Tag: user-set quotas

How to legalize cannabis

With a little help (ok, actually quite a lot of help) from my friends Lowry Heussler, Jon Caulkins, Keith Humphreys, and Beau Kilmer, and my sister Kelly, I produced an op-ed for the Financial Times on the design of a post-prohibition cannabis control regime.

Here’s the punchline:

A large increase in problem use might be a price worth paying to rid ourselves of the many ills attendant on prohibition. But it is not a price we have to pay. Smarter policies could lead to better outcomes.

Many thanks to Kesewa Hennessy, Deputy Comment Editor at the FT, for a superb job of copy-editing.

One key point, omitted to save space: the system of user-set quotas proposed for cannabis could also apply - should, in my view, be applied - to alcohol and gambling.

How to legalize cannabis

Debating *whether* to legalize pot is pretty pointless. The important debate now is *how* to legalize it. Some notes toward an essay on that topic.

Debating whether to legalize pot is increasingly pointless. Unless there’s an unexpected shock to public opinion, it’s going to happen, and sooner rather than later.

The important debate now is how to legalize it. The results of legalization depend strongly on the details of the post-prohibition tax and regulatory regimes. In the current situation, continued prohibition might be the worst option. Full commercial legalization on the alcohol model might well be the second-worst. But that’s the way we’re heading.

I’m preparing an essay about designing a post-prohibition regime. After the jump is a set of topic sentences and paragraphs for sections of that essay, not yet in a well-defined order. (UPDATE: Numbers inserted to facilitate comments.)

Substantive comments are welcome. Rant and snark will be ruthlessly zapped.

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