Thursday, January 2, 2014

The Great Colorado Reefer Race

Today was the first day of legal marijuana sales in Colorado and things went smoothly, so long as you don't count the giant green monster that crawled out of the ground in Steamboat Springs and started eating children.  (StarTribune: First US recreational pot industry opens in Colorado as other states, countries closely watch)

While people are tooting their horns and wearing party hats in Colorado, nothing much is going to happen.  Conservatives warn of a huge increase in consumption as a result of legalization but that isn't what you're seeing.  The crowds are made up of people who were stoners already.

The reason there are such large crowds is that reefer wasn't hard to get, it just hasn't been legal.  Reefer is everywhere and that's been true for decades.  I've been smoking reefer for forty-five years but I've never lived anywhere that it was legal and, barring Texas entering the 21st Century, it's not likely I ever will.

While you won't see Colorado collapsing in any way that would give smiles to Fox News, what you will see is interest from other states as they think, hmmm, thirty dollars tax per ounce ... I could learn to live with that.  So New Hampshire will be voting on legalization of recreational reefer next month. The tax revenue from reefer sales means the wall won't just come tumbling down, it will fall faster than a building demolition.  The other states will follow, they just don't know it yet.

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