POT LEGALIZATION PIONEER?

IN 1971 a group of teenagers in San Rafael, north of San Francisco,
started meeting after school, at 4:20PM, to get high. The habit
spread, and 420 became code for fun time among potheads worldwide.
Ever since, California has remained in the vanguard of global
cannabis culture. Oaksterdam University in Oakland is today unique in
the world as a sort of Aristotelian lyceum for the study of all
aspects--horticultural, scientific, historical--of the weed.

Legally, California has also been a pioneer, at least within America.
In 1996 it was the first state to allow marijuana to be grown and
consumed for medicinal purposes. Since then, 13 states and the
District of Columbia have followed, and others are considering it.
But this year California may set a more fundamental, and global,
precedent. It may become the first jurisdiction in the world to
legalise, regulate and tax the consumption, production and
distribution of marijuana.

Other Western countries--from Argentina to Belgium and Portugal--have
liberalised their marijuana laws in recent decades. Some places, such
as the Netherlands and parts of Australia, have in effect
decriminalised the use of cannabis. But no country has yet gone all the way.

Several efforts are under way in California to do exactly that. One
is a bill wending its way through the state legislature that would
essentially treat marijuana like alcohol, making it legal for people
aged 21 and over. Sponsored by Tom Ammiano, a flamboyant gay activist
and assemblyman from San Francisco, it would levy a $50 excise tax on
every ounce produced and a sales tax on top, then use those funds for
drug education. A rival bill would de-penalise (as opposed to
legalise) marijuana, so that getting caught with it would be no worse
than receiving a parking ticket.

The more visible effort is a measure, Proposition 19, which will be
put directly to voters on the November ballot. This so-called
Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, sponsored by the
founder of Oaksterdam University, would also legalise the growing,
selling and smoking of marijuana for those older than 21, within
certain limits. But it would leave the regulation and taxation
entirely up to counties and cities. These could choose to ban the
business or to tax it at whatever rate they pleased.

This burst of activity may yet come to nothing, however. California
has deeply conservative parts, and Proposition 19 has mobilised them.
George Runner, a Republican state senator, calls legalisation a
"reprehensible" idea. He fears that "once again California would be
the great experiment for the rest of the world at the expense of
public safety, community health and common sense."

Voters, meanwhile, seem split. One poll has Proposition 19 winning
narrowly, another shows a small plurality against it. To nobody's
surprise, voters in the liberal counties round San Rafael, Oaksterdam
and San Francisco clamour for legalisation while those in the inland
counties abhor it.

Perhaps more surprisingly, most blacks and Latinos are also against
it. And yet blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at twice,
three times or even four times the rate of whites in every major
county of California, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a lobby
that wants to end America's war on drugs. This seems especially
unfair, because young blacks actually smoke marijuana less than young
whites. Alice Huffman, the leader in California of the National
Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, America's most
influential civil-rights lobby, is for legalisation because she
considers the existing laws "the latest tool for imposing Jim Crow
justice on poor African-Americans".

The debate tends to lose focus as it gains heat, because nobody quite
knows what legalisation would lead to. So the RAND Corporation, a
think-tank in Santa Monica, has bravely tried to project some effects.

One is that the price of marijuana is likely to decline by more than
80% upon legalisation. An ounce of standard marijuana in California
now costs between $300 and $450. The retail cost to consumers would
depend, in the case of Proposition 19, on the taxes applied by
counties, which are unknown as yet. Even so, weed seems likely to
become cheaper.

This suggests that consumption will increase, but it is unclear by
how much, according to the Rand study. That is because nobody knows
what effect price changes, not to mention more fundamental shifts in
attitude and culture, will have on the demand for marijuana. Today,
7% of Californians report using marijuana in the past month, compared
with 6% in the rest of the country. That rate might go up. Or it
might not: Californians also smoke less than other Americans and do
more yoga, all of which is legal.

Another big topic in a state with a $19 billion budget hole is the
fiscal impact of legalisation. Some studies have estimated savings of
nearly $1.9 billion as people are no longer arrested and imprisoned
because of marijuana. RAND thinks these savings are probably smaller,
about $300m. As for revenues, California's government estimates that
the excise and sales taxes of the Ammiano bill would bring in about
$1.4 billion a year. Rand thinks the figure could be higher or lower,
especially if Proposition 19 prevails, since it leaves tax rates yet
to be decided.

Nothing, in short, is certain, especially because legalisation would
clash against federal laws and international treaties. The Obama
administration has hinted at discretion, but in theory federal
prosecutors could undo any state law by continuing to prosecute
individual Californians over marijuana, or by suing the state. And
Congress could withhold federal money, as it did in 1984 from states
that resisted raising the drinking age to 21.

But Californians and others may also decide that the issue is
primarily one of individual freedom, or at least the ending of an era
of cruel hypocrisy. Why burden the lives of so many adolescents,
especially black men, with permanent criminal records? They only did
what even past and current presidents have admitted to, whether they
inhaled or not.