Pubdate: Thu, 09 May 2013
Source: New York Post (NY)
Copyright: 2013 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.
Contact: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/letters/letters_editor.htm
Website: http://www.nypost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/296
Author: Jacob Sullum
Page: 33

POT'S OUT OF THE BAG

THIS week, the Colorado General Assembly put the finishing touches on
legislation aimed at taxing and regulating the commercial distribution
of marijuana for recreational use. The process has been haunted by the
fear that the federal government will try to quash this momentous
experiment in pharmacological tolerance - a fear magnified by the
Obama administration's continuing silence on the subject.

Six months after voters in Colorado and Washington made history by
voting to legalize marijuana, Attorney General Eric Holder still
hasn't said how the Justice Department plans to respond. if the feds
are smart, they won't just refrain from interfering, they'll work with
state officials to minimize smuggling of newly legal marijuana to
jurisdictions that continue to treat it as contraband. A federal
crackdown can only make the situation worse - for prohibitionists as
well as consumers.

Shutting down state-licensed pot stores probably wouldn't be very
hard. A few well-placed letters threatening forfeiture and prosecution
would do the trick for all but the bravest cannabis entrepreneurs. But
what then?

Under Amendment 64, the Colorado initiative, people 21 or older
already are allowed to possess up to an ounce of marijuana, grow up to
six plants for personal use and keep the produce of those plants
(potentially a lot more than an ounce) on the premises where they are
grown. It's also legal to transfer up to an ounce "without
remuneration" and to "assist" others in growing and consuming pot.

Put those provisions together, and you have permission for various
cooperative arrangements that can serve as alternative sources of
marijuana should the feds stop pot stores from operating. The Denver
Post reports that "an untold number" of cannabis collectives have
formed in Colorado since Amendment 64 passed.

With pot shops offering a decent selection at reasonable prices, these
alternative suppliers will account for a tiny share of the marijuana
market, just as home brewing accounts for a tiny share of the beer
market. But if federal drug warriors prevent those stores from
operating, they will be confronted by myriad unregulated, small-scale
growers, who will be a lot harder to identify, let alone control, than
a few highly visible, state-licensed businesses.

The feds, who account for only 1 percent of marijuana arrests, simply
do not have the manpower to go after all those growers. Nor do they
have the constitutional authority to demand assistance from state and
local law enforcement agencies that no longer treat pot growing as a
crime.

Given this reality, legal analyst Stuart Taylor argues in a recent
Brookings Institution paper, the Obama administration and officials in
Colorado and Washington should "hammer out clear, contractual
cooperation agreements so that state-regulated marijuana businesses
will know what they can and cannot safely do." Such enforcement
agreements, authorized by the Controlled Substances Act, would provide
more security than a mere policy statement, although less than
congressional legislation.

Taylor, who says he has no firm views on the merits of legalization,
warns that "a federal crackdown would backfire by producing an
atomized, anarchic, state-legalized but unregulated marijuana market
that federal drug enforcers could neither contain nor force the states
to contain." Noting recent polls finding that 50 percent or more of
Americans favor legalizing marijuana, he says the public debate over
that issue would benefit from evidence generated by the experiments in
Colorado and Washington. That's assuming the feds do not go on a
senseless rampage through these laboratories of democracy.
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