Gambling was still a sin when i was a kid, almost everybody in town played the numbers game on friday and went to church on sunday. Gambling was illegal too but everybody gambled. The church had BINGO games in the basement once a week, the profits from it topped up the church's coffers. Gambling was ingrained in the culture so solidly church and state were inconsequential. Gambling is a part of human nature, once the State of Nevada decieded to open the floodgates and start taxing the deluge the Gambling Model got rolling bigtime.Nevada's casino's brought in tourists, cash, taxes, jobs and the pressure was on other states who watched their residents and their dough get on planes. The folks came back but their dough usually 'stays in Vegas'. Nevada built schools, roads, libraries and their regulators were the country's best bribed. It took a couple decades but New Jerjey caved first and Atlantic City opened. i forget who came next-the Indian Reservations-Mississippi-Alabama? Lotto, the new numbers game, is inescapable and Keno is worse, it can be hard to elbow into the service counter at many places as the next draw gets closser.
Once upon a time lending money for profit was a crime/sin combo too, times have changed. Now banks, booze, gambling have, for better or worse, gone mainstream. Now its pot's turn to slide into the mainstream.
The next big step, in my opinion, on pot's long road to legality is a clear victory in California on the November ballot. The implications, i think, are far reaching. Undoubtedly California would see 'marijauna tourists' spending money on what would quickly become much cheaper weed than they could buy on the black-maket back home. Back home is where they'd bring it, back home is where they'd re-sell it. The price of pot would drop everywhere not just California, maybe even up here in Canuckistan, as John Lennon sang "Imagine".
States would start caving on pot legalization way quicker than they did with gambling because there's more pot heads thereby more tax money especially now that 'restraint' is about to become the headlines' favorite filler word. i'm gonna guess Vermont goes next, then who knows Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada might feel left out, Oregon, Hawaii, if California votes to legalize pot and the feds don't jump in with warrents and troops to stop the momentum immediately, pot will be legal in almost every corner of North America in 5 years. It's the Gambling Model of immersion.
