re: #345 SteveMcG

I gotta go, but I would just sum up my position by saying that since pot has been illegal, organized crime has played a big role in its distribution. That won’t go away just because marijuana became legal. I think that access to clean money would drive gangs wild. Since I don’t think corporate America will touch pot with a ten foot pole in the face of threats of boycotts from angry consumers (who boycott over much less), that leaves small time growers to compete with gangs of psycopaths over a big pile of money.
As a policy issue, legalization just isn’t the panacea that advocates are claiming it to be. There will be real consequences to legalization and they won’t all be pretty.

Your position is entirely contrived and nonsensical. You’ve done nothing, nothing whatsoever to demonstrate how pot has this horrible stigma that will keep corporations from dealing in it. It’s raw assertion on your part and isn’t conducive to observed reality. Is there some fixed number of corporations and business entities out there, all jealously guarding their valuable family friendly reputations? No entrepreneurs are free to spring up and exploit a newly available market?

I don’t think you understand how organized actually crime works. Once the members of a market have legal sanction to conduct business they have access to society’s traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, the police and the courts. It’s keeping the market illegal that allows organized crime and the attendant violence to thrive.