A couple of us have forgotten what it felt like to buy cannabis before the days of legalization. Cannabis has barely been legal for a decade in the USA, and only for a few years in some places. Sadly, cannabis is still illegal in some states and many countries all around the world.
Back in the days, buying weed used to be a full-blown event. First, you needed to spend hours calling and texting your entire town looking for the person who had the goods. Then you had to wander into a dingy, dark alleyway waiting for your dealer to show up. And choices? Forget that. You took what you were given and you got the hell out of there, retreating to the safe place of your home.
Luckily, for some of us, those days are over, but I think it’s worth remembering them because it helps us to appreciate the legal market and the implications of that.
Walking into a dispensary and getting organic weed that you know has been grown sustainably and organically is a new thing for the world. And just as every beer drinker deserves a legal market, so do cannabis consumers.
The goal of this article is to educate people about the many advantages a legal cannabis market provides.
In a legal market, the product is controlled
We already talked about the “you got what your dealer gave you” phenomenon. Looking back, it’s almost hard to accept that we ever did that. Sometimes you got your hands on the dankest weed and at other times you were dizzy with the fumes of whatever was sprayed on your buds. And there was nobody to complain to except your fellow smoking buddies.
After the advent of legalization, cannabis became controlled. It means that when you walk into a dispensary, you are getting what you paid for. If you paid for a 25mg edible, then that’s what you are going to eat when you leave the shop.
Those who want to grow cannabis to be sold in dispensaries or used to make other cannabis products are also controlled. Growers can’t cultivate commercially without a license, and if they claim to be organic, you can be that someone is going to go out there to confirm that. The controlled nature of the distribution of cannabis is a product of the legal market that consumers deserve.
You get to choose
If this isn’t the most exciting aspect of the cannabis industry as a consumer, I don’t know what is. It’s like we didn’t know how many different ways we could enjoy using cannabis before people could start experimenting with it legally. Dispensaries are full of buds, edibles, tinctures, oils, salves, high CBD, low THC. Being able to choose an appropriate product for the mood changes everything about the way that we consume cannabis.
Choice; it’s the darndest thing, isn’t it? You don’t even know how important it is until someone takes it away. Or in this case, no idea how important it is because you never had it until now!
The choice in terms of products allows people to choose how they want to consume, rather than the single possibility of the black market: buds.
A legal market creates a safe and open environment
There should never be a taboo about something that so many people use. The legal market has opened up so many doors for people to communicate about cannabis, to be innovative about it and to share their experiences. But this environment was nearly absent pre-legalization.
A safe place to share information without the threat of prosecution isn’t the only environment we’re talking about, though. Being able to hang out with your friends, share marijuana and know that where you live in the world is a safe place to do so is invaluable.
A legal market makes medicine accessible to everybody
Slowly but surely, doctors and scientists are coming to the understanding that cannabis is not as bad as it was once portrayed. It even has medicinal qualities that a lot of people can benefit from.
Before the days of legalization, there were a lot of people who did not have access to medical cannabis which would have benefited greatly from it. With a legal market, this opportunity becomes available to everybody.
In the legal market, there is CBD-only medicine which makes cannabis accessible to those with a low THC tolerance, including children and seniors.
The legal market also means that to get access to medical marijuana, nobody needs to go into a dingy alleyway anymore. Finally, the legal market has opened the door for credible medical cannabis, thanks to CBD and third-party laboratory testing.
The economy benefits from a legal market, too
The individual is the one that we have spoken about the most so far (and the most important, of course), but we can’t neglect the economic benefits from a legal market, too.
Colorado and California are perfect examples of the kind of revenue that a state government can achieve with legal marijuana. If tax revenue is put to good use, then the community as a whole benefits from this change.
Not only does the economy of the state improve, but the prices of cannabis drop. With a competitive market, people can purchase cannabis for reasonable prices – rather than the “I’m desperate, I’ll pay anything” price.
And of course, there are jobs to think about. Can you imagine how many job opportunities the cannabis industry has opened up? It has created a demand for growers, scientists, lawyers, financial advisors, budtenders, edible manufacturers, paraphernalia makers – the list goes on.
Plus, with states saving money on law enforcement because nobody needs to be incarcerated for smoking a joint anymore, hopefully, governments will put money back into the community.
Well, it’s tough to find a negative aspect of legalizing cannabis. The legal market has opened up opportunities that we could not even have predicted. Every individual and every community, whether they use cannabis or not, deserves a legal market and all of the benefits of it.
Leave a Reply