John Gravois wonders how the cannabis industry will develop should California pass Prop 19. He focuses on Mendocino County, where Gravois claims marijuana accounts "for two-thirds of the local economy, by some estimates":
Mendocino County’s second-largest productwinemay provide the best alternative vision for dope. Thanks in part to a legal loophole that always allowed for home producers, wine has been much slower to consolidate than other industries, and no single winery has the political clout of an Anheuser-Busch. This has been better not only for small producers, but alsomore importantlyfor the public. So maybe we should all hope that Matthew Cohen is right: that Mendocino will become the Napa Valley of marijuana, and that the premium growers can charge for a sustainably grown, artisanal product backed by a helluva marketing narrativeAmerica’s last frontier! Land of the organic outlaw!won’t turn out to be too much lower, in the end, than the premium they charge now for growing a crop under conditions of abject fear. It’s not such a bad dream, anyway.
I wonder if one day the market will truly be allowed to work and we'll see a range of marijuana outlets emerge, from cheap Dunkin Donuts versions to really serious, hardcore esoteric ones, like the best wine collections or cigar shops.