re: #355 goddamnedfrank

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.

Corporations get intimidated all the time by threats of boycott for one reason or another. So I don’t think you’ll see them touching it with a ten foot pole for a long time.
If you think gay marriage was a wedge issue in 2004, just wait until you see the R’s ad campaign against legislators who voted for pot. Can you imagine the scare tactics (and you know they’ll be effective)? As far as organized crime goes, plenty of legitimate operations have been infiltrated by criminals. But in this case I just don’t think start ups can compete with entrenched operations who don’t play by the rules. That is my argument. I am not passing any moral judgement about smoking pot. I happen to think it’s more benign than alcohol. I just think that advocates of legalization seem to have this exaggerated sense that everything’s going to be fine if everybody just saw things their way.