I'm sure the DEA is fighting it as hard as they can too. Same with the police union lobby.

I do think it'll happen in the near term, probably faster than people expect just like with gay marriage. Though I also think there will be a few holdout states.

It's not just that. A lot of people, including politicians, truly bought in to a lot of the anti-drug propaganda.. and many of them are also in religions which consider drug use sinful. For many of them, their opposition to drugs comes from the same sources as their opposition to gay marriage and abortion: their churches and religious leaders.

What's been incredibly interesting, however, is how their attitudes have been changing once people started to become aware how helpful psychedelics and cannabis can be... to mental and physical health, and to spirituality.

Lots of people are hurting, and the medical and mental health establishments have failed so many people. Even church prohibitions are having a hard time standing up to that, especially if they have a sherd of compassion for those suffering and those than can be helped with these unjustly illegal substances.

Big businesses today tend to not innovate themselves and instead expand into new markets via acquisitions, but how many pot business owners do you think are interested in selling to those megacorps vs running their own show and continuing to make bank?

This is not in the interests of your money-owners.

Instead of reading this as rightly that people wanted change, Ardern has done nothing.

Also lot of the most popular products are stuff the black market never really went into, like gummies, concentrates, etc.

That said, I think OR got it right at about 20% right now, though there's a bill proposed to raise that to ~30%, mostly to raise the local municipalities cut from 3% to 10%.

Hasn't? What about the moonshine business? That was all created by the liquor taxes. And all the organized crime around avoiding cigarette taxes.

It is NOT about price.

I don't smoke so don't know the specific numbers but pretty much all of the people I know that smoked before it was legal have gone back to their old dealers after their glee from buying from a store wore off.

They usually say that they hate the fact that most of the licenses have gone to rich old dudes who most certainly in the past voted for policies that ruined alot of peoples lives but are happy to make a profit off it now, people like Boehner. They'd much rather support their local dealer who doesn't even have access to a license.

But when you press them on it prices seem to be up to half as much for the same amount and nobody is worried about their weed potentially containing anything dangerous.

That said I assume something similar played out after prohibition. I'm sure there were lots of people who kept making moonshine and lots of people who continued to buy illegally, but over time the number of people doing either basically decreased to zero. I doubt any one looking to smoke the first time is buying illegally. There has been push back on the licensing process to make it more equitable so hopefully the local dealers can get in on it in the future.

> They usually say that they hate the fact that most of the licenses have gone to rich old dudes

I'm not sure how this responds to anything I said. This is orthogonal and a completely different conversation. Have you also considered that your friends aren't the norm?

> But when you press them on it prices

So you confirm what I said above. I'll admit now this is a confusing conversation. You open by saying you _absolutely_ disagree with me and then confirm my statement. This has been one wild conversation.