If marijuana is legalized in California the commercial floodgates will open. This is less a matter of good or bad than a simple matter of fact. The marketplace and its investors will swoop in and create an advertising juggernaut to capture customers, and the pot genie will never go back into the lantern.
The juggernaut is already happening in competition between “cooperatives” that serve the medical marijuana community, as well as between medical doctors charging $75-100 to prescribe pot for serious conditions like nausea due to chemotherapy and less serious conditions such as “muscle pain” and “arthritis.” Card carrying pot smokers are being solicited right now with special offers, discounts, and full-page full-color advertising in free newspapers like the Sacramento Review and News promising a choice of “40 varieties” of clones with names like “Purple Kush, ATF2, and Canon Ball.” Free pre-rolled joints and massage services add to the sales pitch. The small print adds: “Make sure to bring your card and doctor’s prescription.”
Legalization will make such marketing efforts look puny. Just as alcohol has become the primary revenue engine for most restaurants, liquor licenses as valuable as gold, selling cannabis will engender a giant industry devoted to keeping pot smokers feeling happy and spending freely. From food offerings to complete spa services, pot dispensaries will morph into lifestyle centers, and the social aspects of marijuana culture will blossom.
The American and international corporations devoted to physical pleasure will quickly dominate commerce. Corporate lobbying will create winners and losers, some companies establishing themselves as the guardians of “quality, purity and reliability.” As revenues and taxes grow, smaller purveyors and cooperatives will quickly fold, in favor of larger discount outlets. Home Dopot anyone?
As the trend spreads, a huge 40-story Dopotel in the shape of a Hookah will be constructed in San Francisco with pot smoking allowed in guest rooms and the pot bar; dope smokers will make Dopotel their lodging of choice. Room rates will be low, food costs reasonable, and pleasures of the flesh emphasized. Over time, Dopotel will open luxury locations in major cities, and within a short period marijuana sales and taxes will equal that of booze. This is not rocket science, just the workings of a market economy with the financial resources and know-how to respond to a massive new financial opportunity.
The forces arrayed against pot smoking have already lost. Use is so pervasive and long-standing that everyone knows it is just a matter of time before the lid pops off. Will this potentially create a larger drug abuse problem? Of course it will. Parents will have to explain why smoking dope is not a sensible activity for a young person any more than drinking alcohol is. Kids will experiment, but they already do that, and some end up in jail. We don’t send kids to jail for drinking a beer, knowing that the crime does not justify the risk. Smoking dope will and should be treated the same way. But to think that no serious problems will arise due to legalization is foolishness.
Legalized alcohol has not stopped alcohol related crime, whether theft, graft, tax evasion or drinking under the influence. Law enforcement will still have plenty to do; it just won’t involve busting people for recreational smoking in the privacy of one’s home or social gathering.
