As Massachusetts prepares for medical marijuana dispensaries, an ongoing move to legalize the drug for recreational use seems sure to resurface as a public debate. Now the state will be forced to join many others in confronting the public health issues raised by the once-illicit drug, including how to keep it away from children.

Should marijuana-laced gummy worms candy be sold in states where recreational pot use is legal? They are in Colorado.



Should women in bikinis be allowed to parade down city streets wearing sandwich boards that say “Joints $5?” They do in Colorado.



And if marijuana is advertised like alcohol or tobacco, could a cute cartoon figure like Pete the Pothead become the new Joe Camel?



Marketing and the millions in taxes so far in Colorado are just a few of the questions and considerations that the first states in the country to legalize marijuana for recreational use – Colorado and Washington – are grappling with. And these are among the questions Massachusetts may soon have to answer, as the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana attains what NBC News recently called “an aura of inevitability.”



Twenty states, including Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia already have legalized medical or recreational marijuana. Several others – including Alaska (recreational), Florida (medicinal), New York (medicinal) and California (recreational) – are considering some form of legalization. Poll after poll reveal a march toward legalization, with a recent CNN national survey showing 55 percent of all Americans now favor it, compared to just 16 percent some 25 years ago.



The federal government, which still considers marijuana illegal, is essentially allowing it in states that have legalized it. Marijuana has become so mainstream, figures as diverse as former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul and advice columnist Ann Landers say what only reefer rabble rousers like Rasta Man Bob Marley once said: Legalize it.



And if polls, public figures and politicians don’t convince you that the green weed is headed toward legalization, consider this green game changer: The Almighty Dollar.



In January, the first month of legalization of recreational marijuana, sales in Colorado of both recreational and medicinal pot have delivered about $3.5 million in taxes to the state. As more shops open, the state estimates it could rake in $134 million in taxes for the fiscal year from sales of recreational and medicinal marijuana.



Marijuana stocks with names like Hemp Inc. and Medical Marijuana Inc. are “on fire” this year, according to a report in the U-T San Diego newspaper, which, like many publications, quotes an estimate from ArcView Market Research that says legal marijuana sales could total $2.3 billion in 2014.



“And it’s going to get bigger,” says Kevin Wolfe, president of Cowen Capital of Jersey City, N.J.



His company offers loans of $5,000 to $250,000 to start-up marijuana businesses that Wolfe likens to “Main Street, mom and pop businesses like day spas, car washes and barber shops” that may have trouble getting conventional loans from banks.



Add it all up and one of the world’s leading experts on the economy of marijuana, Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron, estimates that the legalization of medicinal and recreational marijuana across the country could mean $15 billion to $20 billion per year in tax revenue and law enforcement savings.



But this dawn of a new day of drug use for medicinal and recreational purposes means there’s a lot more to the new pot industry than growing it, packing it, selling it and rolling it.



“Legalization has raised more questions than it has answered,” says Beau Kilmer, co-Director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center and a co-author of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know.”



Kilmer isn’t the only expert who sees the logistical challenges. One of the authors of the Colorado marijuana legalization law agrees.



“There are a lot more moving parts than anyone has foreseen,” said University of Denver law professor Sam Kamin.



One of those moving parts, Kamin pointed out in an interview and wrote in Slate online magazine, is the question of those gummy worms.



“How do you keep them out of the hands of kids?” he asks.



And how do you package them or advertise them? How much pot – and at what strength – do you put into each bit of candy? These are some of the same questions authorities are asking about medicinal marijuana cookies or brownies.

The state of marijuana around the country

But perhaps the first question anyone thinking of legalizing marijuana must ask is a simple one: How do you do it?



The most likely way is to implement an alcohol and tobacco-based system of private stores with government oversight, as Colorado and Washington did.



That means competition between shops, which in Colorado already have evocative names like Mile High and Cut Above. A free marijuana market could mean lower prices and higher potency for the weed that today in California shops selling medicinal pot has an average content of the ingredient that gets you high – THC – of about 10 to 25 percent, compared to less than 5 percent in the early 1970s, according to Kilmer.

Lower prices for stronger stuff would inevitably lead to more use, says Kilmer.



Which means you have to figure out a way to pay for education and prevention. Washington has addressed this need with high taxes, said one of the authors of the legislation in that state, Roger Roffman, professor emeritus at University of Washington and a longtime marijuana expert. Just how high are the taxes? Twenty-five percent for the processor who buys it from the grower, another 25 percent for the retailer who buys it from the processor and another 25 percent tax for the consumer.



Much of that money is earmarked for prevention and treatment, says Roffman, who calls the legalization system in Washington “a public health alternative.”



But just how will your state tax marijuana? By price? Weight? Potency?



Can it be banned in one town or county and be allowed in another?



If the restrictions – and taxes – are too confining, there might be pushback, especially if high-priced lobbyists are doing the pushing. This pushback could occur if a state opts for government-run marijuana distribution, similar to state-run liquor stores in Pennsylvania, says Roffman.



And if you seek to limit advertising, as lawmakers in Colorado did by confining marijuana ads to publications where “no more than 30 percent of a publication’s readership is reasonably expected to be under the age of 21,” you could be sued. That’s exactly what happened when High Times magazine in February filed a lawsuit challenging that regulation.



All of which is why Cort says that before the march to legalization becomes a full-on frontal assault, we must remember this: “People need to know they’re not voting for simple legalization. They’re voting for commercialization, industrialization, for an industry.”



An industry that wants to sell as much marijuana to as many people as possible – whether it’s in those gummy worms, with those sandwich boards or with cute advertising slogans.



Bottom line as marijuana moves into Main Street USA?



“Whether it’s good for society, or bad for society,” says the Rand Corporation’s Kilmer, “decisions have to be made.”



Steve Israel is a reporter for the Middletown (N.Y.) Times Record-Herald. He researched and wrote this story for GateHouse Media.



