Photo credit: Elsa Olofsson – unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/a-plate-of-marijuana-buds-on-a-doily-HbvmGpjIHDQ?utm_content=creditShareLink&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash
by Debbie Burke
Recreational marijuana is now legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Seventeen more states permit it for medical use.
As a result, dispensaries pop up like shrooms.
Weed tourism inhales vacation dollars from millions of visitors. In 2022, Forbes estimated marijuana-related industries were worth a smokin’ $17 billion, with Colorado leading the pack at an estimated $1 billion annually.
“Bud and Breakfasts” are a growing industry, offering lodging, recreation, weed tours (like wine tours but smokier), and dining experiences that go beyond Alice B. Toklas brownies.
Here are amenities:
Spread cannabutter on your toast or enjoy a steak sautéd in it. Take cooking classes in how to infuse cannabis into gourmet meals. Sample different varieties at the bud bar where a friendly “bud-tender” guides smokers to find their elevated bliss.
Hotel rooms may offer decor with black lights, psychedelic posters, and Cheech and Chong movies, along with snack bars if guests develop the munchies.
Budandbreakfast.com is Travelocity for the 420 crowd.
Federal law still criminalizes marijuana as a Schedule I drug under the 1970 Controlled Substance Act. Efforts are underway to reclassify it as Schedule III. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s position is “low-level cannabis crimes would not be a priority of the Justice Department.”
Wink, wink.
Because many banks remain leery about running afoul of federal law, business is often done in cash.
More winking.
Enterprising entrepreneurs don’t let grass grow under their feet.
Between 2017 and 2020, Brian Corty, 53, of Delta Junction, Alaska, sought investors for Ice Fog Holdings, LLC, a “’Bud and Breakfast’ which was described as a marijuana theme park, where they would grow, cultivate and sell marijuana, and allow customers to use marijuana on site.”
Corty purchased a building in Salcha, AK, and told investors he was already raising product there. He convinced 22 people to invest $600,000 in the growing concern.
Instead, he used the money for “personal gain, to refinance his home, and pay off debt.”
“Mr. Corty lured investors with promises of prosperity and guaranteed returns, when in truth, he diverted the investor money to fund his own lifestyle,” said Special Agent in Charge Rebecca Day of the FBI Anchorage Field Office.
On May 3, 2024, Corty was sentenced to two years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Additionally, he must pay $580,000 restitution, and is subject to three years’ supervised release.
In an industry that’s growing like a weed, one wonders why Mr. Corty chose to defraud investors instead of using their money to build a legitimate marijuana grow operation and theme park.
If he had, he might be living high now.
Let’s wind down today’s post with those immortal stoners, Cheech and Chong.
~~~
TKZers: Have you heard of Bud and Breakfasts? Know anyone who’s visited one? No need to name names!
With all due disrespect, Mr. Corty probably was sampling his wares so often that running off with investor cash seemed really cool. Mr. Corty was subsequently named “CEO most likely to be found passed out with a doobie up each nostril.”
“Documented marijuana-related traffic accidents that required treatment in an emergency room rose 475% between 2010 and 2021.” –CNN.com
“The percent of crash deaths involving cannabis more than doubled from 9 percent in 2000 to 21.5 percent in 2018.” –bu.edu
“A Florida man with a long history of traffic violations smoked marijuana oil the night before a crash that killed eight Mexican farm workers…” –multiple sources
“The second most common drug found in drivers in crashes, after alcohol, is marijuana.” –Daily Cal
One of my professors at USC told me about a brilliant student, STEM major, 4.0 GPA in his junior year, who was unable to complete his senior year, flunked all his courses. He’d been introduced to marijuana his last summer at the university.
A friend’s roomie’s supplier was arrested. A day later, the roomie was running around the apartment, frantic, scraping dottle from all the ash trays, trying to get enough for a pipe load.
They told us it was harmless. They said it wasn’t addictive. They said it was safe. They said it didn’t kill people.
They lied.
J, I’m with you. I wasn’t happy to see it legalized in Montana.
But it’s all about the money. Since recreational marijuana became legal in Montana in 2022, it’s brought in $100 million in tax revenue. The vast majority comes from recreational sales, way above medical use.
Some money goes to addiction treatment, veterans, and wildlife conservation (not sure how wildlife is defined), but the vast majority goes to the general fund.
Government agencies are not going to give up that money.
Yes, Debbie, the government is not our friend.
Not at all surprised to see this is a thing in 2024.
Brenda, this B&B variation was new to me. As the old song says, “Anything goes.”
Adding to JG’s commentary above, the link between heavy cannabis use and psychotic breaks with schizophrenic or violent crime has been well documented. (See Alex Berenson’s book, Tell Your Children.)
The British have paid attention and are not following the folly as we are here in the U.S. The cannabis industry here, with all their money, is hiding and deceiving the American public. They pushed for “medicinal use” knowing that 90% of the sales would be diverted to recreational use. Even the timing of placing recreational use on ballots was done strategically.
If you have children or grandchildren in high school or college, please read Berenson’s book.
Steve, I always appreciate your knowledgeable perspective from the medical viewpoint. It will be interesting to study the longterm health effects after a generation or two of legality.
When I was young, smoking was totally acceptable and nearly universal. Then health consequences became known. Will the same eventually happen with marijuana?
Boy howdy, am I out of this loop! Bud and Breakfasts? Really?
Even in the mid-60s when I was sprouting into my teen years, I didn’t try any of that stuff, no, not one.
I think this new *industry* is yet another path leading us down a rabbit hole we’ll never find the end of or get out of. With people up top laughing all the way to the bank.
All of the above can be classified as IMHO.
Rant over, and have a super day staying out of the rabbit holes!
Deb, only research rabbit holes for me, too! I grew up in the thick smoke of the ’60s (cough, choke, sputter).
Cough, cough! Yes, when I was at Douglas, they converted a 12′ x 30′ tool crib to office space without considering the ventilation requirements for human occupancy. The smoke was so thick, you could barely see from one end of the room to the other. I refused to enter there.
It doesn’t surprise me that this is happening. Mississippi recently legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, and I’m sure that’s all it’s used for. Yeah. right. I look for it to be legalized for recreational purposes within the next 5 years. Unfortunately.
I’ve known so many people who let marijuana destroy their dreams and a few who went on to heroin. But I hadn’t heard of Bud and Breakfast.
Patricia, your five-year prediction is probably right, if not sooner. Once government tastes those tax dollars, there’s no going back.
Sad. I never understood the attraction of illegal (and now legal) drugs. I guess I was too busy working. I wonder if governments have folded into their financial calculations the cost of legalizing a drug in terms of paying for illness, chronic addiction, accidents, deaths, etc.
Marijuana is illegal in Tennessee, but judging by the way people around Memphis drive, I’m guessing it’s finding its way across state lines.
Right, Kay, and add to the back door costs this: Years and years of inability to work, so folks are collecting unemployment, disability, and welfare checks-all on the taxpayer’s dime.
Sorry, guess my rant wasn’t quite over. 🙂
Kay, we were in business where alcohol/drug use was cause for immediate termination. The moral and financial liability of impaired employees working with dangerous machinery was too great.
Smoke doesn’t pay attention to state borders, does it?
Coincidentally our local newspaper ran an article today about the release of study results re: use of marijuana daily in 2022 surpassed # of people drinking alcohol daily. In 2022 17.7 million people used pot daily or near daily compared to 14.7 people who drank daily or near daily. Experts said frequent users are more likely to become addicted and also more likely to experience cannabis associated psychosis. Not to sound cynical, but from a writer of crime fiction perspective, it does give us plenty of fodder for stories. From what I saw in my college days, keeping it illegal only encouraged people to use it and upped the ante. Buying a “dime bag” of “primo stuff” was a high all its own. I think legislators figure people will use it anyway so there might as well be ways to make money off it. Like the reasoning behind ending prohibition. I’m not one to judge because in my “wilder” days I preferred drinking to pot because it was legal. But it wasn’t any better for me. Anyway, I suspect we can wring a lot of good stories out of the whole sorry situation.
Kelly, how right you are–stories are born from misery and tragedy and the supply is endless.
B/c banks are leery of federal law, they often won’t accept $$ from marijuana vendors. So cash piles up. Recently I heard an anecdote about a shipping container packed with cash. What could possibly go wrong? That tidbit will find a way into a story at some point.
I haven’t heard of a bud and breakfast. LOL Bud-tender cracks me up!
Sue, I wonder how many times each day the tender says, “This bud’s for you.”
Hahaha!
Had no clue there were Bud and Breakfasts, Debbie. Guess those investors’ money went up in smoke.
LOL, Elaine! Cheech and Chong’s movies always cracked me up.
The human brain is the most complex purposeful system known to mankind. We still, despite decades of studies, have only a fragmentary grasp of how it functions. Imagine a brand new device, the KZB Mechanism, a thousand times more complex than the Antikythera Mechanism, sitting on a table, its precision gears and levers gleaming, steadily rotating. Now imagine that someone comes in and deliberately pours sand into the works, in search of a buzz. The chance of the mechanism continuing to be fully functional is zero. That’s what the government has fostered by legalization of marijuana.