Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jun 2013
Source: Middletown Press, The (CT)
Copyright: 2013 The Middletown Press
Contact:  http://www.middletownpress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/586
Author: Dominic Holden, Slate

CORPORATE POT CHANGING THE MARIJUANA SCENE

Another View

Jamen Shively tore a page right out of the Starbucks handbook last 
week. At a press conference, the former Microsoft manager announced 
plans to open chain stores offering a uniform, high-end product that 
satisfies America's craving for a mild buzz. Except not coffee - pot.

"Yes, we are Big Marijuana," Shively, 45, brazenly told reporters, 
outlining his intent to bring in $100 million in investments to 
establish "the most recognized brand in an industry that does not 
exist yet." Colorado and Washington, the two states that legalized 
marijuana for recreational use last fall, are slated to soon license 
pot growers, distributors, and retail outlets (and impose steep How 
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Find out more at www.middletownpress.com/contact. taxes and strict 
regulations). Shively says he and his partners plan about a dozen 
retail outlets in each state, followed by up to 100 in California, 
where sales of medical marijuana are legal according to state law.

Shively's plan will test how far entrepreneurs can push the new state 
laws legalizing pot before the Department of Justice charges them 
with federal crimes.

Shively is shrugging off the risk. "People are saying, 'You are 
putting a target on your back,' but it's really not a big deal," he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder is the person who will prove Shively 
right or wrong.

Holder said in February that the White House would make a decision 
"soon" about how to respond to the voter-approved pot laws. Since 
then, Holder told a House Appropriations subcommittee, "We are 
certainly going to enforce federal law," but stopped short of saying 
he would try to overturn state laws in court.

Holder's Department of Justice could also prosecute marijuana sellers 
in Washington and Colorado, as Justice has done to some 
medical-marijuana growers.

Mostly, though, the Obama administration has so far targeted growers 
and sellers who are exceeding the limits of state laws.

Between October 2011 to October 2012, federal law enforcement shut 
down 600 dispensaries in California that prosecutors said were 
violating the state's medical marijuana law. Meanwhile massive fields 
of medical pot prosper in the California sunshine, and the Arizona 
department of health actually regulates and inspects medical marijuana gardens.

The White House should cheer E-mail:  middletownpress.com (no 
attachments) on the state inspectors and stay out of the way of 
entrepreneurs like Shively. If President Barack Obama tries to stop 
state legalization, he will lose, if not legally, then politically. 
Three key stated goals of banning marijuana are making the streets 
safer, weakening gangs and keeping kids off pot. Legalizing pot is 
likely to succeed far better at all three than banning it has.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox started making the case for 
Shively's plan last week. He joined the press conference to urge 
Obama to let state legalization proceed in order to stanch the flow 
of profits to bloodthirsty drug cartels. "Business investment" like 
Shively's "will bring a solution to Mexico's huge crime problem," Fox 
told me. "Criminals won't be able to get the money because the money 
will be in the hands of people Mail: The Middletown Press Letters to 
the editor 386Main St., 4th Floor, Middletown, CT 06457 Phone: 
860-347-3331 Fax: 860-347-4425 like Jamen." Legal pot won't eliminate 
the cartels, of course.

But Fox's point is that every dollar in pot sales that stays in the 
hands of a legal business doesn't go to a violent gang across the border.

Shively says he is securing relationships with domestic growers and, 
to abide by state law, will only sell cannabis in the same state in 
which it's grown.

If Obama and Holder try to stand in the way of all this progress, 
they'll have nothing to offer except more years of a failed war on 
drugs. A federal crackdown would offer none of the benefits of 
legalization. Rather than fight Jamen Shively and the other would-be 
moguls who will surely follow him, the president and his attorney 
general should let them do what the White House can't - beat the 
black market at its own game.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom