By Jonathan P. Caulkins, Angela Hawken, and Mark A.R. Kleiman
As officials in Washington State and Colorado try to decide how to implement the marijuana-legalization laws passed by their voters last month, officials in Washington, DC, are trying to figure out how to respond. Below, a quick guide to what’s at stake.
WHAT DO THE WASHINGTON AND COLORADO LAWS SAY?
Lots of crucial details remain to be determined, but in outline:
In both states, adults may — according to state but not federal law — possess limited amounts of marijuana, effective immediately.
In both states, there are to be licensed (and taxed) growers and sellers, under rules to take effect later this year.
Sales to minors and possession by minors remain illegal.
Colorado, but not Washington, now allows anyone person over the age of 21 to grow up to six marijuana plants (no more than three of them in the flowering stage) in any “enclosed, locked space,” and to store the marijuana so produced at the growing location. That marijuana can be given away (up to an ounce at a time), but not sold.
HOW MUCH OF THIS CAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PREVENT?
Paradoxically, the regulated activity permitted by these laws is easy to stop, but the unregulated activity is hard to stop.
Although everything allowed by the new state laws remains forbidden by federal law, if thousands of Coloradans start growing six pot plants each in their basements there wouldn’t be enough DEA agents to ferret them out. The same applies to possession for personal use.
On the other hand, the federal government has ample legal authority to shut down the proposed systems of state-licensed production and sale. Once someone formally applies to Colorado or Washington for permission to commit what remains a federal felony, a federal court can enjoin that person from doing any such thing, and such orders are easily enforced. So the federal government could make it impossible to act as a licensed grower or seller in either state.
Moreover, it could do so at any time. The lists of license-holders will always be available, and at any point they could be enjoined from continuing to act under those licenses. That creates a “wait-and-see” option unusual in law enforcement situations; in general, an illicit activity becomes harder to suppress the larger it is and the longer it has been established.
WHAT IMPACT WILL THE LAWS HAVE ON DRUG ABUSE?
It is possible that removing the state-level legal liability for possession and use of marijuana will increase demand, but there is little historical evidence from other jurisdictions that changing user penalties much affects consumption patterns.
There is no historical evidence concerning how legal production and sale might influence consumption, for the simple reason that no modern jurisdiction has ever allowed large-scale commercial production. But commercialization might matter more than mere legality of use. It could affect consumption by making drugs easier to get, by making them cheaper, by improving quality and reliability as perceived by consumers, and by changing attitudes: both consumer attitudes toward the drugs and the attitudes of others about those who use drugs. How great the impacts would be remains to be seen; it would depend in part on yet-to-be-determined details of the Colorado and Washington systems.
Washington’s legislation is designed to keep the price of legally-sold marijuana about the same as the current price of illegal marijuana. Colorado’s system might allow substantially lower prices. Falling prices would be expected to have a significant impact on consumption, especially among very heavy users and users with limited disposable income: the poor and the young.
WHAT EFFECT WILL THE LAWS HAVE ON DRUG TRAFFICKING?
If the laws affect Mexican drug trafficking organizations at all, the impact will be to deprive them of some, but not the bulk, of their revenues. Transnational drug trafficking organizations currently profiting from smuggling marijuana into the US or organizing its production here cannot gain from increased competition.
The open question is how much, if any, revenue they would lose from either falling prices or reduced market share. The oft-cited figure that the big Mexican drug trafficking groups derive 60% of their drug-export revenue from marijuana trafficking has been thoroughly debunked; the true figure is closer to 25%, and that doesn’t count their ill-gotten gains from domestic Mexican drug dealing or from extortion, kidnapping, and theft. So don’t expect Los Zetas to go out of business, whatever happens in Colorado.
Legal marijuana in Washington State is likely to be too expensive to compete on the national market. But prices in Colorado might be low enough to make legal cannabis from Colorado retailers competitive with illicit sellers of wholesale cannabis as a supply for marijuana dealers in other states. To take advantage of that opportunity, out-of-state dealers could organize groups of “smurfs” to buy one ounce each at multiple retail outlets; a provision of the Colorado law forbids the state from collecting the sort of information about buyers that might discourage smurfing. Marijuana prices might fall substantially nationwide, with harmful impacts on drug abuse but beneficial impacts on international trafficking. (The state government could even gain revenue if Colorado became a national source of marijuana.)
The other wild card in the deck is the Colorado “home-grow” provision. Marijuana producers in Colorado will be able to grow the plant without any risk of enforcement action by the state, and also without any registration requirement or taxation, as long as they grow no more than three flowering plants and three plants not yet in flower at any given location. By developing networks of grow locations each below the legal limit, entrepreneurs could create large-scale production operations with a significant cost advantage over states where growing must be concealed from state and local law enforcement agencies.
Only time will tell whether Colorado “home-grown” could compete with California and Canada in the national and international market for high-potency cannabis or with Mexico in the market for “commercial-grade” cannabis. But the risks imposed by local law enforcement, and the costs of concealment to avoid those risks, constitute such a large share of the costs of illegal marijuana growing that avoiding those costs would constitute a very great competitive advantage, and illicit enterprise has proven highly adaptable to changing conditions.
IS THERE A BASIS FOR A BARGAIN?
Maybe. Federal and state authorities share an interest in preventing the development of large interstate sales from Colorado and Washington, and the whole country might gain from learning about the experience of legalization in those two states: as long as the effects of those laws could be mostly contained within those states. The question is whether the federal government might be willing to let Colorado and Washington try allowing in-state sales while working hard to prevent exports, and whether those states, with federal help (and the threat of a federal crackdown on their licensed growers and sellers if Washington and Colorado product started to show up in New York and Texas), could succeed in doing so. If that happens, it would be vital to have mechanisms in place to learn as much as possible from the experiment.
Things will get even more complex if other states decide to join the party.
So buckle your seat belts; this could be a rather bumpy ride.
Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken are the authors of Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know. Mark A.R. Kleiman is Professor of Public Policy at UCLA, editor of The Journal of Drug Policy Analysis, and author of When Brute Force Fails and Against Excess. Jonathan P. Caulkins is Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Angela Hawken is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.
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This isn’t anything we haven’t covered here before, but here’s another take on the end of impulse shopping for comics, this time via Dean Haspiel. Haspiel covers the problem of shops that only order for pull lists, and suggests that there may be a substitute for impulse buying in webcomics. Linking to it also give us a chance to show this cute picture of Haspiel meeting Wallace and Gromit.
And, that’s where things get interesting as publishers confront the paradigm shift between print and digital delivery and figure out how to preview their product and monetize accordingly. Which is a whole other ball of wax. and confirms to me that a retailers job is tougher than ever before in today’s market. No matter how well my LCS “knows” me there’s no way they can truly know what I will and won’t buy. I’ve come to respect and understand that most impulse purchases may have gone the way of the dinosaur but I sure will miss the latitude of flipping through a $4 comic book that often only tells 1/5th of a story. Hello free webcomics! Luckily, the infinite landscape of the internet allows for comix fans to become aware of what is available for sale, forcing individuals to be their own curators, while encouraging everyone online to enjoy free webcomics from personal blogs to wide-ranging collectives like ACTIVATEcomix, Transmission X, and Mark Waid’s recent Thrillbent launch, to the exciting video game re-envisioning at Namco Bandai’s ShiftyLook website, where me and writer Ben McCool took a short lived arcade game like Warp & Warp and transformed it into a webcomic series called The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies.
@ Brian Hibbs:
I believe it goes something like this: “From my lucky position of living in a city with lots of comic shops, I mistakenly believed I was seeing most of what was available. I now realize that retailers cannot stock that many titles. Fortunately, the internet now allows me to learn about books retailers wouldn’t stock (because they thought they wouldn’t sell) as well as read online iterations of comics that Diamond might not have even distributed (because they thought they wouldn’t sell).”
And I think the larger point about the market is that it would be nice if the pie were big enough that retailers and Diamond felt more comfortable taking a risk on a title that might need time to build an audience. This isn’t a criticism of retailers.
“The idea that any comic store in the world would not stock and promote and sell the fuck out of Love and Rockets and ACME Novelty Library is abhorrent to me.”
I sell what I think are a lot of copies of L&R and ACME — but in no way is it possible to keep the doors open based upon those sales.
I’ve now sold 136 copies of SAGA #1 in the 10-ish weeks it has been out. I’ve sold 54 copies of L&R NEW STORIES #1 in the three and a half YEARS since it’s been released — I sell a copy about every 6 months or so, currently — and the Hernandez Brothers have an entire shelf of their own in this store, have been here in appearance, etc.
It’s nothing to do with comic book stores, either — BookScan sales for L&R and ACME aren’t all that great (about as strong as a “literary” book — and not the “darlings” like Franzen or whoever)
That’s why you have to separate ACTUAL sales figures from your platonic ideal of what they “should” be. You’ll always be disheartened by the real real-world commercial realities.
-B
@Brian–agreed on all points. I don’t in any way think that any retailers are jerks or anything like that; I assume comic shop owners got into it because they like comics, not because they wanna make a mint, so I figure they’re just as interested as I am.
The point of Dean’s piece, as I understand it, and my own reaction to it is that this current setup, in which retailers rely on the “actual commercial reality” of a book but they also self-fulfill that reality. If you don’t ORDER Jack Staff, you don’t SELL Jack Staff, and if the customer doesn’t see issues of Jack Staff on the shelf, he doesn’t know it exists and can’t pre-order it from you.
As a consumer, I don’t care about the commercial reality of an item, be it pickles, music, t-shirts or comics, I only care about the item itself (as a producer of comics and music, etc., I care very much, however!, and so I completely understand and empathize with your point of view).
So the marketplace has changed–not “IS changing”, HAS changed. I don’t need to shop in CD stores anymore, despite my love of shopping for new music–I used to visit the CD store at LEAST 2X a week. It’s easier, it’s cheaper, there’s more variety and I don’t waste money on gas if I do it from my desk. I’m not saying it’s better, I’m saying it’s easier and more comprehensive.
The social and physical qualities of the comic store are still vital and ideal, however. In my opinion, anything that can be done to foster those aspects of the comics reading/purchasing experience is a positive thing. Signings, art classes, book groups, costume parades, free comic book day, art shows…the Fantagraphics Store in Seattle has a once-a-month art show/party as part of the local art walk, and I spend TONS of money there as a result.
In other words, and I think you’d agree, we’re on the same side here. I’d guess you like great indie comics as much as I do and wish they sold more just like I do. But you have a different perspective on why indie comics aren’t carried by many stores than I do; I just know I get frustrated looking for them.
When I worked last in comics retail (ending in about 2005) the shop I consulted with would buy the AC Western reprints. Not because they sold the week they came out. Or the month they came out. However, we’d stock about 5 copies of each (as well as other oddball, off genre titles) because they would slowly migrate off the shelf.
We were in a high foot traffic area, had high kid traffic and eventually some parent or grandparent would come in with a child and they’d see it on the shelf, flip through and pay the $5 – $10 for the reprint.
The shops I go into now don’t do that, as they don’t have the margin or the foot traffic.
Also, I STILL remember Evanier’s story about Groo sales. He’d talk to retailers at conferences…they’d say that they couldn’t sell Groo…Evanier would question them, and they said they’d order 15 for the shelf, and they’d slowly sell until they were gone until the end of the month and they’d say “We were lucky to sell all 15, so I cut the shelf order to 12″ (or some variation).
Brian, I know your shop doesn’t do that and you’re very good with tracking…but you are also the exception to the rule.
wow @matthew your post about the futility of actually going to a shop these days (and the sadness of it) aced it. I am extremely sympathetic with comics stores, but they have to be more than a dry-cleaning run to pick up stuff you have already committed to buy if they want to increase sales. That’s one thing I miss so much about a good record store. But I appreciate the “razor-thin” argument, must be frustrating. It is for us too.
Its like the supermarket — I will definitely try some weirdo cereal or crazy flavored gum at the check-out — but only if I see it (or its on sale). Why are comics different? Because we don’t need them? I didn’t need Smurfs cereal but I bought that!
“As a consumer, I don’t care about the commercial reality of an item, be it pickles, music, t-shirts or comics, I only care about the item itself ”
But of course you do care — if it isn’t commercial, it isn’t stocked.
I can give you an example from my real life: I like any number of microbrews. I tell the guy who runs the local corner store if he stocks beer x, y or z, I’ll buy them from him. He does not think there’s enough people “like” me, so I can’t buy that beer from him. I have to go 12 blocks away to get what I want.
If I lived not-in-San Francisco, I imagine I might not be able to drink those brands AT ALL — beer certainly isn’t the kind of thing you want to ship if you can avoid it (it’s HEAVY)
And so it goes.
The further you want something from the mass, the harder it is to be to find it — let’s PRAISE that most stores have a system you can special order something, then deplore it upon the industry as a whole.
-B
I’ve been a comics fan for 45 years and I’ve never had a pull list.
I’ve ordered stuff through a comic book store a few times over the years. For example, I did just inquire about ordering the IDW boxed set of Mars Attacks variant covers through a local comic book shop.
But generally, if it’s not on the rack, I may not even know a given book/series even existed.
I guess those who like to actually flip through a book to see what they are getting before pulling the purchase trigger are going the way of the dinosaur and buggy whip.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I never use internet shopping for browsing/impulse buys. When I’m on Amazon or what have you, I’m specifically searching for one thing. It’s not practical to look around for “comic books” online, because there’s no real order or easy to sort system in most cases.
I’ve been buying comics from direct sales shops for over 20 years and I don’t see any discernible difference between now and then. During the 80’s B&W boom, there where months were nearly 1000 individual comic titles were released. Minimum order benchmarks forced stores that could only sell one or two copies of something to buy 3 or 5 copies, usually meaning they were going to take a loss in order to carry the book and hope that their X-Men sales balanced it out.
The fact is that most brick-and-mortar stores — no matter what they sell — can’t stock everything. For comic shops, that was true 20 years ago, and it’s true now.
So I think the truth exists at neither extreme of this conversation.
The fact is that the impulse buy is alive and well for a great many readers interested in a great many books. Do I have immediate access to absolutely everything released in a given week? No, of course not. But seriously, I do absolutely have access to more things than I can afford to buy.
Along with everything else I like — film, music, authors, etc. — I have no problem discovering something when I discover it, however and whenever that happens, the same way I discovered The Misfits, or China Town, or Boody Rogers, or whatever.
Not all of it was easily accessible. I had to do a little exploration, like every other human being that existed before me had to do with whatever subject they were interested in. Discovering these things via your friends or your own wanderings or chance encounter or whatever is part of the magic that, to me, is inseparable from my love or art and literature.
Does that mean I’ve probably missed stuff? Yes, obviously. So has everyone reading this. Most of us have yet to read our favorite books, see our favorite films, hear our favorite bands — we just don’t know it. We haven’t discovered them yet. It’s true about comics, and it’s true about almost everything else.
If anything, the internet — which didn’t exist when I was finding a lot of this stuff — has made it infinitely easier to search, find and discover. Having done that, what’s so difficult about asking the lcs that has supplied you with the other 99% of comics that you like to pick something up for you that may be a little off the beaten path? Any shop I’ve ever been to will accommodate when possible.
I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that I live in NYC, but the idea that I can’t find enough great comics to buy on a weekly basis that I didn’t know anything about is preposterous. There’s simply TOO MUCH.
Why a creator would stress impulse buy over pre-ordering is beyond me. Pre-ordering is the key – it puts a tick in Diamond’s checklist. Browsing randomly does nothing to tell the industry that you are interested in that comic. Perhaps that’s fine for the first time you browse, but if you like a title because of browsing, you better be ready to tell someone about it or else it won’t exist. Comics need support.
Being both a creator and publisher (Transfuzion), I assume that no stores are stocking the items for the shelf. They are being ordered strictly by pre-orders. I’m sure there’s some exceptions but I never count on exceptions…the rule for just about any independent comic/book is that you have to rely on customers telling their stores that they want the item.
Do I like it? Of course not. But it’s just the reality. Having owned four shops at one time and being a retailer for nearly 20 years, I saw a dramatic shift in the market during that time…from retailer speculation to being ultra-conservative on orders.
On the Transfuzion titles, Diamond doesn’t even carry half the line. I get that. They don’t think there’s a big enough market for it and in some cases, I agree that the comics market is not the best chance of sales. Many of the books sell well online (and some, exceptionally so) and it’s a lot more profitable for me to sell that way. I sometimes prefer the Diamond avenue even at less profit because of the exposure that the creators want/need/desire…but sometimes, it just isn’t going to work.
When I do have something go through Diamond, I push that the end consumer needs to let their retailer know in order to make sure they get the book. I supply a preview of every book on the website, on facebook, and provide the order code. Sometimes, I’ll do a longer preview.
Even when, as a creator, I go through a larger company such as Image or IDW…I still push that the fans have to let the retailer know. Right now, I have a new Deadworld series from IDW and on the website, I have a form that a customer can download and turn into their store. I can’t count on stores ordering the title for their shelves even though there are variant covers as an incentive from IDW.
And I am also noticing a trend in a lot of shops that might have ’shelf’ stock. The comics are boarded and bagged so you can’t browse through them anyway. When I ask, the stores say they can’t absorb the damage to flipped through copies….
I started as an impulse buyer back when I was a kid buying from the newsstand racks. I switched to reading mostly trades when I worked at a bookstore in college; then around 1991 I went to comics retailers. I started as an impulse buyer at my local shop, and I talked a LOT with the manager and a couple of the other guys who worked there, and slowly started shaping my ideas of what I wanted in my comics. Within a couple of years I went to pre-ordering what I knew I wanted, and I still browsed the shelves for other titles. I still do things that way. I pre-order all the indie comics I want to ensure that I get them, and I’ll browse a lot of the Marvel/DC/IDW/Image new titles. I do this because both my current LCS’s are small stores operating on very tight margins, and my pre-ordering helps them. I prefer to shop local to benefit my local economy.
Great discussion, my friends. Just so we’re clear: I never said you should read free webcomix instead of buying print comics or digital downloads. That’s ridiculous.
I was sharing my experiences with the impulse buy. If my LCS could order one copy of everything that is available every week for everyone to ogle, I would surely spend the time it would take to peruse and knee-jerk react to every item offered as long as I didn’t have to buy them all [who am I, Rockefeller?]. Hell, I do a lot of knee-jerk reacting at my LCS already [it's fun to judge a book by its cover]. And, of course, the notion of a store having everything that is available is preposterous. Part of what I wrote in my essay was about how naive I was about that notion. I fully understand now what it takes to get those books on the racks.
Comix is a tuff biz.
@Matthew and @Brian Hibbs
I greatly enjoy reading both of your comments and respect both of you a lot, but I think you’re speaking past one another. I think you’re both right. It’s sad the comic market can’t support browsing for good, overlooked titles AND retailers have to stock what they can make a profit on.
There’s a solution somewhere in the middle. I know for my eclectic tastes, the Web has been a Godsend. I mean, I both was able to discover and buy niche books due to the Web, and I’m more well-informed on how to ask retailers for what I want.
But please keep discussing, because I enjoy the learning I do reading both of you.
Here’s a solution:
I ask the clerk for recommendations.
“What’s the best thing you’ve read lately?”\
They usually ask me what I like to read.
I answer, “Good books”. (Gruesome horror is probably the only genre I’ll avoid.)
If the clerk has read something, it usually means the store has carried the comic, and probably has copies for sale.
There’s enough good stuff out there to keep me occupied for a while. (I just got around to reading Runaways.) I’ve got stuff from conventions still waiting to be read.