E.D. Kain writes a second response to Mark Kleiman:
The problem with pot is that it's illegal, not anything inherent with the drug -- at least no more so than alcohol (and probably a lot less). If pot becomes legal I hope we don't regulate out home growers or local co-operatives. That would be a disaster and a travesty. Imagine doing to the wine industry what was done to the beer industry for so long. Imagine the Budweiser of bud -- and that all legal marijuana was so lifeless. But preventing commercial sale of anything that has a high consumer demand is just asking for trouble, even if you provide avenues for that demand to be met. Those avenues are simply unnecessary when an open market could exist instead. If we really want to curtail marijuana usage, legalize it and then tax the hell out of it. At least people will be able to buy it and consume it safely.
I think Kain and I are coming from a slightly different perspective -- that is, I don't think that someone smoking a j in the privacy of their own home should be illegal, but my first priority isn't making sure anyone who wants weed can get it whenever they want. Rather, what I'm looking for is a policy that will eliminate the negative effects of prohibition and over-enforcement, and I think Kleiman's proposal would do that. No, it wouldn't eliminate the illicit market, but I think the problems associated with marijuana smoking don't come from the domestic illicit market, which is relatively nonviolent and noncompetitive, but from official efforts to stop distribution and usage. Under Kleiman's proposal, people who want it could still grow it and get it whenever they want if they don't want to grow it.
The other thing is that I'm wary of the unanticipated consequences of full commercialization, of a rather sudden transition from marijuana being an illegal drug to a commodity. The consequence of commercialization wouldn't just be that the demand for marijuana would be filled but rather that companies would have to create additional demand to make a profit. There are a number of possible alternatives in between what Kleiman proposes and what Kain wants, and certainly initial decriminalization doesn't preclude legalization down the road if that's what people ultimately want.
