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by starlust2 3148 days ago
The largest grossing pot store in WA state, prior to legalization in OR, wasn't in the states largest city of Seattle. It was located in Vancouver, just a few miles from Portland.

There is definitely a benefit to being the first mover in a region. You are correct that states will still see significant tax revenues and jobs that persist.
1 comments
rconti 3148 days ago
Right, because Seattle probably had lots of smaller neighborhood shops, whereas the "destination" shops in Vancouver were likely bigger and closer to the freeway.

Not that Vancouver doesn't have a decently-sized population in its own right, but it only stands to reason that the smaller city would have fewer, busier shops serving tourists from across the river.

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SmellTheGlove 3148 days ago
Seattle didn't though, largely because licensing was completely bottlenecked. The city itself took a while to permit more than a handful of shops. I don't know the numbers, but given that Seattle is a bigger city than Portland, I wonder what the data normalized to shops per capita - hypothetically considering Vancouver to be part of Portland, as it probably would be if there wasn't a state line in the way!
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rconti 3147 days ago
Ah, I didn't realize that. I've been away for a number of years, and on my last visit, there were already quite a few.
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SmellTheGlove 3146 days ago
I'm not a Seattle resident, so I could be way off, but it was something I went out of my way to observe. We were spending a week every summer in Seattle, and Washington had legalized while my home state of Maine was debating it. I remember in 2015, licensing was still an issue in Seattle and there were like ~3 dispensaries in the city, none of them downtown. I think there was one down in the ID, one a bit north, but nothing centrally located. Then in 2016 there were at least a couple that popped up closer in.

I tend to think that cannabis is pretty harmless for adults and I voted for legalization in Maine, but I'm okay with a slow rollout. There's a whole generation of folks out there that think the stuff makes you crazy, so there's some benefit to slow uptake.

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