Weed being illegal on a federal level has had some interesting effects. Because of these laws, all legal weed has to be grown, processed, and retailed within a single state. So much industry and local employment has been created by the legal barriers in place. It’s probably still a net positive to release the federal restriction, but I hope all these small/mid sized businesses don’t get gulped up by big tobacco or ot…
- Consolidation is already happening in a lot of ways, in some cases despite state laws designed to prevent it
- Consolidation by big tobacco seems less likely than probably other major industry incumbents (in the long run, I’d bet on companies primarily oriented around alcohol)
- Federal posture since Cole (when first states legalized recreational, partially rolled back under Trump/Sessions but seemingly not as much as was feared at the time) is largely what prompted strong local laws; it’s based in analysis of interstate commerce; federal legalization could have a similar analysis without undermining existing strong local laws; the tradeoff would probably be large disparity of justice between states (on party lines)
- A much better outcome would be a central rule not just to legalize, but to more strongly incentivize justice for people affected by draconian laws in the first place. This is a pipe dream, but it should be the focus because any compromise will start with that.