In Colorado, the sky has not fallen since people started buying recreational cannabis six months ago. The predicted increase in crime didn’t materialize, and there is no evidence that Coloradans are dropping out of school and leaving their jobs en masse to get high and play video games all day. While tax revenues from the new recreational system haven’t been as high as some predicted (in part because the state still has lots of medical marijuana stores operating), thousands of new jobs have been created in the nascent industry.
However, we’re already learning things that can and should be applied in other states. For instance, when a new crop of people began trying cannabis in Colorado, a lot of them found edibles appealing. But since there wasn’t a strict system for labeling and packaging that would let people know exactly what they’re getting and make it easier to keep the products away from children, some people have gotten sick, including some kids who got their hands on their parents’ edibles. In Washington, despite the fact that they’ve had a year and a half to prepare, they’ve only licensed a few shops and growers, so there isn’t going to be much legal pot available — meaning the black market is going to persist, at least for a while.
Any state considering its own legal cannabis regime will be watching these two states closely, to figure out where the potholes are and how to avoid them. But (depending on how things go in Washington) it’s going to be very difficult for legalization opponents to argue that the two states have suffered outright disaster, particularly the kind of disaster the anti-drug forces warned about. So when new states join the debate, the discussion may well focus more on specifics, like how products should be labeled and how an existing medical marijuana system should be integrated with a new recreational commerce system. That kind of debate assumes that the problems are solvable if you fashion your policies with enough care.
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