Movements in that direction are already happening here in Michigan, where recreational marijuana has been legal since 2018. Unfortunately, the State of Michigan has played hardball trying to concentrate the growing and retailing aspects of the new industry into just a few hands.

Part of the problem is just politics as usual. Politicians (often at the county or local level) use their power to help enrich their friends, for either direct or indirect benefit.

Part of the problem is the attitude of law enforcement. Most sheriffs and police chiefs resent the 2018 law. Part of their long-engrained culture is to "fight" marijuana and to use the pretext of marijuana possession to search and arrest. "I smell weed" used to be enough for a cop to force a driver out of a vehicle, call drug-sniffing dogs, and generally turn a person's life upside down.

The cops mostly can't do that now, so they've turned their efforts to growers and retailers who are trying to obey the law. The cops search out any kind of miniscule bureaucratic slip up (and there is a ton of bureaucracy!) and then issue triumphant press releases about saving the people of Michigan from "dangerous" weed. (As if a misprinted or not technically correct label is an actual menace to people's health. 🙄)

In the meantime, the wealthy investor class is snapping up operations, so that both growing and retailing is shrinking into ever fewer hands.

One day, if things continue the way they're going, somebody's going to be able to turn around and sell most of the Michigan marijuana industry to a major corporation in just a couple or three moves

For now, we Michiganders are pretty happy that prices are very low, often even compared to unofficial operations. But once the corporations take over, I don't suppose those low prices are going to continue.

I'm thinking about how hard it is to buy good wine through the mail in Michigan. Long after prohibition ended, merchants are still faced with convoluted, monopolistic, and exclusionary policies enforced by the state — that enrich a handful of preferred vendors for no sensible reason.

I belong to a wine club so I can get a few bottles a month shipped to my house from out of state, but it ain't easy! I sure have to jump through hoops.

I'm afraid that's what the marijuana industry is going to turn into here.