It is Legal; How Will We Tell if That is Good?

I don't know if the social experiment will succeed but there are still a surprising number of people who don't know that it has been going on for several years and is now a fait accompli. Marijuana is now easy to get in California legally. And as of a month or so ago, the federal government has said it will turn a blind eye. So the game is on.

That is not the huge surprise. There have been several big media stories about the easy process of getting a prescription, the nice stores with many varieties from which to choose, and the formalized high-end farming operations that are supplying the product.

What is a surprise to me is that I have not seen anyone proposing what we look for as indications that legalization is a success or a failure. What do we need to measure? DUIs? School reports of UI students? Juvenile possession arrests? Increased sales of Fritos?

Or if you are conservative is the problem that you will not be able to measure the costs of increase through any isolatable numbers? The change will be in 5 years when another 150 SoCal kids who might not have gotten heavily into it have gotten heavily into it and instead of UCLA or UC Davis, it's a community college. It won't be an increase in homicide rates or incarceration rate, it will be a difference in life success rates.

If you are a libertarian, I'd guess you could watch the collapse in adult possession charges and the collapse in the very different distribution charges.

On the movie side, I don't know what Tommy Chong or Cheech Marin is saying about this. Tommy Chong in particular must be happy and relieved. But there's also got to be something disappointing about having been an outlaw your whole life and now having a bunch of regular people publicly doing what used to be at least a little bit wrong.

"Up in Smoke" was on cable a few weeks ago. I had forgotten how strange and funny the movie was, with a lot happening and nothing happening at the same time; the sequels are just mining the same territory that Marin and Chong carved out when they wrote Up In Smoke. Stacy Keach is a great bad cop. Tom Skeritt is a strange Vietnam vet. And somehow the movie feels a little conservative or negative about some of the stoners and women in it.