>but I've come to understand that illegal growers often use toxic pesticides that further increase yield-- and thus it is important to know where your weed comes from.

A lot of illegal weed is from the same supply chain as the legal stuff, but unreported, similar to bootleg products that are sourced from the same factories as the authentic stuff.

I do agree that it's a problem not knowing where it came from, but it seems that legal weed has really raised the bar, and the street has to compete at some level. I've heard street weed is a lot higher quality now than pre-legal weed.

Will the action the article describes, removing the 1%-5% tax, help much? It sounds like the other price advantages of illegal businesses will remain. Maybe removing this tax will reduce some paperwork?

The illegal businesses are probably still evading personal income tax, payroll tax, corporate income tax, sales tax. In addition to the pesticide stuff you mention.

I cannot speak from any position of authority-- but I don't think even 5% would be a major reduction in price-- but its likely the only thing the city of SF can alter. My feeling is illegal weed is at least half the price of the legal stuff.

The rest is state regulations. The laws are as onerous as having to tag and register each plant, what happened to it, their weight at harvest, and sometimes genetic testing of those plants.

The idea is to create a paper trail such that illegally grown weed can't be laundered into being legal-- but my god is it a MESS.

>I thought it was all about taxes at first, but I've come to understand that illegal growers often use toxic pesticides that further increase yield-- and thus it is important to know where your weed comes from.

I've always preferred to pay the higher prices for this reason, and the fact that I know exactly how potent something is.

To say nothing of fentanyl. I'd like to remind you also that paying higher prices for something is a privilege of our class.

So I'm going to work blue here for a bit...

Regarding contamination and unsafe drugs-- my best friend and I had a tradition. Once a year around the end of the year, we'd get a couple grams of cocaine and go to someplace fantastic like the Queen Mary, or Disneyland, or the Long Beach Aquarium, The San Diego Zoo, etc. We called this tradition "Merry Cokemass". We had an agreement to never do any drugs outside of these appointed 24 hours.

Anyways, we have both decided that this just isn't safe anymore.

govt should think different.. ask for smart people to fight to make the bestest safest process and product, then distribute over the nation and forget it (it's safe, it's cheap, it's smart. end of story)