As of this week, the state of Washington will join Colorado in achieving recreational sales of marijuana for the general public. Though not everyone in Washington has been receptive to the idea, one of the first people in hopes of opening a recreational shop is a former math teacher named John Larson. Judging by this year’s accumulation of marijuana revenue sales in Colorado, the former teacher understands the basic principles of “supply & demand”.
[ NY Times Excerpt va Kirk Johnson]
–“If people were dumb enough to vote it in, I’m all for it,” he said over a cup of coffee near his shop here in southern Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. “There’s a demand, and I have a product.”
After nearly two years of anticipation, excitement and dread by still-divided Washington residents, the first licenses for legal sale of recreational marijuana will be issued Monday, state officials said. Sales are to start about 24 hours later.
But the rollout is not unfolding as anyone quite expected it to, from the seemingly unlikely businesspeople like Mr. Larson who are leading the charge to the downright odd pattern of where the first shops will open.
Seattle, for example, with a population of 652,000 the state’s largest city and perhaps most marijuana-friendly, will have only a single store initially, and a tiny one at that: 620 square feet, called Cannabis City. But Vancouver, about one-fourth Seattle’s size, in a largely conservative county that has tried to slow or stop marijuana businesses with strict land-use rules, could have three shops. Tacoma, also in a county that has tried to block marijuana businesses, may have four.
The pattern came down to chance and circumstance, said Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which wrote the regulations and administers the system. With multiple inspections and requirements to meet, “a lot of people weren’t ready,” Mr. Carpenter said.
Only about 20 licenses out of 334 authorized by the regulations will be granted in this first wave, Mr. Carpenter said, with many would-be operators slowed by financing troubles, inspection questions or other issues. Mr. Larson, for example, applied for three licenses in three cities, and two were denied, in each case because state inspectors said the boundary line was too close to a licensed day care center.”–
Product Of Society 