In Santa Cruz, known for its surf culture and "blissed-out natural settings," Tushar Atre was not a rare breed, Scott Eden writes for Inc. The entrepreneur brought a track record of tech-industry success, a hard-edged management style, rich connections, and a pioneering vision for industrial-scale THC extraction. In other words, he was just another privileged intruder, according to the area’s deep-rooted "legacy operators" (legal, illegal, and everything in between). Birthed by Prop 215 in 1996, a lightly regulated medical marijuana industry quickly became a playground for existing black-market networks. By 2017, when voters said yes to full legalization, the market had "mutated and metastasized."
Today, the state’s regulations are still "a total calamity," says Sam LoForti, the Santa Cruz cannabis licensing manager and one of many insiders interviewed by Eden. Taxes and fees created "an absurd, almost satirical state of affairs" that discourages legal trade while greasing the wheels for criminal operators. "The way regulations are now, the legal market will never be able to compete with the black market," he said. Like others who strive to be on the legal side of the trade, Atre was drawn toward the dark side, not only by profit but also fuzzy regulations and—for example—federal laws that prohibit the involvement of big banks and credit card companies, meaning cash is still king. That’s what two disgruntled former employees were said to be after when they allegedly murdered Atre, whose case raises "a cloud of questions about true nature of America’s newest gold rush." (Read the full story, which delves into Atre's murder.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
