The Seattle Times recently published an interesting editorial. The subject was the proliferation of illegal and unlicensed marijuana delivery services in the Seattle area. According to the Times, there are about 30 services that will deliver an ounce of untaxed pot to your door in less than an hour with one simple phone call.
Delivery services are illegal in Washington. Plain and simple. However, the editorial writers were really drawing attention to the fact that these illegal services seem to have no problem advertising in places like Leafly, right next to the legal retailers and growers who pay taxes, obtained licenses and spent small fortunes to own legitimate businesses that play by the rules. I often scratch my head at some of the things I see being done or tolerated in this young and fast-growing industry. Perhaps the strangest of all the counter-intuitive attitudes is this willingness amongst some in the legal marijuana community to look the other way as untaxed and unregulated “bad players” siphon off customers with the allure of cheaper tax-free weed. Will it take a string of bankruptcies to get the legal marijuana community to start pulling together on this issue?
It’s time the highly regulated and overly taxed legal business community make it clear that efforts like blatant advertising of non-taxed businesses will not be tolerated by its members. Washington marijuana companies contributed $83 million in taxes to the state in 2015. While the amount might seem high in relation to the overall gross (it is!), it’s also something the legal community should be proud of. Schools and roads (and many other societal needs) are funded with taxes, and they benefit everyone. The bad players, who still want to have their cake and eat it too, are taking profits away from the hard-working people who — in some cases — risked their life savings to do the right thing.
What to do? My advice if you’re a law-abiding, taxpaying, legal marijuana business, is to make it clear to Leafly and the rest of the companies that advertise illegal untaxed pot dealers that you will no longer support them while they promote businesses working at odds with the legal industry. Money talks, and protecting your own self-interest by refusing to fund the very companies that promote the black market is a basic right. It’s a smart first step toward financial security and the likelihood of this exciting experiment succeeding. After all, if the Seattle Times feels the need to speak up because the legal marijuana community won’t — or hasn’t — that’s a big problem in my view, and it’s not just with the folks flaunting the rules.
In a sense, it all boils down to this: Two key ingredients behind a well-functioning democracy and economy are that businesses all operate on a level playing field, and that the bad players not be allowed to conduct operations with a huge financial advantage.
You, the legal, taxpaying business owner, should demand that the organizations promoting illegal delivery services to do so.
Greg James
Publisher