Since I was a teenager I've have been hearing urban legends about how big tobacco companies like Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds held the trademarks for brands like Acapulco Gold™ and Mary Jane™, in preparation for the day that marijuana finally gets legalized.
Drug policy expert Mark A. R. Kleiman at The Reality-Based Community argues that this wouldn't make sense for those companies. He projects a different future:
I think we can count on developing a set of specialty marijuana companies with the same careful respect for the truth, the same deep concern about their customers’ health, and the same delicacy about interfering with the regulatory process in their business as the tobacco giants display in theirs.
Pretty much.
The only question remaining, then, is whether Marvel Comics will be willing to allow packs of cigarettes featuring Spider-Man's girlfriend on them.
That comment summarizes my reasons why the whole "legalize it for sale, now, everywhere" argument is hollow to me. We've already had one Big Tobacco. Do we really want another?
ReplyDeleteThe compromise I see is to legalize it for personal possession and small-scale cultivation, to enable "Deadhead Fred" to grow it for himself and his buddies, but not to make it a real commodity.
Or to simply expand the dispensary system already in place and put serious controls on the packaging and sale of final products. The more it's just dried buds on a shelf, subject to strict scrutiny, the better.
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