Everybody who cares about illicit drug regulation knows that, this November, Californians will get a chance to vote on a ballot proposition legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. What nobody knows for sure is how legalization would affect the price and rate of use of the stuff. The non-profit Rand Corporation’s Drug Policy Research Center takes some highly educated guesses, predicting that the (pretax) retail price of an ounce could fall by 80 percent or more, and that consumption could rise to 1970s levels. There’s a lot more to their analysis, though: think tax revenues, drug law enforcement costs, tourism, gang violence – even the impact on innovation.







When I attempted to download your paper, the pdf file seemed to be corrupted. Is there another way to obtain a copy?
Hi Ed,
The link to the paper can be accessed from RAND’s website: http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP315.pdf. If you have trouble with the link to the PDF, you could also try this one: http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP315/
Thanks for writing!