AML / CFT: no legalisation of recreational hash in California

For Californians, the prospect of raising taxes to support their increasingly poor state machinery sounded attractive. What did not sound attractive was the idea of freely available dope adding to the estimated 17 million regular users across the USA.

The worries were simple: if California allowed the farming of marijuana and its legal sale and consumption, then what was to prevent large numbers of people turning up in the state for the sole reason of buying and consuming the drug? Worse, with the rest of the country still in a state of prohibition - including nearby Nevada which has particularly stringent laws for possession of even small quantities what were the probabilities that legal businesses in California would become the sunny face of organised crime gangs distributing across the rest of the country.

California already has a huge problem with drug smuggling due to its border with Mexico and its proximity to other South American drugs producers. And it is part of the western seaboard combine where the use of marijuana for medical purposes is permitted.

Arguments in favour are that an absolute prohibition isn't working but that - if lessons are learned from alcohol and tobacco, permitted use by adults and a lower age limit below which the use is illegal means that use by young people actually drops.

That argument may be dubious: it's decades since alcohol and tobacco went through that process and the situation today is very different. Aside from anything else, there are many more young people with time and money on their hands.

One pressure group hoping to legalise the use says that it estimates that the illegal marijuana trade in California in 2009 was as much as USD14,000 million.

Perhaps it would be cheaper if it were legal.

Strangely, George Soros backed the Proposition and invested as much as USD1 million in trying to get a yes vote. Had he been successful, the possession of up to 28 grams for personal use would have been legal for those of over 21 years. And they would have been able to grow their own: up to about two and a quarter square metres as, er, pot plants.

As Arnie says he won't be back, he and all of those serious contenders battling for his seat argued against the Proposition.

So while, as of the time of writing, Californians don't know who their Governor will be, they at least know he'll be clear headed.