Op-Ed: Why legal weed is losing the war to illegal weed

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Op-Ed: Why legal weed is losing the war to illegal weed
By Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner
May 22, 2022 3 AM PT
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... uana-rules
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The framers of Proposition 64 had noble ideals. They wanted to assure buyers that legal weed was perfectly safe to buy and use. They wanted to accommodate diverse interests from law enforcement associations, labor unions and environmental watchdogs. They wanted plenty of taxes and fees to fund good causes like drug education programs, addiction treatment and research initiatives.

It’s nice to imagine a world where all weed businesses are registered, meticulously follow safety and environmental standards, and sell perfectly clean and pure products that generate lots of tax dollars for the state. But trying to achieve those laudable goals perfectly is standing in the way of practical success for legal weed.

Regulations and taxes are not free. Far from it. In California, many of the operations that made a good-faith effort to go legal and follow the rules have gone out of business from underestimating their costs or overestimating the size of the legal-weed market. A legal system works well when people and businesses are rewarded, not punished, for following the rules.

Furthermore, a system that makes legal weed too costly ironically undermines the very public-interest objectives that the system was designed to achieve.
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