I don’t usually post links to stories for which I am only able to read the teaser and the rest is behind a subscription paywall, but… I just couldn’t resist this opening, where Patrick Radden Keefe of the New Yorker appears to tell us the driving force behind legalization in Washington State.
One morning in August, Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at U.C.L.A., addressed the Seattle city council on the subject of marijuana. Kleiman is one of the country’s most prominent and outspoken analysts of drug policy, and for three decades he has argued that America’s cannabis laws must be liberalized. Kleiman’s campaign used to seem quixotic, but in November, 2012, voters in Washington and Colorado passed initiatives legalizing the use and commercial sale of marijuana.
Who knew?
Now the title of the piece is “Buzzkill: Washington State discovers that it’s not so easy to create a legal marijuana economy.”
So in the remainder of the article I can’t read, I can only guess that the hero of our story begrudgingly discovers that legalization is full of uncertainties and concerns.
They note that Mark Klieman was a drug policy adviser for decades,,,working for the drug warriors which is why he was “sent” to WA to help them make sure the legal market did not disrupt the black market,,and he did a bang up job,,he even has them trying to remove their MMJ program,,,the ONDCP is proud of Mark.
That is how I see it Vern.
Mark Kleiman, champion of drug law reform:
“legalization isn’t going to happen — it’s a political nonstarter and would be a public-health disaster”
Guess who:
“I think marijuana deserves a relatively low priority on the list of drug policy targets.”
Usually New Yorker writers don’t go too easy on their subjects, so I expect a little criticism of Kleiman in there.
On the other hand their recent history w r t cannabis is to write vaguely condescending, “foolishness of youth” pieces (e.g., the one by Robert Stone several years ago lamenting his misspent youth on drugs).
As it’s the one thing I read hardcopy, I shall wait with bated breath.
Nice. Nothing better than spraying my computer with coffee through my nose first thing in the morning.
Thanks, Pete.
Wasn’t he basically fired from his gig in Washington, having over-charged the state by about 600%?
The New Yorker gives credit for legalization to the guy who billed the State government over $800,000 to fuck up the process? Who’s responsible for the LCB’s attempt to shut down MMJ in the State?
Greed is motivating every aspect of the I-502 scheme, including Kleiman’s over-billing (and the excessive tax structure that guarantees the illegal market will continue by pricing legal weed too high).
The LCB risk making itself irrelevant if it follows Kleiman’s advice in the face of facts on the ground. You know, the free market. SOviet-style supply management and price controls didn’t work in the Soviet Union and they won’t work in Washington State’s legal cannabis markets. But Kleiman is an academic who has never had a real job or run a business, and he’s advising LCB people who have never run a business either. The system they are building is a testament to their socialist ideology. ANd it will fail for the same reasons the soviet system failed.
Lose a majority of the silly regulations and the legal marijuana economy would work just fine, it’s when you add the governments and regulations into the mix is when it becomes difficult for people to give their customers what they obviously want. That’s a silly daydream though, we all know the parasites must tax and regulate it to extinction.
I always knew this would happen: Prohibs in false reformer’s clothing getting credit for reform. And in 20 years time they’ll be back, revising history to suit themselves, and make as if they never were prohibs (just as it was hard to find anyone who admitted voting for alcohol Prohibition after it was implemented and finally repealed).
The Mainstream Media has been complicit these past 30-40 years, supporting the DrugWarriors by essentially being their stenographers, not their interrogators. This kind of thing is the inevitable result.