Marijuana, Market Forces and Why Colorado’s New Pot Law Could Actually Be a Black-Market Boon

“What’s the price of an ounce of marijuana in Colorado these days?” I e-mailed a friend who I thought might know. The reply: for the top quality stuff, about as much as a share of Apple stock. Apple shares were going for $528 recently, which raises an interesting arbitrage possibility: What’s your guess about the price of Apple and pot a year from now, when Colorado’s legalization of personal pot possession establishes a legitimate commercial market for weed?

My play would be to go long on Apple and short hemp.
Colorado has made the possession of marijuana legal but hasn’t figured out much else. Looking at it from a classical economics perspective, the legitimization of marijuana raises the issue of what happens to the demand, quality, supply and price of a product that has now become legal after decades underground.

Tobacco industry makes inroads into Himachal

A labour-intensive bidi-making project that is expected to generate around 40,000 jobs in chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal's home district - Hamirpur - was cleared on Saturday by a high powered single window authority chaired by the CM.
The project proposal of West End Tobacco Pvt Ltd, along with eight other new proposals and 21 expansion plans, was given a clearance today, said a spokesman of the industry department.

Will plain packaging of cigarettes work? A look at the current evidence

Earlier this week an article announced that the UK is to bring in legislation that will force tobacco companies to sell their products in standardised plain packaging. This is similar to legislation Australia brought in last year.

Although there has been no official confirmation from the Department of Health (in fact, David Cameron stated the decision has not been made yet), the public consultation on plain packaging closed a while ago, so an official decision is likely to be reached soon.

At last glance there were more than 800 comments on the Guardian article. People are arguing strongly on both sides of the debate: is plain packaging another chip at our free will, undermining our freedom of choice, or a move to protect the most vulnerable in our society from a highly addictive, deadly habit?

Let's look at the evidence. What research has been conducted to assess whether plain packaging will make any difference to the uptake and maintenance of smoking habits, and indeed on shopkeepers who will be selling these non-branded packets?

I'll start with the money.

Tumorous cigarettes – and the rest of the year in shockvertising

What's bulbous, comically gruesome, and worth around £2.7m? The answer is not, in fact, Boris Johnson, but the government's new anti-smoking campaign, unveiled last Friday. The "hard hitting" initiative is the first graphic anti-smoking government campaign to run in the UK since images of fat-dripping cigarettes made the nation feel uneasily queasy in 2004.

After an eight-year hiatus from grimagery you'd think the Department of Health bods might now have something really quite sickening up their sleeves.

Tribal Cigarette Brands Take Shelf Space; Avoid State Excise Taxes

Less than two months after New York State lawmakers won a court battle to collect excise tax on cigarettes sold on Indian reservations to non-tribe members, some Native American tribes are taking to manufacturing their own cigarettes to avoid the levy.
In mid-June, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court lifted a temporary injunction against the collection of the $4.35-per-pack tax. Immediately following that decision, Robert Odawi Porter, president of the Seneca Nation of Indians, said the tribes would turn to making their own cigarettes, therefore exempting them from the fee.
"While the state may be able to embargo through taxation premium brands from entering our territory, it cannot tax the brands made in our territory or any of the Six Nations," he said, as CSNews Online previously reported.