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Sin taxes are suffering from a shortage of sinners

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36 points hhs | 2 comments | 06 Nov 24 22:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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dylan604 ◴[06 Nov 24 22:52 UTC] No.42070820[source]▶
I'm always surprised at how "little" the use of the taxes for marijuana have made an impact. Either it's being grossly managed, or there's just not as much sales from mary jane as I would have expected.
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aliasxneo ◴[06 Nov 24 23:00 UTC] No.42070907[source]▶
As an Oregonian, I wish I could see the benefits of it locally. We have at least a half dozen weed shops in my town, vastly outnumbering any other category of business, and yet my kids literally couldn't go to school one day last week because the district "doesn't have enough money to staff the buildings."

I know it's a bit of an unfair complaint, but these are the things I start wondering about when we can't even keep our schools open. Where is the money going?

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1. stickfigure ◴[06 Nov 24 23:11 UTC] No.42071015[source]▶
Maybe there isn't that much money in it? The stuff does "grow on trees" after all.

There might be lots of weed stores for the same reason antique stores and cigarette shops proliferate - they're cheap to set up.

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2. akira2501 ◴[06 Nov 24 23:56 UTC] No.42071496[source]▶
There's a ton of money in it. The arbitrage is that one farmer can produce hundreds of pounds of product but cannot possibly warehouse and sell it all themselves. The resulting wholesale prices make setting up a shop that charges retail prices an incredibly reliable way to make money.

There is no mechanism, as there is in food, to support farmers or to control consumer prices. There is also no government funded free marijuana program. It seems like it would have analogs, but marijuana is truly a unique market.