Marty's Travels

My house has wheels

Good stuff by the NYT

The New York Times has been running a series on marijuana, which I highly recommend as excellent background on the business of legal cannabis products. The comparison of existing regulations in WA and CO is especially good to highlight the differences in how regulation might be done.

I would add one other point to the comparison: residency requirements. WA requires licensees be residents for 3 months, while CO requires 2 years. I think WA was using prior policy without regard to anything else, while CO was trying to protect it’s own people from outsiders, like Californians.

Not a big deal until you look at the Oregon initiative. That provides for no residency requirement, rather remarkable when you consider the close associations Oregon has with the “Emerald Triangle” in California. It’s like they are inviting (encouraging?) the pros in California to set up shop in their state.

And despite the US Justice Department’s promise to lay off if there’s no import or export across state lines. the economic forecasts in Oregon for tax revenue includes estimates from exports. Each state is pushing a line somewhere, and will continue doing that.

The answer to this absurdity is that the federal government gets out of prohibition entirely, lets the states and local communities set their own rules, and let things go where they may. The NYT seems to be advocating for this approach.