OAKLAND POISED TO BECOME POT'S SILICON VALLEY

Jeff Wilcox, a middle-aged, clean-cut man who dresses in the Bay Area
casual business attire of clean jeans, collared shirt and running
shoes, may be the face of Marijuana, Inc., the corporatization of cannabis.

He has just persuadedOakland to legalize industrial-sized marijuana
farms, touting a study that promised millions in city taxes and
hundreds of high-paying union jobs.

The long-struggling city, which has failed spectacularly to capitalize
on the high-tech boom, could be the Silicon Valley of pot, Wilcox told
the city council this week before its historic vote to grant four
permits for urban, industrial-size marijuana farms.

But as Wilcox points out, his business model -- a nonprofit -- will be
less Google or Apple and more Trader Joe's, a California cut-rate
gourmet grocery chain. The store's best-known product is $2-per-bottle
Charles Shaw wine, known affectionately as Two Buck Chuck and
considered a great glass of wine for the price.

"The new Two Buck Chuck will be $40-an-ounce pot," Wilcox said,
looking forward to a day of full legalization. Boutique growers could
produce the high-end stuff in their "gardens," he explained, while he
supplied the masses with a clean, controlled, great-value product.

If California legalizes marijuana, the rest of the nation may well
follow. Cut-rate, highly potent California weed is unlikely to stop at
the state's borders.

The U.S. state that first allowed sales of medicinal marijuana, in
1996, may take away all restrictions on adult use of the drug in a
November vote, allowing local governments to regulate sales and
growing of marijuana.

The world's eighth-largest economy will tear down barriers to the most
used illegal drug in the U.S.

Even the cops who most hate it see legal California marijuana as a
different breed of drug -- and a game changer for the country.

"The stuff we are getting in California is fricking leading the
world," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department senior narcotics
Det. Glenn Walsh.

A drug of hippies and cartels, marijuana has become a cultural
touchstone. To advocates, it symbolizes counterculture freedom and
alternative medicine; to detractors, it is a drug that saps the
resolve of hardworking Americans, draws children down a path to other
more dangerous drugs and enriches ruthless Mexican cartels.

Economists see a different picture -- a multibillion-dollar market
about to be unfettered with little sense of how consumers will react.

One recent study predicted California marijuana would underprice
high-quality Mexican imports in virtually every city in the U.S., even
including the costs of smuggling and state taxes.

The reaction of drug cartels behind vast imports into the U.S. is
anybody's guess

But fear of the effects of legal California "bud" already has made its
way to the streets of Tijuana, the Mexican sister city to San Diego
and a major gateway of drugs into the U.S.

"We're screwed," said Juan V., a street dealer in the grimy border
city of around two million people. "They are going to want us to lower
prices," he said. "We'll just have to sell more here."