Marijuana company buys California ghost town | Hacker News Reader

Marijuana company buys California ghost town

m.sfgate.com

52 pointscft28 comments

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6rjpji/marijuana_comp...

"Their balance sheet is appalling, and I have no idea who would loan this company the money to purchase the land, as it goes against almost every underwriting principle. The company brought in $378k in revenue last year and had an operating loss of $1.8 million."

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6rjpji/marijuana_comp...

"They have about 14.5B shares currently issued, and are authorized to issue a total of 25B."

They have no water rights sufficient to create a farm in the middle of the desert. They bought a town which only draws enough water for personal use and some small gardens.

It's also on the way to Las Vegas, but requires you to detour on a dirt road for a significant distance. That's not going to happen -- it's simpler for tourists to just continue on their way to Las Vegas.

Calling Nipton a "town" is a bit of an exaggeration, too. From what I'm seeing in the satellite photos, it's barely a wide spot in the road, in the middle of the desert, near what might have once been a train station. I've seen truck stops larger than this.

(And I'm not exaggerating when I say "in the middle of the desert". It's right on the edge of the Mojave National Preserve. This is not a good place for anything, let alone for agriculture.)

Assuming i've found the right place[1], I doubt Nipton would even be counted as a village in the UK.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Nipton,+CA+92364,+USA/@3...

That's the one. If you zoom in to Street View, you can see the back side of the "Hotel Nipton".

I've driven through Nipton more times than I can count. It's a ghost town, I don't know how people survive there.

"They have no water rights sufficient to create a farm in the middle of the desert."

They may have no water sufficient to create a farm in the middle of the desert, but I don't think it's a problem of water rights.

As a Colorado native I have a good sense of water rights, but as a farmer in California I have been (pleasantly ?) surprised by how little restriction or ownership there is attached to water here ... it is very unlikely that the water rights are not attached to their parcels and its possible that they were never detached at any point.

All they have to do is dig a well. Maybe nothing will come out, but nobody will stop them ...

A sealed greenhouse can be very water efficient by recycling the water.

i mean if they want to have some legal weed(and gambling) there is primm in the same amount of distance from the off ramp that you would be taking anyway. 10 miles on a small road vs. 10 miles on a freeway to primm.

All the smell of a scam. The journalists at various papers that are disgorging this thinly veiled PR release as if it's news should be put on your shortlist of garbage journalists.

I'm surprised corporations haven't bought ghost towns, and turned them into themed resorts, etc. A place like this that is built for one person, the enjoyment of cannabis, with the right amenities, could be huge.

Since it's still very illegal at the federal level, the pot industry is generally very investment-averse. Financial companies don't want to get involved (already subject to plenty of federal regulation) and the risk of suddenly having to shut down overnight after trying something big and entirely new is another issue. Cannabis-based businesses tend to be pretty modest cash-only ventures that have learned from previous mistakes. A ghost-town-turned-themed-resort is asking for a lot of very negative attention with a business model that hasn't had to work out all the kinks of avoiding the DEA.

Which brings up another interesting question: Why haven't states taken a hard stance against the federal government on this? What would happen if Colorado state troopers stood up to federal DEA agents and said no, you have no authority here. I seriously doubt it'd come to blows, or gunfire, but in this case I think the states need to take a solid, protective stance against federal intrusion. For once, this type of resistance is a good thing.

The US fought it's most deadly war over that type of situation. There is zero doubt that federal law supersedes state law, regardless of how much we'd rather it not be. The DEA agents would simply arrest the state troopers for obstruction, and every judge would be okay with it.

I'm very much against the federal ban on marijuana, but it doesn't even begin to make it onto the list of things that I think are worth taking up arms for, much less expecting someone else to take up arms on my behalf. (Even though, yes, I'd like them to stop taking up arms against pot heads). There's also still a lot of opposition to the current, permissive marijuana regulation in Colorado, so it's hardly the kind of thing the state is in a position to take that hard a stance on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman,_Chicago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_towns_in_the_U...

It usually doesn't work out very well. People don't like the idea of a company getting involved with their lives when they're off the clock

There's still a lot of fear with the federal government still seeing it as illegal. Jeff Sessions could destroy your investment overnight.

Tell me more? Are you referring to specifically cannabis, or setting up corporate towns?

Obviously cannabis; Sessions has an obsession with destroying its presence in the US.

Well, that's somewhat similar to what I am doing with my new startup - only that my mission is not to build resorts, but to build meaningful, resilient towns: https://www.gitbook.com/book/simonebrunozzi/how-to-build-a-c...

I frankly don't understand why I have been downvoted. Anyone cares to tell me why? I would like to know.

I'd be surprised if anyone is willing to travel to Mojave for a "vacation" when you can get these products in just about every major city.

Surprised to see no mention of Fallout references in the comments here sofar.

I wonder is anyone in this company involved in this purchase a gamer.

  One of the first products made in Nipton will be hemp water

They've gone too far...

  Huge amounts of hemp must be processed in order to draw a small amount of CBD

OK, I guess it's just CBD, as opposed to THC which would be a potent bottle of water... Antianxiety aqua seems less extreme.

I didn't think CBD was soluble in water, like many cannabinoids, but apparently there are forms of it which are. Still, seems like a tincture would be simpler.

A town where you can be on vacation and consume drugs.

Is not that Las Vegas?

Really it's almost anywhere

Amsterdam.

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