How would neighboring states' follow-on legalization diminish tax returns over time? Washington has posted $280 million in tax revenues so far, and Oregon $85 million. Neither seems to threaten the other -- demand is pretty much ubiquitous.
There is definitely a benefit to being the first mover in a region. You are correct that states will still see significant tax revenues and jobs that persist.
Not that Vancouver doesn't have a decently-sized population in its own right, but it only stands to reason that the smaller city would have fewer, busier shops serving tourists from across the river.
I tend to think that cannabis is pretty harmless for adults and I voted for legalization in Maine, but I'm okay with a slow rollout. There's a whole generation of folks out there that think the stuff makes you crazy, so there's some benefit to slow uptake.
Boston, DC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are all reasonable drives away and NYC is right next door.
But the plan is to delay actual legalization till 2019 (the Gov just wants the legislation passed in his first 100 days), so presumably they're conscious that legalization will bring about a bunch of logistic issues like this that need to be worked out.
not to nitpick, but Philadelphia is just as close as NYC (maybe even closer) I routinely joke that Philadelphia and NYC are part of New Jersey, usually to upset citizens of said cities. Then I point out that the culture in those cities is much more like NJ than the rest of their own states.
...Another fun one is to pretend that Central Jersey doesn't exist, or to claim to be a proud Shoobie (or Benny) to the shore people :-)
Say you want a consistently dosed 5mg edible. Does your state have a robust cannabis oil extraction and distillation infrastructure? Does it have rapid, reliable testing to quantify dosage? Probably not.
Maybe you prefer a live resin extract produced from fresh cut flower. You need to have refrigerated trucks in the field when you harvest, a -20C refrigerated room for product storage, and a processing lab. This kind of product is highly sought after but rare in the black market.
There's as much depth to the cannabis industry as there is to alcohol, tobacco, or food. It just wasn't clear to people when all they could purchase was the equivalent of moonshine.
http://wealthalchemyblog.com/2012/10/taxes-matter-14-cross-b...