Mark Kleiman talks about legalizing marijuana.

June 19, 2013 9:52 AM

On blogginheads.tv Mark talks to Glenn Loury about helping the state of Washington to legalize marijuana. Licensing, costs, restrictions, methods of sale etc. One of the best conversations on the topic I've heard.
posted by xjudson (2 comments total)

There was a while, back in the 1970's, when Washington had a law legalizing sales of certain kinds of fireworks, but only for shipment to people from other state. A fireworks store got set up in Vancouver which catered to Oregonians coming north on I-5. You had to show an out-of-state driver's license to buy there, and after you paid, your stuff would be loaded into a van and driven across the parking lot, where you then received it. Legally that constituted "delivery", I guess.

So the other curious thing about it was store sitting; Washington natives trying to convince Oregonians to buy fireworks for them. It was altogether an odd experience shopping there. (I only did it once.)

I wonder if some sort of great Grass store will get set up in Vancouver, next to one of the I-5 exits, and you'll get Oregonians store-sitting because they'll only sell to people with Washington ID? Takes me back to high school, store-sitting at the 7-11 to get beer.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:49 AM on June 19, 2013

Good conversation. Kleiman is probably the best person you would want to help implement marijuana legalization, since, as Gabriel Rossman argues, he's not a pot booster, and in fact is skeptical of marijuana legalization in general:

So the person whose idea of a marijuana policy is “everybody must get stoned” isn't somebody you’d want in charge of it, especially if they've convinced themselves of their own talking points that marijuana isn't addictive or dangerous. (By which logic the problems with alcohol are DTs and alcohol poisoning, but there’s no need to reckon non-physiological addiction, car accidents, homicide, cirrhosis, heart disease, etc). Rather you want somebody who worries about all the things that could go wrong to implement a reform because that person will take steps to make sure that, as far as possible, they won’t.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:41 AM on June 20, 2013