Proponents of marijuana legalization often point to Amsterdam’s “coffee shop” marijuana sales, rarely mentioning that the Dutch have dramatically reduced what at one time were thousands of shops to only a few hundred — after being inundated with “drug tourists,” drug-related organized crime involvement and public nuisance problems. During the period of marijuana commercialization and expansion, there was a tripling of lifetime use rates and a more than doubling of past-month use among 18- to 20-year-olds, according to independent research…

Regarding the supposed economic benefits of taxing marijuana, some comparison with two drugs that are already regulated and taxed — alcohol and tobacco — is worth considering. People don’t typically grow their own tobacco or distill their own spirits, so consumers accept high taxes on them as retail products. Marijuana, though, is easy and cheap to cultivate, indoors or out, and Proposition 19 would allow individuals to grow as much as 25 square feet of marijuana for “personal consumption.”

Why would people volunteer to pay high taxes on marijuana if it were legalized? The answer is that many would not, and the underground market, adapting to undercut any new taxes, would barely diminish at all.