There are many folks who buy a pound sell 15 oz bags and keep the last one for personal use.  No way the govt will provide that service.

My roomates and I will chip in together for a bulk package of razor blades from Costco, and we'll chip in together on bulk pot for a better price.  What's the big deal?  As long as it's purchased legally somewhere along the line, some taxes are being paid.

Unless you're talking about selling homegrown, in which case how is that different than a roadside fruit stand selling their homegrown fruit?  If they're not licensed or collecting taxes they are subject to prosecution, that won't change.

"Off the books" dealings exist in every business, it's nothing unique to marijuana.

[Mary Katherine]Ham, who frequently spars with the Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly on the subject, argued that the truly conservative position is to let people make their own choices and to avoid wasting taxpayer dollars enforcing laws that don't seem to work and that often have negative consequences. Even if legalization ends up having unanticipated negative consequences, she said, those should be weighed against the lives no longer ruined by the drug war and the "moral value" of increased freedom.

Similar views appear to be gaining currency in a Republican Party that has increasingly turned away from the tough-on-crime stance that was once its signature domestic issue. (Remember Willie Horton?) In 2012, the official GOP platform discarded its old war-on-drugs plank in favor of a softer stance, and many in the party support criminal-justice reforms to reduce prison spending and sentencing disparities.

But CPAC is a gathering that draws much of its attendance from college students and skews libertarian. (Indeed, Dymowski is a Libertarian Party candidate for Maryland attorney general.) Based on that, I wondered if the beating Beach had taken was an anomaly, not representative of the dynamic of the broader conservative movement.

I put that question to Beach after the panel. But he said no--basically every conversation he has with his fellow conservatives about drugs, he said, turns into a similar browbeating. When Bennett, who also served as George H.W. Bush's drug czar, talks about the issue on the radio, callers are generally 70-30 against his position. "There used to be a strong conservative coalition opposed to drugs, but it's dissipated in the face of mounting public support for legalization," Beach told me. "We're fighting against the tide on this."