California's--And America's--Black Market Cannabis Problem

Looks like the black market for cannabis is unfortunately alive and well in states that have legalized cannabis. This includes California after over a year of legal retail sales, and in other legalization states even after several years of legal retail sales.  So what gives?

The two biggest reasons appear to be high taxes/prices and a limited number of legal dispensaries/outlets.  The black market can easily undercut such high prices and fill in the gaps left by not enough legal retail stores, and do not have to deal with the rather onerous licensing and other regulations that legal businesses must adhere to.  When there is an artificial shortage of legal cannabis, the black market easily picks up the slack, and where there is an oversupply that makes it less profitable, some of it gets diverted to the black market to sell illegally to other, non-legalization states as well.

And then there is that 21 age limit as well, which is currently the case in all legalization states.  That also encourages illicit sales as lower-hanging fruit compared to legal dispensaries with strict enforcement. Can we get a resounding, "DUH"?

So what to do?  Cut the taxes on cannabis, yesterday, for at least a year or two before raising them again.  Consider a complete tax holiday for a few months, like Oregon did when legalization began there.  Ease up a bit on licensing regulations (and fees) for both producers and retailers.  Allow at least all liquor stores to sell weed alongside their booze, and further consider allowing any store that sells cigarettes to also sell weed as well, including grocery and convenience stores.  Lower the age limit to 18, yesterday.  Encourage current black market dealers to "go legit".  And once these things are done, then crack down hard on the black market, particularly the illegal commercial growers and higher-ups in the illegal businesses and organized crime syndicates.

Problem solved.

And of course, fully legalize cannabis at the federal level as well.  Period.

Of course, once the black market is dead and gone, then by all means, tax away.  But now is NOT the time for overtaxation or overregulation.

So what should the tax on cannabis be?  To start with, we at Twenty-One Debunked believe it should be no higher that $10/ounce for bud and $2.50/ounce for trim at the production/cultivation level, with no other taxes aside from regular sales tax.  Consider a three-month tax holiday as well, like Oregon did in 2015.  Then, after the first year or two, the tax should be no higher than $50/ounce for bud and $15/ounce for trim, much like it is in Alaska today.  As for concentrates and edibles, those are best to tax based on THC content, e.g. 1 cent/milligram of THC.

Remember, there is really no good reason why cannabis needs to be regulated any more stringently than alcohol or tobacco.  After all, while it is not completely harmless for everyone, the fact remains that by just about any objective, rational, scientific measure, cannabis is safer than alcohol, tobacco, most prescription drugs, aspirin, and even Tylenol, while it is less addictive than coffee.  Thus our laws and regulations need to align accurately with reality, since facts > feelings, even in a "post-truth" society.

Awkward Turtle! Mitch McConnell Wants To Raise Federal Tobacco And Vaping Age To 21

In 2019, there seems to be one thing that Big Tobacco, JUUL Labs (which sold out to Big Tobacco), most anti-tobacco groups, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Majority Leader Mitch "Awkward Turtle" McConnell (R-KY) can all agree on.  And that thing is a federal Tobacco 21 law that raises the sale age limit for all tobacco and vaping products to 21 nationwide.  Politics certainly does make some very strange bedfellows indeed!

This would require an act of Congress, of course, as the FDA is explictly denied (as they should be!) the authority to raise the federal age limit any higher than 18.  And unlike the drinking age where the feds had to make an end-run around the Constitution to coerce states to raise their drinking ages to 21, this time they will not have to do so and can simply set a federal age limit of 21.  They already set a federal age limit of 18 as of 2009, so that law can very easily be amended.  Crucially, this law  only applies to the age limit for sales, and only sellers are targeted and penalized (unlike the drinking age in which public possession by young people is an offense), so this is still within Congress’s authority.  

Except, of course, for the substantive due process and equal protection argument invoking the 14th Amendment, since the age limit would be higher than the age of majority, but that is a separate issue from state's rights and the 10th Amendment.  And that can potentially be challenged in court, albeit as a VERY uphill battle.

Thus, this bill is likely to pass, unfortunately.  Write your Congresscritters and convince them to oppose it.  And point out all of the other things they can do instead:

• Raise the federal cigarette tax, apply it to the producer level, and set a national price floor to discourage interstate smuggling.
• Create a federal vape products tax on all nicotine-containing vape juices and pods, ideally proportional to nicotine content.
• Ban fruity and candy flavors in any nicotine-containing product.
• Cap the nicotine content of vape products down to European and Israeli levels.
• Give out free nicotine patches, gums, inhalers, etc. to any smokers who want to quit (NYC already does this.)
• Consider gradually phasing down the maximum allowable nicotine content of combustible cigarettes to a non-addictive level.
• Consider gradually phasing out menthol cigarettes like Canada did and the EU is in the process of doing.
• And last but but not least, enforce existing laws better in terms of the current 18 age limit for tobacco and vaping products.  In fact, amend the Synar Amendment and Program to raise the passing grade for retailer compliance checks from the currently low bar of 80% to 90% and then 95%, and include vape products.  

But do NOT raise the age limit any higher than 18.

Have A Safe And Happy 4/20

We at Twenty-One Debunked would like to wish every cannabis user a safe and happy 4/20.  For those who don't know, 4/20 (April 20) is the unofficial National Marijuana Day, based on the number 420 being code for cannabis dating back to the 1970s.

Please keep in mind that while driving under the influence of cannabis alone is not as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol, it is NOT really safe or wise to do so, particularly with higher doses.  So avoid doing so, and if you do toke up, try to wait as long as you can (i.e. a few hours) before getting behind the wheel, as that can make all the difference.  Also, coffee and sleep will not sober you up--only time can--but they can take the edge off of any residual fatigue.  And certainly do NOT drive twisted (high and drunk at the same time) under any circumstances, period, as that is worse than either subtance alone.  Even fairly small amounts of alcohol when combined with weed can make driving all the more dangerous in combination, albeit with the silver lining that the impairment from such small amounts wears off fairly quickly compared to larger amounts.

The two most important rules for life in general, according to the ancient Greeks, are as follows:  "Know thyself", and "Nothing to excess".  These certainly apply here.  And we will add another one:

"When in doubt, wait it out".

Canada's Black Market For Cannabis Won't Die Quickly

Six months after Canada's cannabis legalization went into effect on October 17, 2018, the black market still seems to be alive and well.  This is despite rather modest taxation of legal weed, and the fact that the age limit is 18 or 19 depending on the province, as opposed to 21 in the US states that have full legalization.  So what gives?

Apparently, there are chronic shortages of the herb throughout Canada that persist to this day, with the legal stores often selling out too quickly, and the black market dealers seem to have no difficulty filling the gap, and cheaper.  Why is this happening?  Well, it is clearly not due to any real scarcity, but the artificial scarcity of overregulation.  Most provinces only allow it at government-run stores which are few and far between, while the few privately-run ones are also few and far between due to a limited number of licenses.  The rollout of legal weed has been painfully and deliberately slow so as not to offend the public-health crowd too much, and they don't even sell edibles, beverages, or hashish yet (until October 2019, a whole year after phase-one of legalization began).  So it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how this would create shortages for illicit dealers to fill.

Best thing for Canada to do?  Implement phase-two of legalization yesterday, as it is long overdue.  Consider a tax holiday for a few months, like Oregon did when legalization began there.  Ease up a bit on licensing regulations (and fees) for both producers and retailers.  Allow at least all liquor stores to sell weed alongside their booze, and further consider allowing any store that sells cigarettes to also sell weed as well.  And those provinces that set the age limit at 19 (including Manitoba, despite their drinking and tobacco smoking age being 18) should lower their age limits to 18.  Encourage current black market dealers to "go legit".  And once these things are done, then crack down on the black market.  Problem solved.

Of course, once the black market is dead and gone, then by all means, tax away.  But now is not the time for overtaxation or overregulation.

Remember, there is really no good reason why cannabis needs to be regulated any more stringently than alcohol or tobacco.  After all, while it is not completely harmless for everyone, the fact remains that by just about any objective, rational, scientific measure, cannabis is safer than alcohol, tobacco, most prescription drugs, aspirin, and even Tylenol, while it is less addictive than coffee.   Thus our laws and regulations need to align accurately with reality, since facts > feelings, even in a "post-truth" society.

Does The Latest Brain Study Vindicate The 21 Drinking Age? Well, Not Exactly.

There is a new brain study making the headlines these days.  This study examined postmortem brains of three groups of people:  1) 11 people with alcohol use disorders (AUD) who began drinking consistently before age 21, 2) 11 people with AUD who began drinking consistently after age 21, and 3) 22 people who did not have any AUD at all, though many of them drank at least somewhat.  And among the three groups, only for the early-onset AUD group were epigenetic changes related to the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) found, particularly in the amygdala, which is responsible for regulating emotions.  These changes are thought to lead to difficulty regulating emotions, problems with anxiety, and even be part of the pathophysiology of alcoholism itself.

So what does this really mean, exactly?  First of all, the researchers seem to have arbitrarily picked 21 as the dividing line between early-onset and late-onset AUD drinkers, and made no further distinction within the early-onset group (i.e., before 15, before 18, first drink, first drunkenness, first regular drinking, etc.).  Secondly, the study looked at a small sample size of people with alcohol-use disorders (think alcohol abuse/dependence, alcoholism, truly heavy, heavy drinking for many years or decades), who at the time of death averaged well over 10 standard drinks per day and over 100 drinks per week, over 30+ years.  Males were also overrepresented (in fact there were zero women in the early-onset AUD group), and the early-onset group drank significantly heavier then the late-onset group.  It is probably safe to say that these drinkers are NOT representative of the vast majority of those who drink before 21, and given how early the onset of early-onset AUD drinkers tends to be, it would also be safe to say that this early-onset AUD group largely began drinking well before 18, if not before 15.  And even among the late-onset AUD group, the relative lack of epigenetic changes certainly did NOT stop them from becoming alcoholics in any case.

Furthermore, there is no temporality to this non-longitudinal study, so we don't know whether or not these epigenetic changes were due to pre-existing vulnerability or perhaps the early use of other substances such as that now-infamous neurotoxin, nicotine. (Most of the study subjects were smokers, apparently, and about 90% of adult regular smokers typically begin smoking before age 18).

Thus, this study tells us NOTHING about the difference between people in general who begin drinking at 18 versus 21.  NOTHING.  Nor does it vindicate the ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age.  And anyone who claims otherwise is being, shall we say, "economical with the truth".

Do Tobacco 21 Laws Really Work?

One preliminary study seems to think so about California's law that raised the age limit to buy tobacco and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21 as of June 9, 2016.  But the devil is really in the details.  The study did not, I repeat, did NOT, look at actual teen smoking rates, only the degree of retailer compliance as measured by decoys, which did in fact improve since then in terms of sales to people under 18.

The two problems with this logic are 1) it is not necessary to raise the age limit to 21 to discourage retailers from selling to people under 18, as simply better enforcement against scofflaw vendors would do the trick, and 2) survey data do not really show any decrease in teen smoking that can be unambiguously linked to the policy change, whether in California or elsewhere with a Tobacco 21 law.  Teen smoking dropped nationwide from 2015 to 2017, and while it dropped somewhat faster in California, keep in mind that California also raised their cigarette tax significantly during that time, by $2.00/pack, and Pennsylvania saw an even larger drop in teen smoking despite keeping the age limit 18 and a cigarette tax hike of $1.00/pack, only half as large.

As we have noted before based on survey data for the past few years, there is really no robust correlation between a state or local smoking age (whether 18, 19, or 21) and the teen (or adult) smoking rate.  The strongest predictors of both teen and adult smoking are the tax/price of cigarettes and the prevailing social attitudes towards smoking, and in fact prices seem to have a larger effect on young people than adults.  It is practically axiomatic.  Retailer compliance is also inversely correlated with smoking by people under 18, but again it has proven to be entirely possible achieve nearly 100% compliance without raising the smoking age any higher than 18, as long as there is the political will for it.  And it doesn't even require the criminal justice system at all, since the best tobacco-control success stories involved only administrative penalties (i.e. fines and/or tobacco license suspensions) against rogue vendors.  Nor does it require criminalizing young people themselves.

If anything, if NYC is any indication, retailer compliance actually deteriorated following their age limit hike from 18 to 21 in 2014.  This was in spite of heavy crackdowns against contraband tobacco during that time.  In any case, while teen smoking rates declined in NYC following the law change, they did not drop any faster than the rest of the state or the nation as a whole, in fact they declined at a slower rate in NYC compared with the control locations, and teen vaping actually increased despite the fact that the law applied equally to e-cigarettes as well as combustible cigarettes.  If that's "success", we would really hate to see what failure looks like.

Oh, and about Chicago's supposed success, keep in mind that raising their age limit to 21 in 2016 was not the only new tobacco control law passed around that time in the Windy City.  And the cigarette taxes there also went up significantly shortly before the age limit hike to 21 as well.  Thus, there were too many variables to really tease out the effect of the Tobacco 21 law on teen and young adult smoking rates.

And in fact, this also once again calls into question how effective the 21 drinking age (and now toking age in some states) is as well.  Spoiler alert:  not very.  Thus, if there is a silver lining to the recent hike in the smoking age to 21 in some states and localities, it is that re-running this same failed social experiment with a different age-restricted psychoactive substance only to see it fail yet again in more modern times, a fortiori, is probably the strongest evidence against the very concept of such ridiculously high age limits in general.  If you give the pro-21 crowd enough rope...

We Hereby Excommunicate JUUL Labs

(Editor's Note:  Twenty-One Debunked has never been affiliated in any way, shape or form with JUUL Labs or any other vaping, tobacco, alcohol, or cannabis company.  And we never will be, either.)

Dear JUUL Labs,

Since you were founded in 2015 as a spinoff from Pax Labs, you have always presented yourselves, at least publicly, as the underdog saving the world in the fight against the evil Big Tobacco.  Little did America know that you were about to pull the wool over everyone's eyes and make fools, and then cynics, of us all.

Why do we hate thee, JUUL?  Let us count the ways:

• You loudly proclaimed yourselves as the enemy of Big Tobacco, but you began to copy their playbook awfully quickly in terms of advertising to young people and cynically attempting to implement your own "anti-vaping" progams in schools. (You claimed that was just an oversight.)
• You chose a much higher nicotine level for your products than other vape brands, by far.  That was most likely to try to edge out the competition, and it worked--at the expense of a new generation of nicotine addicts, that is.
• You lowered your nicotine content when selling in the European Union and Israel (who by law set the maximum allowable nicotine content of vape products much lower than the American version of your products), but curiously still do not offer such reduced-nicotine products in the USA, or any nicotine-free products.
• Until very recently, you failed to adequately warn users that your products contain nicotine and are addictive.  Many young people did not even know that all JUULs contain nicotine, let alone such a high level of it.
• When the FDA finally blew the whistle on you, you responded in the most cowardly way possible.  You decided to throw young adults under the bus by calling for the age limit for vaping products to be raised from 18 to 21, and you banned 18-20 year olds from your website.  And you still made no significant changes to your highly-addictive products, save for the removal of a few flavors.
• And worst of all, you literally SOLD OUT to Altria Group (aka Philip Morris), whose name is literally synonymous with Big Tobacco.  You know, the evil industry you once claimed to be fighting against?  Your deal with the devil may have made you richer and bought you some temporary protection, but everything comes with a price, and your day will come very soon.

Thus, in light of the above grievances, we hereby excommunicate you.  Here is your bell, book, and candle, you cowardly quislings.  Now go take your crack nicotine and shove it!

Say It Ain't So, Governor Cuomo! New York State To Raise Smoking/Vaping Age To 21

No, this is NOT an April Fool's Day joke.  New York State is now set to become the eighth (or ninth?) state to raise the age limit for tobacco and vaping products to 21.  The legislature passed it, and Governor Cuomo is expected to sign it.  If (really, when) he does, it will take effect in 120 days.  Which is very, very soon.

Many counties and cities in the state, including NYC and most of its "backyard", already set the age limit at 21.  That of course includes my home county of Westchester, which raised it from 18 to 21 last year.

The only silver lining is that the new age limit of 21, like the old age limit of 18, will only apply to vendors, as it will still not be illegal for "underage" people to possess or consume tobacco or vaping products.   But that still does NOT mean we should support it one bit!

With the "bookend" states of California and New York now down, plus several other populous and not-so-populous states, not to mention hundreds of localities across the country, and even our nation's capital, is our movement lost for good?  We sure hope not.  It looked like the Tobacco 21 movement had stagnated last year, but now with New York, Utah, and possibly Washington State next to jump on the bandwagon, perhaps we got too complacent last year.  It certainly does NOT bode well for any near-future attempt to lower the drinking and toking ages to 18!

Hindsight is 2020, both the year and the vision.