That's not what happens.

When I go to the pot stores in Massachusetts and California, most people just buy regular pot. There's plenty of edibles and vaping concentrate available, it's just that most people want to smoke the flower.

This is describing a lot of what happened here in Canada. People still smoke pot, but edibles are widely available. I can order anything I want online and have it shipped in a day or two. I can walk across the street to the nearest store and but what they have.

But some people still smoke pot.

MA res. here. I tried a few different edibles, sublinguals and they didn't do shit for me. They seem to be regulated to 10mg doses. If they aren't popular it's possible it's because they're expensive and don't work. I am road cyclist and would never fuck with my lungs.

Smoking and edibles are different experiences. If you want the effects right away, edibles don't do that. Very different thing feeling the full effects in 10 min. vs 1-2 hrs.

It's also much easier to consume a much larger dose by edible than by smoking. Smoking is sort of self-regulating - if you take hits too quickly, you'll cough too much to be able to continue smoking without taking a break.

In addition, weed is much more potent than alcohol. With alcohol, most people roughly have the same experience. With weed, give it to 10 different people and they'll have 11 different experiences with it.

> The main disadvantage of these products is controlling dose, and those go away with a well regulated market.

Nope. THC intake with smoking is (pretty much) consistent across people and the dosing feedback from intake to effect is much shorter, whereas edibles hit differently depending on a lot of specific factors (body weight, how much one has eaten/drunk) which means that especially in "social get-high situations" edibles don't really work as intended. Not to mention it's easy to overdose on edibles.

Unless you can find another way that gives you an instant high, people are still going to smoke.

Just boof it

Cost. Isn't the process to extract thc content and turn it into an edible rather intensive? Not to mention spoilage issues.

In Seattle, a fully legal 10mg THC edible can be had for $2 dollars. Higher quality ones for $3.

And that will get an average person pretty solidly high for several hours.

Contrasted with the cost of alcohol, this is dirt cheap.

What makes an edible higher quality versus lower? Is it taste, consistency of dose, etc? Are some edible form factors more desirable than others?

> In Seattle, a fully legal 10mg THC edible

...does not exist, as it is still banned by federal law.

Federal legality will probably drive prices up compared to the current “technically a major crime subject to run, invest in, or play any leadership role in a major business in, though that's not currently actively enforced” [0] condition as the current condition encourages lots of small operators while preventing consolidation, without the high added risk premium of an actively enforced probibition.

[0] because drug kingpin laws apply to marijuana

Laws only count if they are enforced, and the federal government would have to deploy the military on American soil to police states that have legalized marijuana.

Therefore, if you are over 21 years of age and can prove that with official documentation, you can walk into any of hundreds of official retail establishments in several states that are publicly advertised on billboards and purchase marijuana with cash. As long as you do not operate a motor vehicle under the influence or cause a public nuisance, there will be no legal consequences of that action.

Furthermore, you can buy stocks in companies that grow marijuana for sale and distribution in the United States. If it were really illegal, why are companies that do that and pay taxes on the commerce allowed to operate and be publicly traded on the stock exchanges?

> Laws only count if they are enforced

The thing is, the drug kingpin statute has a long statute ot limitations, and there is no federal policy making current violations relating to marijuana not criminal, only a law prohibiting the executive branch from spending money prosecuting marinuana-related offenses related to medical use consistent with state law which the executive branch has also mostly treated as applying to other use permitted by state law. But the boundaries of the legal policy are somewhat fuzzy, and were it to be repealed tomorrow, there would be no bar to the Feds rounding up people who had been openly engaging in the marijuana trade and charging them under drug laws, including the drug kingpin law, subject to the applicable statutes of limitations. And/or filing forfeiture actions (civil and/or criminal; though the latter requires criminal charges against the individual) against property used in or derived from the business.

The risk does affect the who enters the industry, who supplies the industry, and how people in and around the industry conduct business.

> the federal government would have to deploy the military on American soil to police states that have legalized marijuana

AFAIK, the DEA, FBI, and other federal law, and the people who have openly been conducting marijuana business don't take that much effort to identify and round up. The military would not be required to do policing, though DOJ’s Criminal Division might want to get some military JAG lawyers assigned on temporary duty to handle the caseload surge.