Our own Dominic Holden landed a story on the front of Slate’s news section, all about former Microsoft manager Jamen Shively’s new corporate “Big Marijuana” business, and what Obama should do about it. (Hint: Dom thinks all you lousy drug pushers should go rot in jail. Ha-ha, j/k!)
It’s great, and you should go read it:
I’m not thrilled by the prospect of smoking the Starbucks of bud, but I hold out hope that the microbrews of pot can also flourish in the emerging state markets. And since large-scale operations have the most to lose, they will be the most accountable. They have the incentive to check ID (keeping pot out of the hands of kids, since sales to people under the age of 21 remain illegal), pay taxes (Shively expects to pay $300 million a year in taxes), and adhere to the letter of the law, establishing a model for the pot industry that will make it safer than the illegal market.
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.