I made a series of notes to myself at the beginning of the session, re all the promises the DFL made in the wake of their “trifecta”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were a lot of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of them won’t matter for a while, or won’t be measurable for quite some time. (Is the DFL really <\/em>going to cut child poverty by 1\/3 in the next year\/)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But one can be tested today: “Did the DFL legalize Cannabis?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they did<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m a little surprised. While on the one hand a buzzed, stuporous electorate is a perfect DFL audience, I figured the issue was worth more to the DFL as a social wedge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, the law is full of gimmies to Big Pharma, and handouts to well-connected political insiders<\/a>, and will benefit small producers not one iota. And as Colorado discovered<\/a>, the taxes and regulation won’t actually affect the black market criminal sale:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, in 2023, Colorado\u2019s cannabis entrepreneurs face a perfect storm of problems: too much supply, not enough demand, plunging prices, heightened competition in other states, the allure of black market weed, a lack of cannabis tourism and more. That\u2019s on top of the shaky economic forecast for the rest of the year, even though\u00a0inflation is steadily slowing<\/a>….Earlier this year, marijuana giant\u00a0Curaleaf<\/a>\u00a0shuttered its operations in Colorado, along with California and Oregon. \u201cWe believe these states will represent opportunities in the future, but the current price compression caused by a lack of meaningful enforcement of the illicit market prevent us from generating an acceptable return on our investments,\u201d CEO Matt Darin said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There is ample evidence the DFL spent even less time thinking about unintended consequences than Colorado did:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n