Cannabis-related twattishness

The Evening Standard has launched a laudable campaign to get cannabis legalised in the UK, hooray, nonetheless, the article highlights some cases of extreme twattishness:

Nova Cannabis, just down the road from Hunny Pot, was the third brick and mortar [cannabis] store to open in Toronto, and I pitched up to find the owner, Heather Conlon, looking shell-shocked in her first week of business.

The 50-year-old was one of 58,000 people to enter the licence lottery, and her win has turned her into an instant multi-millionaire. “My husband and I run a locksmith so running a cannabis business is totally new to us,” she said.

The Toronto government should have auctioned off the licences rather than turning a random few people into 'instant multi-millionaires'. It is a protection racket, after all - you pay us, and we'll lock out the competition. Or they could have handed out more licences, or imposed an annual tax on licensed premises, such that the value of the licence is minimal.

“Our competition is not the other legal shops like Hunny Pot, it’s the prolific number of illegal dispensaries that operate without the same restrictions we have,” said Conlon. “They can undercut us on price because they don’t pay tax. It’s unfair. I hope they will make arrests and shut the lot of them down.”

The mark-up for anything illegal, like cannabis, is enormous because of the risks (being shot by a rival dealer or going to prison), the overheads (mainly bribes and hush money) and the fact that a lot of supply is confiscated (by the authorities or other dealers). So unlicensed dealers will have to drop their prices significantly to compete, not the other way round. Dealers aren't paying tax to the government as such, but a bribe to a government official is still a kind of tax.

And if unlicensed dealers have drop their prices significantly, that in itself is A Good Thing. The trade is now less attractive to criminals, so attracts fewer of them and acquisitive crime falls. If the government wants to shut them down, it just has to keep dropping the tax until illegal supply is simply not a commercially viable enterprise.