If you smoke pot yu need to be VERY wary of any legalization initiatives, they are not all what they seem.
Here in WA they are going to put the medical guys out of business, triple the cost of weed and dump huge amounts of money into weed law enforcement, where before I-502 there was ZERO law enforcement, high quality and low prices.
Now people are going to go to jail for growing weed at home, I wouldnt even be surprised if they put up a reward for your neighbors to rat you out just like in the 80s. The drug war is back on here.
And of course you will have to go a designated store and show ID just for the privilege of buying overpriced weed.
Huge amounts of people are now getting DUIs for smoking weed because they changed the way that is enforced (DUIs have been big business here in WA for decades), basically if the cop says your stoned you get a DUI which is very expensive and takes years to deal with.
I'd vote to legalize it in a second, just so you're not always worried about a simple possession charge and have a record. Get stopped/searched or denied at the US/Canada border, TSA, etc. Thankfully I don't have one, only ever been caught by a cop walking downtown high, but we smoked the joints we brought with us so the cops couldn't really do much. A lot of hassle can come from possessing something that nobody cares about anymore, except maybe some extreme right wingers.
I think any place that legalizes it is going to have higher prices that normal street price, and I don't have a problem with going to a designated store, and showing ID. I'd be a little concerned if you could walk into a corner store and buy weed it just doesn't seem appropriate. But in most of Canada you have to go to a designated store to buy beer/booze, so I guess I'm used to that anyway.
I went to Colorado for the 4/20 weekend, and prices were $20-$30/gram depending on the strain. It was the first time I've been somewhere where it's legal to buy/possess. In Canada (like most places), it's about $10 by the gram on the streets, and less if you're buying something like an ounce or more, which is not a huge amount for a regular smoker. At least with the dispensary though, you can be pretty confident that you're getting a consistent product, it's the product you want, and there's always high quality stuff and choices available. If you don't have a dealer like James Franco from Pineapple Express, you might have to settle with some crappy schwag from time to time.
You will still be able to find weed cheep if you want to buy off the streets. In Denver me and my buddy were off our plane, got our rental car, booked into our hotel and started walking around 16th street. Within 5 minutes some guy saw us, said we looked lost, and asked what we were looking for. We told him we were from Canada and looking for a dispensary, and he opens up his backpack and told us the dispensaries were overpriced, and told us to buy from him. We chatted him up for like 10 minutes, told him thanks and we'd think about it, took his number, but we wanted to check out some dispensaries, wanted to also buy edibles, and we were only in town for 5 days and flying back to Canada, so we didn't need a whole lot anyways. He pointed us in the right direction, and gave us a doobie. If you still want to buy it illegally you'll be able to get good prices.
I'm not sure what you mean by people will "now" go to jail for growing at home though? Hasn't that always been the case (or parole / fine)? Just because something is legal to buy from a dispensary doesn't mean it's legal to manufature/produce.
