Show HN: Potbox – A premium cannabis subscription club
potbox.com
potbox.com
Raich was a terminally ill old lady, living in CA, who in compliance with state law and under her doctor's oversight, was growing 6 pot plants for her personal medical use. She was subjected to a federal DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) home-invasion raid wherein said plants were seized.
Raich argued the legality of growing the plants for personal medical use under state law, intra-state, alleging doing so in no way affected interstate commerce and thus was not subject to federal regulation & seizure (and violently so at that).
The Court ruled that her growing her own pot for personal use did affect interstate commerce by reducing demand in an illegal interstate market.
No, I'm not kidding. Yes, they said that.
While the current federal administration may be opting for leniency in enforcing controlled substance laws, the next (1.5 years away, whichever party) may choose to resume aggressive enforcement to the limits of the law which SCOTUS has defined, which as Raich shows is very, very expansive. I suspect a, say, premium cannabis subscription club might be first on the DEA hit list.
[PS: the ruling in Raich may have been affected by the pending Stewart case, which was remanded in light of Raich. If Raich had been ruled to the reverse, Stewart would have in likewise reasoning legalized convicted felons building machineguns at home (legal under Washington state law). I'm not kidding about that either.]
* Cannabis has demonstrated medicinal value, directly contradicting statute. Statue provides no evidence of, nor ability to verify, its claim that there is a lack of evidence of medical value.
* Individual prohibition requires a constitutional amendment a la amendment 18.
* Founding leaders of US grew hectares of cannabis. System is in gross hypocrisy.
> Cannabis has demonstrated medicinal value, directly contradicting statute. Statue provides no evidence of, nor ability to verify, its claim that there is a lack of evidence of medical value.
Please cite a case of a law overturned in the US judicial system because of medical value.
> Individual prohibition requires a constitutional amendment a la amendment 18.
Again, please cite case law. I'm pretty sure you don't need a constitutional amendment to outlaw possession of a type of good.
> Founding leaders of US grew hectares of cannabis. System is in gross hypocrisy.
Seriously? It wasn't outlawed until the modern era. By your logic, should slavery still be legal since founding fathers owned slaves?
I think the logic is sound: Party A (statute) argues a->x, b->y, c->z. Party B shows a, b, c don't actually hold in reality and therefore you cannot conclude x, y, or z based on a, b, or c.
Statue is therefore meaningless.
Amendment 18 & 21 set the precedent. Amendments 4, 9, & 10 provide huge cover.
>By your logic, should slavery still be legal since founding fathers owned slaves?
I didn't expound my whole logic, but the largest difference is that slaves are human beings and cannabis is a plant.
Also note, slavery is outlawed by the US constitution. Cannabis is not.
Your reasoning has been tried, and failed. People are working very hard to make such reasoning work, and are making little progress.
The point ctdonath was making was that the Supreme Court has ruled that private, personal cultivation of marijuana, even when in accordance with state laws, has an effect on interstate commerce. The relevance of the effect on interstate commerce is that the activity - growing marijuana - falls under the purview of federal law and federal law enforcement agencies.
To bring it back to your suggestions and the distinction between conventional and legal arguments, ask yourself this: for each suggested argument, think of two worlds with one being a world where your argument is absolutely correct and the other being a world where your argument is absolutely incorrect. Is there a difference between these two worlds in whether or how personal marijuana cultivation affects the illegal interstate marijuana market?
This line of argument can be used to justify federal involvement in anything. This makes it useless in drawing any interesting distinction, nor does it address any of my original arguments.
However, I do not think the US Supreme Court has real claim to be the final, global arbiter. Usurping power is, however, the US Supreme Court's demonstrated prerogative. It's pretty much how the institution began its life.
- "enter" was pretty far on the right side, and didn't seem intuitive
- may want to add geo-ip service to forewarn visitors of legal status and if it's a serviced area
Other comment:
- sampler packs would be nice for first-timers. especially strains on the far sides of the spectrum. maybe do a free sampler if they buy 3 months in advance?
- when do you plan to expand into CO, OR, AK and WA?
- for year-round sun growth are you just planning for low yields in the winter time? is your supply accommodating that?
Ian here, co-founder, thanks for that feedback. We’ll be refining those sections :) Effects can range from person to person, especially depending on how much cannabis you consume. We also stay away from making promises on that end as well, as it does not effect everyone the same. As a general rule of thumb (we should make this more-clear) sativa has more of a “mind” high and indica has more of a “body high”. Depending on what the plants are crossed, variations fall somewhere in-between those two experiences depending on the person.
Either way best of luck to these guys.
Do you have the data from your study? I'd be interested in checking it out.
I know I sometimes enjoy getting to try a sampling of something that varies a lot. Especially, if I do not have much experience in that particular market. How (or, better, why) should I discriminate between the thousands of strains of cannabis? Why not try out a variety of claimed high quality strains?
The only way you seem to be able to pay is with a credit card, so I guess they already solved that challenge?
Well thats why people like going to a dispensary and talking to the staff, even other customers are very helpful in this area. Usually the staff are incredibly knowledgable (this is just in my own personal experience from researching this).
>Why not try out a variety of claimed high quality strains?
Most dispensaries do offer various levels of quality usually you can tell by price, but like I said theres not a huge amount of variety. Its seems this company is going with the sustainable/ethical route, but I really don't know how most indoor grown hydroponics is not sustainable or ethical.
I'd really be concerned with the credit card processing. I would guess even if they were just a middle man to other dispensaries its still likely to get shut down or I have heard of high risk credit card processors, but I really don't have many details on that.
Is this still the norm as other delivery methods have gained popularity? I haven't smoked cannabis in a long time but I also stopped smoking anything a few years ago as well. Aren't more people moving toward edibles, vaporizers, and the like? I know you can use "plant" cannabis in lots of vaporizers that minimize the combustion of vegetable matter but I guess I just assumed that in places where you weren't dependent on black market dealers trying to cut costs and streamline, it would be more about hash oil or candies or any other form with no smoke or at least minimal smoke involved.
I guess I don't know much about the market as legal options aren't available to me and I got tired of dealing with the black market sources. Just seems most friends who still use cannabis for fun or for medicine have moved past joints and bong rips whenever possible.
Seems like a "premium" service would be just the place to find those arguably premium products.
Edibals are too much work for a daily smoker and hard to dose. They are not sold widely at all in the UK.
Ian here, co-founder of Potbox. Very good question. This is something that we might explore in the future, but right now we wanted to get our core product out and branch out from there based on feedback. From our experience, concentrates seems to be a lot popular with younger age groups that don’t really seek out farm-to-table products (they are also super strong). On your last point, a lot of our user-base use premium vaporizer systems like the Volcano, which is able to vaporize your cannabis without the use of chemicals. Most concentrates are made using chemicals (like butane) and you will taste it, we want to avoid adding any additional chemicals into something that can be enjoyed safely without them. We aren’t ruling it out, but for right now we are focusing on our core product, premium all-natural cannabis.
As for editables, this is a very gray area of the cannabis industry right now. They can be pretty scary if taken in excess and it’s very difficult to measure exact doses contained within an editable and how much someone should consume. The way we see it is that there’s just so many variables in editables, from production to effects, that we thought we’d hold off on that for right now.
Until Federal Law changes, this is a real threat to cannabis users. Not to mention, the ATF could go after anyone that uses marijuana and possesses a firearm. The way the statutes are written, it is a federal crime to possess or use a firearm (even for sporting purposes) and be a consumer of cannabis.
It is very much illegal to cross state lines with cannabis currently, so we're starting in California and then will expand to new markets thoughtfully.
Ian here, co-founder, we are not in San Jose just yet. Right now we are only in San Francisco and Los Angeles with plans to expand, stay tuned!
Know your market: a substantial portion of your patients may be older people who have trouble getting around and less-than-perfect eyes, unlike a 20-something web designer with 20/20 vision and a giant monitor.
You can still fit the same text in about the same space or just a little more: simply choose a more readable font, and reduce the excessive line height to allow for a larger font size.
Ian here, co-founder, thanks for the feedback. You make a very valid point and we are working to refine our design and type on our site. There’s definitely room for improvement and optimization on that front. Keep an eye out!
In fact, most of the dispensaries in the Bay take CCs.
It really is a state-by-state and bank-by-bank (or credit union) issue. Same with the credit card gateways -- some are completely fine with it and others freak out right away.
When I spoke with SVB they told me their view on it was similar to Bitcoin. Oddly enough, SVB will no longer open accounts for Bitcoin startups. :-p