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Comment by hncurious | Hacker News Reader

The regulators were way too aggressive. They overburdened farms and dispensaries to such a degree that legal sources are having a hard time competing with the black market even though dispensaries were considered essential businesses (able to stay open) through the pandemic.

Now California is bailing out the industry to the tune of $100M.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-14/californ...

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This is the consequence of the “regulate and tax the hell out of it!” policy that some Americans want to apply to all vices.

But that's what lots of the legalization activists asked for. I heard "just make it legal and you can tax it all you want" for nearly half a century. Well, now they got what they asked for. IIRC, one of the few voices that said "legalize it and don't tax it at all" was Ron Paul. Everyone else was so enthralled with finding a way to get it legal that they really didn't give much thought to how the government could end up making legal weed a lot less desirable than illegal weed.

Not sure why you said “but”. Those are the people I’m talking about. They were wrong.

Taxing is only half of what GP mentioned - regulations can be even more costly and burdensome than taxes if done poorly (and they often are).

I’ll admit, the rapid turnaround from black market to corporate welfare within such a short timeframe is kind of shocking.

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