On Election Day, states from sea to shining sea legalized marijuana for recreational and medical use, getting high or getting better.
Now, despite pot still being federally illegal, it has become legal in 28 states.
While the fast-moving track for legalized marijuana is, at least for the next few years, teeming with profit opportunities for self-starters and multinationals… and with visions of grand tax revenues for states that legalize it… the trip will be riddled with twists and detours.
Headlines make it appear simple, that states passed medical- and recreational-use laws.
That leaves the impression that what you want is what you’ll get. But, given entrenched political self-interests and competing business interests, the laws themselves in some states will be written with strict restrictions and conditions.
Yet others, with their eye on the bottom line, will follow Colorado’s model, which has created a booming industry that has filled tax coffers with more revenue than from booze and increased weed-happy tourism traffic.
Again, trends, like life, have their ups and downs.
Therefore, as evidenced by myriad existing laws and regulations often written by political hacks and bureaucratic incompetents, look for distortions of what the simple pro-pot resolution majorities voted for, on a simple ballot resolution, to fit the hacks’ personal or special-interest agendas.
Thus, passing the law and writing it are two very different things.
As such, serious investors and an anxious public need to be mindful of how the actual law is written.
for more on this story go to The Daily Reckoning
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