Pubdate: Sun, 19 May 2013
Source: Odessa American (TX)
Copyright: 2013 Odessa American
Contact:  http://www.oaoa.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/708
Author: Jacob Sullum
Note: Sullum is a senior editor for Reason magazine and a syndicated columnist.

THE CANNABIS IS 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 has 
not said how the Justice Department plans to respond. But if the feds 
are smart, they will not just refrain from interfering, they will 
work together 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 would not 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 is also legal to transfer up to an ounce "without 
remuneration" and to "assist" others in growing and consuming marijuana.

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.

Washington's initiative, I-502, does not allow home cultivation. But 
UCLA drug policy expert Mark Kleiman, who is advising the Washington 
Liquor Control Board on how to regulate the cannabis industry, argues 
that collectives ostensibly organized to serve patients under that 
state's medical marijuana law could fill the supply gap if pot stores 
never open.

It is also possible that Washington's legislature would respond to 
federal meddling by letting people grow marijuana for personal use, 
because otherwise there would be no legal source.

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, which are 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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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom