Ganjapreneurship

TW: I support drug legalization. Grow the stuff here, tax the heck out of it, regulate it, support American jobs. Various states have relatively liberal drug laws but federal laws overlay local law. The Obama administration is taking a more lenient view of the state laws (see Dems can support states rights too...) than his predecessor. Unsurprisingly jobs are being created. Or perhaps not so much created as lifted from the "black" economy, where no one pays into social security, medicare etc., into the formal economy where they do. Imagine folks opening up storefronts paying property tax contributing to the vitality of a town rather than lurking surreptitiously within the shadows of society. This stuff is not that complex.

From Atlantic Monthly:
"...What can only be rightly described as an explosion of ganjapreneurship is currently underway in Colorado, sparked by the Obama Administration's new policy announcement in February, which directed federal agencies to defer to state law enforcement on the issue of medical marijuana.

Medical marijuana has been technically legal in Colorado since 2000, when residents voted to add Amendment 20 to the state's constitution. The Bush Administration, however, always maintained a rigid stance that federal anti-drug laws took precedence over state rights. Regular DEA raids on medical marijuana distributors in states that legally permit such commerce effectively intimidated citizens who would have otherwise officially registered as patients or caregivers.

At the beginning of this year, only 2000 people had applied for Colorado's Medical Marijuana Registry since the system was established on 2001. In the past six months, the registry has grown to nearly 10,000.

...Colorado is just now entering a phase of transition that embraces that legal reality. The longtime lucrative blackmarket in a forbidden agricultural product is being legitimized--all the financial transactions that used to flow underground are now being raised to the taxable surface, creating a new era for an ancient industry, and fertile ground for ganjapreneurial start-ups to sprout like new shoots of Cannabis sativa.

...Kathleen suggests, "Marijuana is the only thing pulling Colorado out of the recession right now." Not only has her own small business been saved, but whereas her previous sales tax bill would run about $500 per quarter, Nederland will be getting a $5000 check out of her first few months as a dispensary. Most of the farmers Kathleen works with have been cultivating their product illegally for many years--the oldest has been in the illicit business for 35, more than half have grown marijuana for over two decades. Now that they sell their product to a legal commercial enterprise, weed farmers will have to register their income and pay taxes on it, just like anyone growing tomatoes or tobacco.

...Kathleen says. Since marijuana farmers have begun selling exclusively to legitimate dispensaries, the underground market for illegal weed has been quashed, putting drug dealers out of business for lack of available stock.

...Considering the prevalence of the underground market, legitimizing the business has the effect of tightening controls over it, regulating who can legally purchase, sell, or grow it, which puts unscrupulous drug dealers out of business, this reducing the availability of product through any but official channels. The controls that come with legalization effectively reduces its availability, rather than the contrary..."
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/christina_davidson/2009/08/at_first_glance_the_one.php