Yeah, when you have pre-established wealth at that level, little ripples in the economy isn’t enough to rock the boat (baby) too much. The slow-but-sure death of the American Dollar? They’re not even worried about that. Like you said, a lot of value is just tied up in more stable expressions of wealth. Land. Houses. Expensive Vehicles. Art (yes, that old racket), and of course- the ultimate tool of laundering, a Business. Money comes out and stays out, and the businesses go and pluck what’s left over. They didn’t even have the good sense to stop when everything was fucking gone already. So they just started printing more currency and pretended like they didn’t take it all already and started making up excuses as to how they didn’t just try to flex on the entire planet as it’s “rightful rulers”. So now they’re just stuck scratching their heads when naturally occurring innovation comes through and starts breathing life back into the field they picked dead. They thought they took it all, why does more just keep… growing? So they’re backpedaling, trying to grab as much as they can. Because it’s growing faster than they can pick it. And they’re scared.
They’re so big and capitalized and international and diversified that none of these thing would make them blink an eye.
“We have weathered 17 major international wars and the Great Depression and this ain’t nothing to worry about.”
Exactly. Old money has that old mentality. “We’ve seen this before. We’ll just wait until it goes away.” is generally the consensus. To be fair, it’s worked for them so far.
Addit: 
I think I’m shifting a little political. Sorry, I’m done. Clean it up if y’gotta.
Of course quarterly profits are important but they are much smarter than that.
Old broads getting it.
Excuse me. I think it was boomers which caused an explosion in cannabis use to begin with. Early on it was use mainly used by musicians and migrant workers, at least that was narrative I believed. Then the baby boomers told the establishment we don’t t want your war, we want our rights and please don’t bogart that joint. Boomers may be returning to cannabis consumption because they have been acclimated to it in their youth. Now that it’s legal and folks don’t have to worry about losing professional licenses they are coming back. Back in high school everyone smoked, maybe not as often as me but on weekends or in summer they smoked. I know cause I had a rep of not talking and folks who you were not expecting to smoke were buying.
Belive it or not I still don’t talk that much. Drives the wife nuts wondering what I’m thinking
Well, I’m an older boomer, and with the exception of regular tolerance breaks, I haven’t stopped using ganja since 1967. A substantial number of my old cronies quit cannabis for various reasons over the past decades, and many are now starting up again.
So, certainly they’re not brand new smokers.
My 70-something mother and stepfather went on a cultivation facility tour a couple months ago…
Old people who gave me shit for smoking weed as a kid are now smoking weed as older people.
It makes me both laugh and angry at the same time.
On the other hand, laws against distilling are seldom enforced. Laws regarding fermentation even less so.
Withering Green Rush: California Cannabis Breeding at a Crossroads
ON A WINDY road off Route 101 in Santa Barbara County, just past the vineyards and bed-and-breakfasts, are some of the largest legal cannabis farms in the world. Nearly 100 acres of hoop houses as far as the eye can see. There is heavy traffic entering the fortified gates of these farms, close to 100 migrant farmworkers are shuttled in and out daily, and almost as many refrigerated trucks hauling off the harvest for processing. One such farm might be guarded by white Rhodesian security contractors who claimed to be working in Iraq until recently, the workers might be overseen by a Dutch manager who up until recently ran a massive cut-flower farm, and the farm might be owned by a kid in his early twenties whose rich father bought it for him. The product is of pitiful quality—one of the many signs that these new farms are a far cry from the sometimes idealized, but rapidly collapsing, family cannabis farms nestled in the hills of Northern California, where for decades alternative lifestyles were carved out while producing that dank weed. The consensus among farmers who have grown cannabis well before legalization is clear: legalized cannabis in California has been an epic failure.
Excerpt from
Iconic store, RIP.
Pretty well written piece too
Generally an interesting read, though I’m not sure I agree with the core part of this paragraph:
“Selecting for visually attractive cannabis (“bag appeal”) also meant selecting for the maximum number and size of trichomes (“frosty buds”), where secondary metabolites such as cannabinoids and terpenes are produced. These high-potency cannabis varieties were becoming necessary for hardcore stoners who were quickly building a THC tolerance. This sparked the journey of increasing THC percentages, reaching the notoriously dubious but still mind-boggling 35 percent THC lab results that are the market preference today.”
They had a good thing going, a little dry recounting the history of cannabis in California perhaps, but then they drop the veil of an academic approach and make a broad generalization about “hardcore stoners” and don’t really capture what’s been going on with THC numbers and user-experienced potency. Weird because they’re apparently a plant science person who worked in the industry… sounds like they worked for Phylos (or maybe that isn’t weird, maybe that’s the problem with industrialized/capital-driven cannabis? TBF they are focused on that as a problem)
Still, it is balanced by parts that the author does capture pretty succinctly, for example:
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Most people struggling through cannabis prohibition wanted legalization or at least decriminalization, and to empty the prisons. But the way legalization was implemented in California, it remained unclear if the crop was a drug or an agricultural product; stuck in limbo with the worst of both options proved in time to be the worst way to go. Overregulating certain aspects, treating cannabis as a drug, and under-regulating other aspects led to an economy-of-scale agricultural consolidation, as evidenced by the type of farm described in the opening paragraph. We are left in a situation where the rich history of California cannabis is being eliminated one farm at a time.”
PS: One thing that always makes me a little nuts (and I’ll admit there’s a possibility I’m actually wrong on this)… people “in the industry” seemingly always say “well, that’s what the customer wants, hyped pretty weed with astronomical THC numbers.” I’m not sure I buy that the demand occurred in a vacuum - I think the sellers have been pushing those qualities are super-desirable, and the consumer has bought in and run with it.
Unintended consequences. When you take more pride in your bottom line than you do in your craft, this is what happens.
I agree. I also believe it’s a generational thing as well. Someone mentioned on another thread that the new generation doesn’t even know what prohibition is, let alone what the old strains were. They were born into a legal market and prefer the designer strains. Just like designer clothes. The younger generations are as judgmental as they’ve always been in past generations. If you show up at a party with C99 and everyone is smoking Runtz, you’re an outcast.
Unless it’s a party of weed nerds in which case you’re a dangerous rebel and hero.
People care about potency and price not trendy strain names.
I think you are giving “people,” particularly younger people, far too much credit. Younger folks are generally why short lived fads (no matter what the product) exist. It was the same when I was a kid.
Haha @Mota has a Supreme T-shirt. He waited in line for 4 hours for the privilege.