Five fatal flaws of California’s Prop 64
/1 - Allows unlicensed, untaxed, unregulated home grows
2 - Allows advertising & promotion in all media
3 - No law enforcement identified, structured or funded
4 - Penalties identified in Prop 64 are at “non-deterring” levels & cannot be increased
5 - All previous felons allowed into the marijuana industry – rape, murder, selling to minors, using minors to sell
Sneaky aspects of the law also exist:
“Unreasonably impractical” clause - any changes to ballot initiatives passed by voters are supposed to return to the voters; anything about Prop 64 can be changed if it is deemed to inhibit the legal market’s ability to compete with the illegal market without voter approval (all regulation will compromise the legal market’s ability to complete with an unregulated market).
Although touted for it’s ability to raise tax revenue, all tax rates in Prop 64 can be reduced (and possibly completely eliminated) beginning in 2020, tax rates for cultivation can
Sometimes compared to the repeal of prohibition of Alcohol, Marijuana Legalization defined in California’s Prop 64 is nothing like it:
Reasons why marijuana legalization doesn't get rid of the black market...
People seem to have made up a new economic theory about the market and crime. Never has the market moved to eliminate criminal activity. Law enforcement and the judiciary do that. The market moves as shifts in supply and demand occur. Organized Crime can easily be a part of supply and can easily manipulate demand inside or outside of any new regulatory framework - like the ones set up in marijuana legalization bills, like California’s Prop 64. And notably, the illegal players are the market leaders/experts when it comes to recreational marijuana. They have the greatest market knowledge along with longstanding supplier and retailer relationships. They also have vast experience operating outside of legal lines.
All a regulatory framework does for illegal players is make their products more expensive, so if there is nothing compelling them to convert, there is no reason to believe they will come under a legal set of operating rules. In fact, in all RecLegal states, we find robust black markets operating and growing quickly under the veil of legalization.
For law enforcement to help bring illegal players into the legal framework, roles need to be defined, responsible parties need to be identified and funding is required. California’s Prop 64 did none of that. Also, CA-Prop 64 set penalties for violating regulatory rules and guidelines so low (literally 85% of violations carry a $100 or $200 fine) that they practically encourage non-compliance. Penalties like these, make law enforcement jobs much harder.
Law enforcement agencies inside RecLegal states spend exponentially more time dealing with marijuana laws than enforcement agencies outside RecLegal states.
