 in Toronto in 2010, denied them their rights and created what is considered the worst abuse of human rights in Canadian history. He, somehow, got swept into office as an MP with the Trudeau tide in 2015.
And with a political point-man such as this, a stiff, oppressive plan was put in place by the civil servants, who also seemed to know little about the product or its marketing. Their objective, so they said, was to undermine the illegal trade, instead, they guaranteed a lucrative illegal market for years to come.
Their first mistake was to put the actual marketing chore in the hands of the provinces. They built more barriers to success. In Ontario and Quebec, there are some 25 stores in operation in each province plus a mail order system—for a total market of over 23 million people. In Ontario, selection of retail outlets is by a strange form of lottery and there are huge gaps in market coverage. Instead of an open legal market, we have a highly restricted market where there is only profit for the illegal sellers.
-30-
Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]