The Discontents of Partial Marijuana Legalization

time to face some answers like adults

The situation of marijuana legalization is currently in a really uncomfortable liminal zone. The disparate conditions of state legalization and Federal illegality have resulted in a condition of "oasis states", many of them replete with unlicensed grow operations that exploit lax enforcement to divert the product to illicit retail markets in states where cannabis is still illegal.

Not long ago someone read me some excerpts from a news article about Maine, of all places, where pot has only had a commercial market for around 2-3 years. The state has since been overrun with huge unlicensed indoor growing operations funded by Chinese organized crime syndicates, often in partnership with Mexican cartels. It was bad enough when that was happening in California, but the effects are unbalancing the cultural ecology and economy of a much smaller state, and even draining rural power resources and destabilizing power transmission lines.

I swear, I spent decades in the legalization movement, and neither I or anyone I knew ever anticipated that legal cannabis would become Big Business, or that diversion would not be effectively controlled, or that so much of the crop would be grown indoors under lights, or that some of the biggest players in the unlicensed de facto "gray market" would be organized crime syndicates- with the biggest players being foreign organized crime syndicates, in point of fact.

There is no reason why that had to happen. It's a travesty to witness the lax regulation and enforcement resulting from the ignorance, laziness, and "legal corruption" of state legislatures by Big Cannabis. Federal legalization is imperative, in order to get the domestic wholesale retail market under control. But if I were putting a legal regulatory regime in place, I'd also place strict limits on commercial crop amounts, and ban commercial indoor growing operations. (In states like Maine and Massachusetts, most of the crop must be grown indoors in order to meet the retail demand, because importation from out of state is presently Federally illegal.) And if some of the provisions I recommend mean that people like Joe Montana lose some of their investment money, I don't care. I never thought that marijuana would receive so much uncritical positive publicity, complete with celebrity endorsements and venture capital angel investors capitalizing on name-brand recognition.

Beyond expanding regulation of legally licensed growers (including antitrust, and size regulations on grow plots), I'm entirely in favor of throwing the book at unlicensed growers of commercial quantities- property seizure, asset forfeiture, and felony prosecutions for criminal conspiracy, including the use of Federal RICO laws. No new laws are needed- bootlegging cannabis is no different than alcohol bootlegging (except that it's possible to grow $1 million in pot on a much smaller footprint than is required to distill $1 million in moonshine.) What's needed is enforcement. Pronto. Before the problem gets unfairly blamed on the plant itself, and there's a backlash.

I'm not exaggerating. It isn't funny. This is not a problem to be kicked down the road by cowardly politicians.
Triad Weed: How Chinese Marijuana Grows Took Over Rural Maine - The Maine Wire
Illegal Chinese Pot Grows Are Taking Over Rural Blue State And Law Enforcement Isn’t Stopping Them: Jennie Taer - The Maine Wire
Maine leaders continue to urge DOJ to shutdown foreign-owned, illegal marijuana operations

I anticipated some rough spots on the road to a stable regime or regulated cannabis markets. But not like this. The problem is out hand. And, again- not the fault of some inherent property of Cannabis Sativa, okay?

The Federal government has yet to legalize cannabis at the national level. There are various side effects from the continuing condition of Federal illegality: 1) a lot of business banking transactions are blocked, leaving the business to be carried on in cash- a magnet for organized crime and money laundering as well as for armed robberies, home invasions, and burglaries; 2) the US States where cannabis has been legalized for retail sale are enjoined to rely on in-state growing operations in order to supply their in-state retail sales outlets; 3) the states with those legal growing operations are de facto functioning as "oases" that not only draw an out of state "pot tourism" industry, but

Right now, the current Federal approach of non-enforcement laissez faire- "let them do as they please"- is the one that's being applied to the states that have legalized cannabis for sale. Unfortunately, the DoJ and DEA seem to be applying that low-to-no enforcement priority to unlicensed grow operations as well as to licensed ones. So it's actually more like a non-policy.

One possible interpretation of this reluctance- and it is studied reluctance, to judge from the unheard appeals of Maine legislators for Federal intervention that hasn't yet shown up- is that the Drug Warriors in the DEA and the DoJ are counting on the State experiments in legal cannabis to lead to so many problems- particularly for the States where cannabis remains criminalized- that the situation will eventually lead to a backlash and popular outcry to shut down the entire industry. The people most likely to hold that view would be the opponents of Federal legalization in the US Congress- and, conceivably, Presidential nominees- cynically counting on that gambit to rebound to their political fortunes in a partisan way. After all, they've managed to exploit the immigration issue and the fentanyl issue without once alluding to the historical legacy of Federal Drug War policies. 

I'm speaking principally of Republicans, of course, who found success at exploiting the immigration issue, the cartel issue, and the fentanyl issue as a cudgel against the Biden administration without once explicitly making mention of the Elephant In The Room- the multitude of problems exacerbated by the punitive prohibitions of the War On Drugs. The Republicans have their adversaries psyched, in that regard; they basically realize that no political movement—least of all the Democrats in Congress—has developed the comprehensive reforms to replace the Drug War with a better alternative. The Democrats don't know how to discuss the disastrous Drug War status quo any more than the Republicans; lacking the clarity and knowledge base to address the situation (have there ever even been hearings?), the Democrats run scared. It's a situation that the Republicans realize only too well. But it's also worth noting that a genuine and sincere effort to re-impose cannabis criminalization on the legal States by national Republicans risks a calamity. And not just a minor calamity, either; one of possibly fatal proportions. I'd expect that any Trump dope-baiting about "cannabis cartels (in the Blue states)" will be mostly about rhetoric. But if the GOP Congress can try to impeach a DHS head over insinuations of a conspiracy related to "immigration policy", they can probably milk the cartel incursions into the marijuana market for partisan gain, as well. 

It's also possible that this foot-dragging is primarily connected to the inertial failure of the bureaucracies of the DHS, DEA, and FBI to re-set their priorities in order to adapt to the relatively recent status quo of legalized commercial sales in many States. Bureaucratic hierarchies aren't driven by the practical or empirical facets of the problems they're tasked to solve; they're mandated to do things by the book, following the letter of the law. In this case, Federal law at odds with the laws of the states that have legalized. But ever since the first states legalized and put a commercial retail market in place about ten years ago, three Presidential administrations have adopted a hands-off policy of "lowest-priority prosecutorial discretion" in regard to enforcing marijuana laws in the states with legal markets. This policy has evidently been applied to pursuing the enforcement of any marijuana laws, in the legal states- even in the case of extensive criminal conspiracies by unlicensed profiteers connected to international organized crime syndicates.

Part of the problem could also simply be pique. As noted above, bureaucracies often plead that they're constrained by policy directives and funding problems that present obstacles to effectively addressing the goals they're tasked with- but they can be terribly "practical and empirical" about their own self-preservation as bureaucracies, to the point of pettiness and spite. So it’s likely that there’s some gloating and smug head-shaking going on in the corridors of the DEA, based on the narrative that the legal States "asked for it" by defying the Federal prohibitions on cannabis that still remain on the books.

Worst of all are the hardline prohibitionists who seek to re-criminalize cannabis in the States where it’s already legal, and begin the clampdown all over again.