I am hopeful and will consider this question to begin "when marijuana is legal" as opposed to "if marijuana were legal." The fact that a little grass is demonized is pretty arbitrary and laughable. If you want to be a stick in the mud, why not outlaw booze while you're at it? Fairly certain more vehicular homicides occur from drunk drivers than blazed ones (among other things, motivation to get up and drive somewhere is lower). Also this person I know acts like a way bigger jackass when she's drunk then when she's high (read: giggling and/or napping). I cross my fingers that policy makers will get real sooner rather than later and drop the pot ban. And nope, I'm not a stoner.

First off, are there a lot of people out there refraining from doobie-smoking because it's illegal? I am aware of no such phenomenon. My understanding is those who want to smoke weed go ahead and do. And they will probably continue to smoke the same quantity they already smoke when it becomes legalized. On that note, the snack industry (specifically cheetohs, mountain dew and ben & jerry's half baked flavor) sales figures will remain fairly stable as well.

The government could reel in some money if they taxed the marijuana that is already sold anyway. The timber industry would be less heavily relied upon as cannabis can produce many great products. Then the world's forests wouldn't be as strained. And I'll just go ahead and refute the "gateway drug" myth. I speculate people who are going to get down with heroin just happen to smoke bleezies first. Just like they're more likely to drink beer and smoke cigarettes before they shoot up, ya know? Correlation, not causation. Something like that.

So I really don't see a whole lot going wrong with the legalization of marijuana. Except maybe people wouldn't try to conceal their enthusiasm for Phish as much. Perhaps we could do something about that, though.