Pubdate: Wed, 18 Dec 2013
Source: Time Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2013 Time Inc
Contact:  http://www.time.com/time/magazine
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/451
Author: Katy Steinmetz

WASHINGTON RESIDENTS SMOKE WAY MORE WEED THAN OFFICIALS THOUGHT

A new report highlights the difficulty of predicting supply and demand
for a legal weed market

Generic Marijuana

Knowing how much marijuana people consume is now a very important
statistic for officials in Washington and Colorado. That number can
help them make sound decisions about how to regulate the supply side
of the country's first recreational marijuana markets. And on
Wednesday a non-profit think tank released a report showing that
Washington residents consume far more weed than the state initially
thought.

In 2012, the Washington Office of Financial Management estimated that
residents were consuming about 85 metric tons of marijuana. The RAND
Corporation now estimates that the number is closer to 175 metric
tons. That's very roughly the difference between about 25 and 50
joints per resident each year. "You need to have a good idea about
consumption to make decisions about licensing, how many distributors
to allow, how many retail shops," says Beau Kilmer, the lead
researcher on the project. "And it's important to have this
information now, because people will want to know what the world
looked like before the stores opened up."

The Washington State Liquor Control Board is the body responsible for
the nuts and bolts of implementing the new law. RAND researched these
numbers at their behest and gave them preliminary findings months
before the Board finalized rules like limiting the growing canopy, the
total amount of square footage in the state that can be used for
cultivating cannabis. So the disparity between RAND's findings and the
bureaucrats' working estimate isn't as vast as it sounds. Still, Brian
Smith, a spokesman for the Board, says that any number is an educated
guess at best. "No one knows what this recreational market is going to
look like," he says. "What we've been trying to do is establish a
legal market where one exists nowhere else in the world. So you base
it on the best data you have available to you."

Getting accurate numbers about the use of illegal drugs isn't easy.
Surveys are often based on self-reports, and people often don't want
to fess up or misreport the amount they use. Many studies on
marijuana, Kilmer says, have also concentrated on numbers of users and
how often they use, without getting details about how much they use or
how potent the product is-which could be the relative difference
between a glass of wine and a night of binge drinking. In their study,
the RAND analysts took data from previous surveys about drug usage
circa 2011, combined them with more recent metrics and augmented that
with their own web-based survey of more than 2,700 residents in
Washington state. To get information about metrics like the amount of
cannabis consumption, they provided photographs of weed piled next to
credit cards and coins. Kilmer says their research is just the "tip of
the iceberg."

On Friday, Washington will close its window for accepting business
license applications from residents who want to grow, process or sell
marijuana. As of Dec. 17, the state had received 1,117 applications
for producing, 817 for processing and 513 for selling. While the state
placed a limit on the amount of land that can be used to grow
marijuana-at 2 million square feet, the size of about 35 football
fields-they did not place upper limits on the number of producers and
processors who can share that total. Officials did cap retail shops at
334, which means the Board will likely have to institute a lottery for
some of the spots.

The RAND survey has a big margin of error, ranging from about 135
metric tons to 225. If it turns out that the state has underestimated
demand, that could make for unhappy shoppers and a run on stores. If
they've overestimated demand, that could lead to lower prices, which
may lure marijuana users from other states where weed is still a black
market drug. And officials want their market to be competitive without
spilling over into other jurisdictions.

Colorado is going to being blazing part of the recreational-marijuana
trail before Washington does. Smith says the state plans to start
issuing licenses to producers and processors in the next few months,
in time for retail spots to open in the spring. Colorado, meanwhile,
is in the midst of what Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown calls
"the December to remember," the final days before pot goes on sale
Jan. 1. Brown says that because of licensing delays, a mere 10 shops
will likely be open when potentially thousands of toking tourists
descend on the town New Year's Day.

His sentiment about so-called "Green Wednesday" sums up the position
of many officials in both Colorado and Washington "Nobody knows what's
going to happen. We're the pioneers here," he says. "It's been a
grind, and it's not over. We're going to ride herd on this industry
and on these regulations. If we don't work, we're going to change
them. And there will be gaps." Smith says Washington regulators also
built their system to have "flexibility," so they can make changes
after the theoretical market comes to life in 2014.
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MAP posted-by: Matt