POT IS LEGAL NOW

By IAN WINTHROP

In September Fortune ran a story called “How Marijuana Became Legal,” to celebrate some recent, aggressive water treading on the legalization frontline. First the DoJ sent out a strongly worded memo directed at ending federal raids on legal marijuana dispensaries. A measure which effectively does fuck-all to reverse a recent, questionably legal step back toward prohibition. Then the people of Maine and Colorado voted in favor of ballot initiatives that were long overdue and purely symbolic, respective to the two states. So, pot’s still illegal, and Fortune’s click-generating, magazine-selling over-broad speculation is really just another entry in a long line of spurious predictions about weed’s future in the States. Even the Brits are getting in on it now, although they’re not the best at stirring this particular pot. A few mere paragraphs after the aforelinked article praises LA for its super-progressive pot policies (as exemplified by the city’s 700+ medical marijuana dispensaries, or something), they spiral back down to reality. “The police still police it and hundreds of thousands of Americans — disproportionately black and poor — are in jail for it.” Even in these enlightened, potentially pre-post-prohibition days, over half the population still opposes legalization despite increasingly persuasive arguments from the “legalize and tax it” camp. As usual, progressive policies are being held back by a bunch of “dopes.”