The sales pitch for medical marijuana is rooted in claims of compassion and healing. It's also a budding commercial enterprise that relentlessly presses the legal system.
Since 1997, prescription pot has become a $1 billion-a-year industry in California. Though nominally a "not-for-profit" business, cannabis growers and dispensers find ways to make their efforts pay off.
Operating in 14 states, marijuana growers and dispensers are banking on wholesale legalization to yield bigger profits in the years ahead. Corporate stock pickers have taken note.
Beacon Equity Research calls medical cannabis a growing business, and recently cited three companies with strong upsides for long-range investors.
"Can [a] company survive on medical marijuana alone prior to wide scale adoption?It may be many years until the present powers-that-be see the benefits in legalization," Beacon opined.
"Its no longer a question of if, it has become almost an eventual certainty," Beacon said of full-scale legalization.
By rough estimates, the legal and illegal marijuana market is valued at $150 billion annually.
Seeing green, 300-plus businesses have applied for licenses to manufacture marijuana-infused products in California alone.
Perhaps betting on the come, the U.S. government registered a patent on "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants" in 2003.
Revenue-hungry states are already reaping revenues from prescription pot. California rakes in about $11 million in marijuana-related taxes and fees, including a $1,250 fee for each of those "manufacturing" licenses. A more recent adopter, Colorado, received about $2 million last year.
Florida state Rep. Jeff Clemens, who introduced a proposal to legalize medical marijuana in the Sunshine State, figures that the take here could be "anywhere from $5 million to $12 million."
EXPANDING THE MARKET, LOWERING THE PRICE
Opening the door to medicinal sales of pot has affected more than the prescribed users -- it's actually depressed the street price in states that have prescription pot.
USA Today reported: "Oregon boasts the country's cheapest pot, with the price of a high-quality ounce running $259.13, according to PriceofWeed.com, a site that uses crowd-sourcing methodology to track marijuana prices around the country.
"Montana comes in second at $273.87 per ounce. Both states are among the 14 to have passed laws allowing the medicinal use of the drug."
Florida, by contrast, weighs in around $425, the report stated.
Legalization advocates say such comparisons point to a healthy trend.
"If you lower costs, you lower the [dealer's] profit percentage. Crime will go down, not up. It will be a safer environment," says Alex Snitker, the 2010 Florida Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate and proponent of legalization.
Clemens, D-Lake Worth, adds: "There's no doubt that the federal government's prohibition and drug war has driven the price up. And, of course, when you make things more readily available they're going to come down in price. That's just the law of economics."
Whether an expanding marijuana is a good deal for society remains a subject of ongoing and heated debate. Social conservatives and fiscal conservatives even disagree on the merits.
Meantime, in medical-marijuana states, enterprising cannabis purveyors are developing evermore novel ways to push their product beyond "patients."
Some law-enforcement agencies fret that marijuana-laced food and drink products are, in fact, designed to seep into the general market. Not surprisingly, pot-infused brownies, candies and chocolate bars are showing up more frequently at schools in states that have legalized medicinal cannabis.
HIGH TIMES: GAMING THE SYSTEM FOR PROFITS
While proponents tout the reputed medical benefits of pot, Montana residents are seeing the weed spreading in a less healthy way.
A Billings health-care provider wrote recently, "What we now have are very few community doctors willing to write prescriptions for 'medical marijuana' for the patients they care for, which was predictable.
"Unfortunately, what came in through the back door are individuals who are willing to go into a community, set up clinics and, for a fee, pass out medical marijuana cards to patients they more than likely have never seen."
The health-care worker, who declined to be identified, continued, "On a regular basis, I now see in my office young, healthy patients who are on 'medical marijuana' for headaches and ankle pain.
"I think that 'medical marijuana' may be worth revisiting at the ballot box and Legislature with a sharper eye toward that back door."
At seemingly every turn, the regulatory apparatus designed to control the medical pot supply is subverted to expand its use.
Medical-marijuana states report a rising incidence of illicit trafficking in pot prescription cards. Such activities drum up business by artificially inflating the market.
In Colorado, a pot "patient" can bestow his right to grow as many as six plants to another individual simply by furnishing that person a photocopy of a prescription card. Such transfers have been replicated multiple times, enabling large growing operations.
As states issue more licenses to grow marijuana, more cannabis farms are looted for their stock.
Clemens says his bill would "protect" the property of pot growers, but the drive for easy money and cheaper narcotic highs is steadily subverting state laws across the country.
Snitker isn't concerned.
"People say [medical marijuana] is a gateway for legalization. I hope that's true.
"The current laws put people in a dangerous position. Let's take the money out of the criminals' hands."
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
