Marijuana Legalization Lessons From Washington’s Shaky Start

Last week King County, Washington, Sheriff John
Urquhart, speaking at a conference in California, alternated
between praising his state’s approach to marijuana legalization and
conceding that implementation has been more than a little bumpy.
His overall message: Things are great, and it will all work out in
the end. In my latest Forbes column, I explore the
reasons for such ambivalence. Here is how it starts:

Next week voters in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington,
D.C., will decide whether to legalize marijuana. If they
look for guidance to the two states that took that step in 2012,
they will see a situation in Colorado that falls far
short of the cannabis catastrophe predicted by
prohibitionists. The legal industry is thriving, although it has
not entirely displaced the black market yet, and
marijuana-related problems are minimal so far, although controversy
swirls around issues such as regulation of
edibles and restrictions on consumption. If voters
contemplating legalization turn their attention to Washington,
which has been plagued by regulatory delays and uncertainty, there
are lessons to be learned there too, but they mostly
concern what not to do.

Read the whole thing.