Kleiman on Pot

(via Drum)

Mark Kleiman (along with Sullivan) thinks that the “legal to grow, but not sell” model is the best for pot going forward, since it will keep the Phillp Morris’s of the world from commercializing it.

The problem is that it’s already a great deal further along than that in places like California, and different legalization scenarios in different states will produce wildly different outcomes.

As it stands now, California pot law gets to exist in the vortex grey area of “medically legal,”  but this regime can’t really stand up to full Federal medical re-scheduling.  Currently, because it’s still a Schedule 1 drug, Feds can bust dispensaries and growers – but the state has allowed an ad-hoc storefront-pharmacy distribution system to spring up sans any kind of real medical oversight.

This is almost a perfect situation for everybody involved at this particular moment.  Buyers in cities who cannot grow their own can get a legal prescription and join a ‘co-op’ which is (theoretically) contracted to ‘grow’ their weed for them.  For growers and distributors there is still a high enough risk from Federal interference to merit high prices and profits, and the police get to bring out their new military surplus toys to bust pot farms in suburban neighborhoods.  It’s win-win-win. But it may not last.

Should the Feds actually re-schedule pot, as opposed to just dropping it from controlled substances altogether, than California is in a bind.  Pharmaceuitcal companies could decide to enter the business, and demand that this ad-hoc system be dismantled in favor of a regulatory scheme complete with trials, approvals, and prescriptions written by doctors and filled by pharmacies.  Under Federal law, of course, this would be the immediate remedy: if you can convince a pain specialist to prescribe it for you, than you will be able to get your joints at Rite-Aide.

If this actually happened, then this medical model would instantly be valid across the land, not “medically” legal, but actually medically legal – so would California be allowed to let stoners, rather than pharmacists, dispense the weed?

Probably not in the long run, so Californians would be faced with several choices.  They could dismantle the current ad-hoc, county-by county system in favor of true, medicallized pot. This would drive illicit production and distribution back underground, but would not kill it.  Far too many recreational users would continue to demand high-quality strains delivered without government interference to put a dent in illicit production and criminal importation

For law enforcement, this wold be fine – for pot smokers, not so much – as we’d be back at square-one in terms of recreational use.

At this point some states like California and others might try to push the issue again by decriminalizing growing and possession of small amounts in addition to the medical mandate.  This may lead to a sort of equilibrium as envisioned by Mark, where it was available either as government joints or on the DL in the black-market – but again, it may become hard to sustain this, especially in liberal cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

For one, it may prove more difficult to shut down the current system in California.  People who use and like the current approach might balk at the lack of variety inherent in a Government run medical regime.  And local authorities are just starting to get a handle on how to license (and eventually tax) under the current system – they may wonder about the wisdom of forgoing all that tax income just as they were about to solve the problem of how to seize it.

But the key issues remains that after any kind of break in the current stalemate, the lines of demarcation between “legal” and “illegal” chaines of production will come into direct conflict with each other.

Once the Feds allow medical via re-scheduling to 2 or below complete with trials and FDA approval, than Big-Pharm has a reason to enter the game and try and shut out it’s competitors via an officially sanctioned pipeline.  Strains are patented, tested, approved, sold via pharmacies and covered under Medicare.

This won’t end the push for full legalization at the State level, however, and eventually the growers and distributors in places like Mendocino, San Francisco and Los Angeles will from growers unions to lobby for liberal reform.

Hopefully, some city somewhere will attempt to solve the problem by allowing a mini-Amsterdam, perhaps under some sort of “social club” rules, whereby lounges are licensed for the open social consumption of pot.

UPDATE: I wrote this a few days ago, and am posting it now without editing.  Since writing, I have learned that our new AG has announced  the Feds will no longer interfere with states that have medical pot and that a California legislator intends to submit a bill legalizing pot statewide and adding a $50 per ounce tax to all sales.  The AG news means that theoretically at least, the LA raids 3 weeks ago were the last, and may signal an intent to re-schedule.  The news from Sacramento is probably a stunt aimed at getting tax revenue, but also aims to legitimize the retail network already in place.  But if it goes to vote, LA could be the next Amsterdam… providing the Feds really do stay out of the way.