In recent weeks, landlords of some pot shops [in California] have received letters from federal prosecutors warning them to stop sales within 45 days or risk seizure of their property and criminal charges....If you tell businesses they can do something, and they rely on it and expand, how can you justify changing the policy because they expanded?
The current crackdown... is spawning some backlash accusing President Obama of a reversal based on campaign statements, and those later by Justice Department officials, that the federal government shouldn’t and wouldn’t go after medical pot usage allowed by state laws....
Administration officials have countered, such as in this memo in June from Deputy Attorney General James Cole, that the recent aggressive enforcement isn’t a flip-flop — simply a reaction to a vast recent expansion of marijuana cultivation and distribution facilities....
We were just talking about the way uncertainty about government policy inhibits the expansion of business. Now, here's a case where the government proffered assurance about something, triggered a big expansion, and now it's changing the policy.
Why didn't the Obama administration foresee that non-prosecution would lead to expansion? Or maybe I should ask why the purveyors of marijuana trusted the government not to flip the policy? Were they high?
Hey! Wait a minute. Here's some lateral thinking on the subject: All those other businesses owners who are inhibited in the face of policy uncertainty. Let them smoke marijuana. It might overcome their inhibition.
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