Pointing to the question posed by Time Friday, Can Marijuana Help Rescue California’s Economy?, Gregor Macdonald says try it:

By some estimates marijuana crop production in California accounts for roughly 14 billion in gross sales. That would make marijuana the states largest single cash crop. One has to believe that current growers would happily trade the costs and risks of concealment for the visibility of taxation. Which would also afford property protection. The current estimate is that taxation could start to yield over 1 billion for the state annually. That’s not going to close either the budget gap of 26 billion, or, make a dent in a 100 billion annual budget. But legalization could bring some efficiencies and perhaps became the basis for an expansion of the marijuana economy. […]

The potential legalization of marijuana in California should be embraced, if only as a sign of a cultural shift from an era of fantasy-based debt creation to a reality-based era of resource maximization. In order to more firmly reinforce such a paradigm shift in the minds of the electorate, Sacramento would be well advised in addition to track on open websites the transparent utilization of marijuana taxation–say, to fund state health programs.

AP has a long and interesting piece on the ‘green rush’ in CA:

More and more, having premium pot delivered to your door in California is not a crime. It is a legitimate business.

Marijuana has transformed California. Since the state became the first to legalize the drug for medicinal use, the weed the federal government puts in the same category as heroin and cocaine has become a major economic force.

No longer relegated to the underground, pot in California these days props up local economies, mints millionaires and feeds a thriving industry of startups designed to grow, market and distribute the drug.

And CNet looks at a new iPhone app called “Cannabis” that allows you to locate the nearest medical marijuana doctor, the nearest medical marijuana supplier, and, just in case, the nearest attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases.

Meanwhile, in response to the Sunday NYTimes piece on the debate over whether more and more potent types of cannabis affect the levels of addiction, the editors today have pulled together a group of policy thinkers to ponder the question, If Marijuana Is Legal, Will Addiction Rise?

For the record, I believe cigarettes are the real gateway drug and alcohol the worst addiction in our culture. (Remember, Dr. George Vaillant’s 72-year-long study at Harvard about how different experiences affect the health and happiness of people found that alcohol is “probably the horse, and not the cart, of pathology.”) I have advocated parity for pot and booze in legal and disciplinary actions and would decriminalize, tax and treat!

As is endorsed in the editors introduction to the Mother Jones’ drug issue on newsstands now:

[T]he drug war has never been about facts—about, dare we say, soberly weighing which policies might alleviate suffering, save taxpayers money, rob the cartels of revenue. Instead, we’ve been stuck in a cycle of prohibition, failure, and counterfactual claims of success. (To wit: Since 1998, the ONDCP has spent $1.4 billion on youth anti-pot ads. It also spent $43 million to study their effectiveness. When the study found that kids who’ve seen the ads are more likely to smoke pot, the ONDCP buried the evidence, choosing to spend hundreds of millions more on the counterproductive ads.)

What would a fact-based drug policy look like? It would put considerably more money into treatment, the method proven to best reduce use. It would likely leave in place the prohibition on “hard” drugs, but make enforcement fair (no more traffickers rolling on hapless girlfriends to cut a deal. No more Tulias). And it would likely decriminalize but tightly regulate marijuana, which study after study shows is less dangerous or addictive than cigarettes or alcohol, has undeniable medicinal properties, and isn’t a gateway drug to anything harder than Doritos.

That via Patrick Appel.

Here’s the Esquire interview with Barney Frank about his Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009. And, yes, I’m aware that pot smoke causes cancer.