Green Wednesday: Colorado pot shops are opening today

Meanwhile, back in the so-called real world, Colorado is pursuing its legalization experiment to a logical conclusion:

Police were adding extra patrols around pot shops in eight Colorado towns that plan to allow recreational sales to anyone over 21 on Jan. 1. Officials at Denver International Airport installed new signs warning visitors their weed can’t legally go home with them.

And at a handful of shops, owners were scrambling to plan celebrations, set up coffee stations, arrange food giveaways and hire extra security to prepare for potential crowds and overnight campers ready to buy up to an ounce of legal weed.

While smoking pot has been legal in Colorado for the past year, so-called Green Wednesday represents another historic milestone for the decades-old legalization movement: the unveiling of the nation’s first legal pot industry.

Here are further details on Green Wednesday., including this: “Federal law says the drug’s possession, manufacture, and sale is illegal, punishable by up to life in prison…”  I wonder if this experiment in federalism will survive our next Republican President.  My prediction has long been that this kind of legalization will not persist, but the chance I am wrong has been rising.

Out-of-staters, by the way, can purchase only a quarter ounce at a time and are not supposed to carry the pot outside Colorado borders.  There is also this:

Colorado projects $578.1 million a year in combined wholesale and retail marijuana sales to yield $67 million in tax revenue, according to the Legislative Council of the Colorado General Assembly. Wholesale transactions taxed at 15 percent will finance school construction, while the retail levy of 10 percent will fund regulation of the industry.