Oakland marijuana plants

After overcoming the federal prosecution hypothesis and the drug cartels competition medical marijuana growers from California face a new threat: the “Wal-Marting” of weed.

The Oakland City Council is going to license four pot production plants where marijuana will be raised, packaged and processed into different goods. The pot plants will have to pay 211,000 dollars as a growing permit fee per year, 2 million dollars insurances and 8 percent of the total gross sales to taxes. Marijuana advocates argue that the intention of legalizing the outlaw industry will drive the small growers out of business and that the industrial scale gardens will not only hurt the environment, but will also reduce the quality of the merchandise, leaving people with fewer seller options. As a response, the supporters of the proposal say that the small growers that produce pot in covered warehouses and that do not pay any kind of taxes are more likely to harm the environment and produce low quality marijuana then the large producers. Adding to that, the large plants will create hundreds of jobs for the city.

The four retail marijuana stores from Oakland had 28 million dollars total gross sales last year, so if the sales remain the same the city will get 1.5 million dollars from the business tax each year. A November state ballot measure intends to legalize marijuana possession for adult recreational use and to allow local governments to license and tax marijuana sales that are not intended for a medical purpose.

For now, there is no indication of the supply side of the marijuana business from California and when asked where they get their stashes from, sellers say they rely on a variety of sources, including farmers who grow the pot outdoors in northern part of the state, contractors who grow marijuana indoors in ware houses or even in their homes, and customers who grow their own and sell the surplus. The Berkeley City Council has also approved last week a measure for the November ballot to authorize, license and tax six pot cultivation sites. The six companies running the sites must agree to donate some pot to low income users and use organic gardening methods as much as possible.