Today’s topic: Should the city of Chico allow retail cannabis? This week, Matt York takes the “Pro” side and Anthony Watts delivers the “Con.”
PRO
By Matt York
The City of Chico’s prohibition of retail cannabis is not working. The black market thrives, criminals get rich, and retail taxes are evaded. The retailers are pot dealers and they can sell to customers who are underaged or have poor mental health.
Our city needs proper retailers to play the role of the Learned Intermediary who interacts with the consumer of a product. Liquor store and gun shop retail clerks are good examples of Learned Intermediaries who help keep potentially harmful products out of the hands of customers who may be prone to abuse.
Liquor store clerks are on the lookout for would-be customers who may be abusing alcohol. Unlike black market drug dealers, retail clerks are trained to evaluate customers, doing their best to determine if the person purchasing liquor is a responsible individual.
With recreational use of marijuana now legal in nine states plus Washington D.C., the latest Fox News Poll finds a record number of voters nationally favor legalization. The poll shows 59 percent of voters support legalizing marijuana. A Gallup poll showed that 64% of Americans favor legalization, and even a majority of Republicans back it. In the near future the Chico City Council will likely vote yes and follow the trend set by Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Canada. According to data from the California Bureau of Cannabis Control, the state currently has 358 licensed recreational marijuana stores. College towns like San Luis Obispo and Davis licensed retail stores last year.
Legal cannabis revenues in the U.S. exceeded $10 billion last year with a quarter-million jobs devoted just to the handling of marijuana plants, according to New Frontier Data, a leading cannabis market research firm. Another report from the investment bank Cowen estimated that legalization in California would triple the size of the nation’s legal pot industry within 10 years. This points to the potential economic impact on Chico as entrepreneurs begin to grow, process and distribute. Like beer and almonds, large volumes of cannabis products produced by Chico-based businesses could be shipped to markets outside of our community, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into our local economy.
Culture is always changing. Chico has become world famous for beer in spite of the fact that Annie Bidwell, the pioneer and founder of society in Chico, was a leader in the temperance movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Today, in a similar vein, the cCity cCouncil’s current prohibition of retail cannabis sales requires change as well.
CON
By Anthony Watts
Let’s look at another college town that tried this experiment. Last summer, I had the opportunity to visit Boulder, Colorado, where retail cannabis is big business. There were billboards all over town advertising “pot shops” and there was even a couple of “chain stores” with presence throughout the city. They seemed as ubiquitous as Starbucks.
The stores I saw seemed well-kept and well regulated, even looking cleaner than most liquor stores. From external appearances, it all seemed like legit business. One thing I noted from viewing store websites, was that cannabis for sale today is far more potent than 30 years ago, due to selective breeding.
From a tax revenue standpoint, Colorado’s 5-year legalization experiment seems to be working. Recreational marijuana sales in Denver from 2014-2017 were $1.038 billion, with a tax revenue on recreational marijuana from 2014-Oct. 2018 of $173.1 million. That’s not small potatoes, and certainly attractive to politicians.
According to recent research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), since legalization, vehicular accidents are up by as much as six percent in Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, compared with neighboring states that didn’t legalize marijuana for recreational use.
A separate IIHS study examined accidents logged by law enforcement before and after retail sales were legalized in Colorado, Oregon and Washington. The IIHS study says data from those three states demonstrated a 5.2 percent increase in the rate of crashes per million vehicle registrations, compared with neighboring states that didn’t legalize marijuana sales.
Citing a state report, the Denver Post reported in October 2018: “Colorado has not experienced an increase in marijuana use among young people, although it was the single most common reason for school expulsions in the 2016-17 school year, the first year it was broken out as its own category.”
They also said: “driving fatalities involving cannabinoids are on the rise”
Proponents often gloss over such issues, but think about this from a January E-R editorial:
“In the aftermath of the Camp Fire, there are more cars on our local roads than ever before. By a matter of simple mathematics, that also means there are more careless drivers on our roads than ever before.”
Do we really need to add increased cannabis impaired driving to that mix due to easy availability? I think the timing is really bad, and a detriment to safety in our community.
