The Future of Marijuana: Corporate America Takes Over

This thread is for discussing the future, twenty years on. When the last of the Silent Generation will have either passed on or will be in the nursing homes and off the voter registration lists.
By that time the oldest voters will be the Boomers, ....so practically every voter in the U.S. will have at least a passing experience with marijuana, or accustomed to the idea that ordinary people use cannabis and don't end up crazy or suicidal or making mutant babies as a result.

What then?

I think we should be preparing ourselves for the possiblilty that this industry COULD go mainstream, and if that does happen, what will it look like?
Some say it will be like the tobacco industry. But cannabis and tobacco are radically different plants. Tobacco's active ingredient is in the leaf itself; ours, of course, is on the surface of the leaves. A product very different from cigarettes will probably be the result. Hash perhaps, but then there is the delivery system: hash is not convenient to smoke. Budder is also a possibility, but again, not very convenient. (This is Corporate America we're talking about here after all. You know they will ruin the finer elements of a product if they think a competitor has developed a better, more marketable delivery system and could gain marketshare, ...Quality be damned).
Will we sit back and let Corporate America design, market and sell cannabis as THEY see fit?
I think that we ought to be ahead of the curve on this since cannabis is "ours" (at least for now anyway) and begin designing this industry in our minds now, using our imaginations, preparing for the future.

Just some thoughts, but ones I wanted to share and to ask, respectfully, for yours. Peace

If anyone knows of a similar article or thread please post.

gooboo said:

This thread is for discussing the future, twenty years on. When the last of the Silent Generation will have either passed on or will be in the nursing homes and off the voter registration lists.
By that time the oldest voters will be the Boomers, ....so practically every voter in the U.S. will have at least a passing experience with marijuana, or accustomed to the idea that ordinary people use cannabis and don't end up crazy or suicidal or making mutant babies as a result.

What then?

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Well these people are being taken care of as we speak. Why do you think the propaganda about today's cannabis being X times more potent than that which was around in the '60s is being propagated? 'Sure, we'd legalize it if it wasn't a different drug now. Back then, it wasn't an addictive drug!'

well if it is legalized someday, it'll be thanks to its medicinal qualities...so I would think that it's entrance into the "mainstream" will be through pharmaceuticals...imagine pfizer dropping pill production just to make room for high tech cannabis labs (grow rooms)...that would be something.

of course, there are other uses...paper, fabric, food...however my belief is that the first to put their hands on cannabis will be those with the most money...so my bet is on the pharmaceutical sector...

also, cannabis has a recreational use aswell...here is where my doubts are...how will they regulate? how can a cop tell if you're too high to drive?

you could walk into walgreens today and buy 2 or 3 pills or liquids that'll get you high as a kite...fuck that, you could kill yourself if you'd like;all without a prescription...does this mean that MJ will be as readily available as asprin?

maybe, pharmaceuticals will supply the high quality MMJ and for the recreational user, cannabis with a lower THC rating perhaps?

hard to speculate really, lots of posibilities...all I know is, whatever happens, I'll still grow my own.

If you check out my link "a serious talk about legalization" we go in to this a little.

I think that while big buseinss takes over most everything in america, taking over craft and artisian methods is just not what they do. They produce in bulk for cheep and quality is low on the list. As long as it sells for a bigger profit they will keep producing and making crap.... Take a look at bread or cheese you have all sorts of major producers, however I love me some humbolt fog, or Rouge smokey blue cheese. I also like the local artisian baker for my breads. Especially for most all bread except plain white sliced sandwich bread, mainly because he does not make it...

Or think about all the micro brews out there now. America demands quality, butwipper got popular because it was all america had after prohibition as prohibition took out many of the smaller local breweries who had to shut down. Plus there deal with the Govt' to supply the military got the solders hooked on it and so we have had 4+ major wars and many years of basically forcing this standard of beer to generation after generation since the end of prohibition. However with my generation late 20-30's group I find that more and more people are leaning towards craft beers and even the younger generations have been bit with this afinity for good beer over mass marketed $15 for a 24 pack beer. Shit I've purchase single bottles of beer for that price and more.

Now for cannabis we are all striving for the best production that we can get. there is already this culture that we require the best and want the best when it come to cannabis. The only reason most people smoke beasters or brick is that is all they can either get or afford. Now the major corporations are looking at the bottom line and will not care about growing some high quality low production strain ( like the kushes or most heady smoke) they are going to keep the ones that give them the most product to increase the profit margin. Its the crux of big business, the bottom line will eat away quality every time it's the priority.

When I started thinking about my plan I wanted to keep big buseinss out but I think that it might not be a bad to have them to cater to the beaster and brick crowd. Atleast they would help keep the cartels out and could offset the imported illegal crap weed.

Come on over and bring your input.

Thanks guys for your replies.
Raygun, your thread on legalization was the impetus for starting this one, so thank you much for joining in. I wanted this to be a companion discussion with yours.
The points you make are exactly where we need to start.
I have an older buddy of mine in his 70's. He worked for Ma Bell for many years. When they taught him the history of the phone company they told him about when they set about to standardize the telephone itself, they made the decision that it would be of the highest quality at every level: materials, construction, durability etc. (and as anybody over 30 remembers, you could throw one of those babies against the wall all day and it would still work just fine). So your point about craft vs. mass production is exactly what I'm talking about and where we need to concentrate our imagination and efforts:
1) Provide an outstanding product, with an eye towards efficiency and standardization of production, so that if and when Corporate America comes knocking, WE can teach them how, or just sell the business to them outright (with a well paying job(s) as Production Supervisor or Quality Control Manager for the original grower(s) his or her self.)

Now, I hear some of you already: "I'll be goddamned if I'll work for some CORPORATE PRICK, Why in hell do you think I grow weed in the first place?"

I hear you, but we have to start thinking about and imagining this possible future, because, brother, THEY already know how to do what they do. WE have to figure out how to stay in charge of the quality, if and when it comes to that.
We all see what the Mexican cartels have done to the quality of the "average man's dope". and how they've changed the business to a two tiered system; where their product is cheap, and quality is, at best, less than acceptable to downright shitty in the poorest neighborhoods, (well, ok...it was always shitty in those neighborhoods)

2) Start doing some serious brainstorming on what the final product will be. The first challenge being the delicate nature of trichomes and the relative instability (shelf life) of the product as it exists today. (If you ever worked the stock crew in a grocery store then you know what that stuff goes through sometimes before it's waiting on the shelf all nice for you...lol).

I do remember my grandparents having one of those huge clunker phones. you could drop them off the 2nd story and they would still work.

Alright now as for when corpo comes knocking on the door for production of cannabis for human consumption I honestly don't think that they are really going to care about quality. Even after we show them how. Why would they want to spend the extra $$$ when they could pocket that? We are talking about people who will outsource your job if they can get some one to do it for less $$$ in another country...

gooboo said:

..... we have to start thinking about and imagining this possible future, because, brother, THEY already know how to do what they do. WE have to figure out how to stay in charge of the quality, if and when it comes to that....

Click to expand...

This is a good point. We do need to figure out how to stay in charge of it. And not just quality I'm talking about all aspects. That means getting involved. Working with local law makers and enforcers and educating the public. Coming up with sensible laws and guidelines. I'm not in favor of even allowing a system where big business could take hold and market like cigarettes or alcohol but that is just me. Would like it to be controlled on the state level. Have the federal govt declassify it to the same level as alcohol and allow the states to determine the production levels they want and do not allow inter state transport unless the states have voted on allowing it and permits have been issued to the parties allowed to transport.

You could still be a corpo giant and have a chain of cannabis grows across the country or just grow your commercial grade out door for your pre rolled packs of weed (which I really hope does not happen but it will). I think that having locally grown products will be one of the only ways to keep quality up. I don't doubt that there will be some company that finds it worth it to delicately package the product up for long time storage and or transport. They do it now with delicate fruits such as the Asian pear (Fiji pear) they actually wrap them in a Styrofoam netting I'm sure you have seen them in the store.

Human ingenuity will always find a way when the will to do so is burning inside.

Now personally I would rather create a new giant call the cannabis industry which would include industrial (hemp production) and human consumption (yummy sticky delicious buds to smoke, cook, vap.. well you get the point) production. This new conglomerate would be such a huge financial power house it would rival all other major commodities traded in this country. This is the industry I would want to control.

I want to be the new corpo america, the corpo that cares about the nation and its employees. A corpo that wants to rebuild America to the great nation it once was. Building for the future and not building to rake in what we can for now and leave the clean up to the future generations.... I guess I'm kind of an idealist and very optimistic with this aspect


Now with that said hypothetically if Phillip Morris did say they wanted to get involved in cannabis production why not go and get a job working for them to establish their cannabis production. All's that it would take is one person to get the job who knows what they are doing and with the almost limitless resources available for them to make that happen I'm sure that we could see some really good product come out from them. However I don't see the stock holders accepting the profit margin for long and will start to look for ways to cut corners and costs to improve profit margins... Stock holders only look at the bottom line and that is how much more money can this company make me....

However I think the more probable situation is that us the craft cannabis growers will corner the market in their local area and the big companies will have to adjust to the market if they want to compete with my cannabis product. I know all my friends for the most part would prefer what I had to smoke over what they purchased, why, because I grew it and cared for it and it did not get smashed in to bags, transported divided, smashed in to more bags, handled, smashed in to more bags, handled & handled some more.
Now it being legal and they are able to process it and put it in to jars for protection then its all about the product ad the handling before it gets in to the jars and still I know I grow good cannabis and the big boys will have to step up there game if they want a piece of my market.

I remeber a few years ago they developed some thc drug to help people loose weight(go figure). It was a in-hailer. Maybe thats how you will deliver the drug. Im sure there would be canna milks and stuff. Joeshmoe could b a billionaire selling his cannamilk,.

Seeing as how MJ is somewhat easy for the average person to grow I could see how corporate oversight would create laws or licenses to grow.Imagine harsher sentences for growing while big cannibus lobbyists campaighn for more control.I like the idea of buying a pack of blueberries at the local state store, but not if growing my own for better quality will still incarcerate me.Its an herb and should be treated as one.Hell,
My own opinion is that Salvia is more harmful for you.As for delivery, I can see patches similar to nicotine patches.Thc compounded into a slow release form.But that steals from the true variety of the plant itself.different levels of chemicals run thru each plant.I can see the corporate version to be a very bland form at best.

I sense that if helping the economy is anywhere factored into the reasons for cannabis legalization, that there will be very large importation taxes on it to encourage it being grown within the united states. also, im willing to wager that most weed will be sold in specialty stores like dispensaries or coffee shops where the owner would know his shit and therefore the demand for high grade shit would be high.

While studying history can be interesting it can also be misleading. SO I can think of some paths for the future that history has little to say (or does if you look correctly).

The pharma industry is doing MASSIVE research on the endocannabinoid system. There will be innumerable drugs coming out the interact with it. Probably few will get u high but many might address ailments well.

Soon the ability to sythesize pure THC will be here (and many other things) sort of like beer/vodka in bacterial fermenters, or if legalization happens thru extraction of plants. The costs will ne negligible tho the profit margins might be big depending.

IF ya read Michael Pollen on agriculture you can see that capitalism is too good at lowering prices. The US set out to have cheap food and they succedded and now obesityis a problem. They set out to provide important life saving drugs and now many people take too many legal drugs. But many people also take too many illegal drugs so its not just capitalism/governments fault.

Micahel Pollen does seem to be a good read about stuff. Maybe cannabis enthusiasts will need to create a protected marketplace for traditionally grown medicines. If pot got more legal and technology and skills increase then farmers could grow lots of greeat weed, but would that be good? Alot of time all that one needs is one small hit. IF everbody had access to pinnacle quality buds cheap would that really be a good thing? All people really need is a litlle variety of different buds.

The world is transforming and accellerating and the next 5 year will represent changes like the previous 20 which were like the previous 100 years. Exponential change. So 7 years fromn now will be like the last 120 years. 10 years from now will be like the last 300. 20 years from now..........the robots take over. We should try to get the robots to be able to get high cos then they might be sorta cool and enjoy us and work with us. I am sorta serious. The people in power should get stoned and in 29 years the people in power might not be people. So lets engineer in a THC programming module right now into AI. Open source this to sourceforge. However we should NOT engineer in cocaine receptors or the bots will definately be Terminators.

That was fun.

And I am serious, the world is changing fast. Stoners by nature are sorta slow, like chameleons moving. But that is not bad look where the adrenaline pumped finance people got us, or the military, or many other non stoners.

With the finacial calamity facing the world capitalism and all other systems might change radically very quickly. IFF capitalism collapses what will step into its place? Socialism? communism, totalitarianism? Sharia law? Google? Facebook? Skynet? etc? How about an enlightened stoner philosophy. But we all sorta know that if ya smoke too much the stoner manifesto will be unfinished so just a little pot towards the end.

An open source government that has stoner coders and sentinels and pot written into the constitution. That is the future as I see it and all in 20 years. Get a good seat and enjoy the ride.

250 years ago the founding fathers and colonists were complaining about taxation without representation. if weed were to be legalized and taxed, i'd still complain. all they care about is taxes, taxes, and more taxes.

Ben Franklin: "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
Oliver W. Holmes, Jr.: "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
Mark Twain: "I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes."

AND the best of all:
The best things in life are free, but sooner or later the government will find a way to tax them.

hi there folks.

regarding the future of pot i have an idea that a few standardized strength categories would be a corporate approach, namely a product, like tobacco, that has had the cannabinoids leached out with solvents and re applied to product to maintain levels that keep people smoking. A far less competetive product in reality, than what good grown nice buds would be.
definetly the comparison with artisan breads comes in handy, even though i doubt that they would be able to efficiently control their mediocrity in any other form than hasch or oils, I will have to admit that since as any product, and people that buy it vary in characteristics. And we prefer this, a choice appears to be necessary.
i believe that there will be a "commercial" product in cigarette shape with filters in nicely designed packs as patents that allready has been made for those.
very likely large " estate" growers of high grade quality products in larger operations could cater for a need on the larger scale for export quality products canned by the ounce for freshness (as is done right now on slightly smaller scale).
local market high quality products at local coffeeshops etc allready seems to happen world wide on a smaller scale, that hopefully could be catered by people like us, if we so should choose, not a bad way to make a living.

if any one out there has enough money, patent some names and logotypes for your own cannabis cigarette(no tobacco) products, a way of efficiently standardising cannabis product thc content would be the biggest money maker of them all if patented early enough.
hell why not figgure out some methods for large production scale approaches for all aspects of making the product to final packaging .
this are pretty interesting questions to contemplate

but we have to make sure not to have it leached out so the corporations do it before us, I would suggest not communicating any really tangible ideas through this medium since security could be jeopardised easily, rather you think this outfor yourself, invite a few close peeps in on it, plus a financer presumably.
and a lawyer as soon as you have anything do everything right with having your idea witnessed and documented by notary or similar at earliest stage possible incase a dispute occurs later etc

Ive allready toyed with a few ideas and i think anybody with enough go spirit to illegaly grow pot, with all its hassles involved should be entreprenaurical enough to find their angle on market aspects of it for future use, since non as far as the people i know, are as inventive and clever towards finding a way than a stoner looking to finding a way to grow a few and smoke it. in the face of the immeasurable difficulties it entails.

so good luck bro's! chat with ya later

There are some practical impacts.

At some point in the near future, marijuana will be all the health care many Americans can afford.

There are a host of marketing issues in play here, but the capital models are where it will all be made or lost. The right business model that doesn't compromise principles will have a Google-like opportunity for its sponsors.

That's something to think about because Wall Street will not run to our door, only the door marked "successful business model that spews forth cash".

You have to prove it first. Corporate America will wait for the business model to be perfected and then attempt to leverage an enormous future market potential that cannabis represents to institutional investors by starting to buy-up the companies, stabilize a market growth strategy and then cash out.

That will create significant opportunity for anyone who is interested in making marijuana a business opportunity every bit as big as the Internet has been.

I don't know about you, but I don't plan on missing it. I'll have 100,000 square feet of greenhouse and production space humping inside of 180 days - that's not time enough for Wall Street to even count the shekels.

Plenty of people are going to be standing there to provide for my future. I am going to work with them all and help them realize my retirement because if I don't provide for it, it isn't going to otherwise happen...

one thing that we need to remember is that marijuana is not a "product" it is a plant that can be made into a myriad of products. If you are someone who is really into pot you are going to want perfectly grown high potency flowers with known lineage and known growing parameters. This will not change. People who are really into wine do just this. People who are just looking to get drunk can buy mad dog which is still technically a wine. The products WILL be what ever "WE" want them to be, because we are the market.

I also think that some of the above comments about the "corporate" world asking us "hobbyist" growers for advice on growing a plant does not hold true to reality very much. there are people called horticulturists and farmers that could propably do a pretty damned good job at growing the dank.

ya i guess for msot that just wanna smoke something theyll go get there marji joes cigs whatever.
ill stick to growing and friends to share my green with. besides dont we all just wanna be able to take care of ourselves and our friends and family?

What I think would be cool is if they did more research to find out how to isolate all the different highs, they'd have to have 100's of flavors with different effects just like real weed.

Oaksterdam University is my pick to take over. They do weekend workshops in many states that have a legal medical marijuana. They're putting on a class in Michigan in March or May. As long as I get my organization when medical marijuana visits Illinois, I'll have something constructive to do for a change.

medical mariuana or otherwise commercializationo of marijuana through legalization will leave us with less rights as growers and consumers

Do you really think our government is so efficient that if they tax weed that well get that money back in whole or in a large part back to the people who payed the tax?

fuck no

In fact Im gonna go a bit further an suggest that the minute the government make weed commercially viable, we can expect the government will add regulation upoon regulation and big corporations will lobby to have an aggreagate of control.

In other words private growing will be outlawed and only big corporations will have the resources, legal and otherwise to grow weed.


IMO we have more freedom if the governemnt does not regulate marijuana

The marijuana phenomenon is partly so because

WE ARE A BODY THAT GOVERNS OURSELF

OUR OWN ACTIONS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN PAYING TAXES FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO GOVERN US

When the market isnt regulated by the governemtn ment it doesnt have to follow the classical economic patterns that governed markets do

The government should treat weed as if it were air an only get cocerned when ppls actions start fucking up the quality for everyone

it should never be contained controlled or ruled by corporate law let alone the criminal justice system system

very good read.

Just make sure you guys make your seeds and continue to make seeds. If the big corporate guys get ahold of it, and genetically modify it where you cannot clone it and the seeds are not viable, they can monopolize. This cannot happen!
We need to get the genetics back into seed form and quit relying so much on elite clones to fill our desires. Save those seeds.