Kansas City Food Blog

More and more I hear arguments for legalizing marijuana. Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan are two people pushing especially hard for it right now, although President Barack Obama has blown off the issue -- and for good reason. If Obama made a huge deal about legalizing pot he might make gains among a percentage of people who probably already support him, but he'd lose plenty more voters.

But what if pot were to be legalized without becoming legal?

That appears to what's happening. Two weeks ago, Attorney General Eric Holder announced no more federal raids in the 13 states with medical marijuana laws. For people with marijuana prescriptions in those states, it's just as legal as taking Vicodin after surgery or Ritalin for ADD.

Now marijuana is jumping a huge hurdle into respectability. A marijuana company has gone public.
From 24/7 Wall Street:

This morning the company [Medical Marijuana Inc.] filed a patent application for an invention that the company says "potentially satisfies various governmental and the medical marijuana dispensaries' needs for tax collection in the medical marijuana industry." This is to identify the dispensary's tax ID number and tax rates for state and local taxes.

Medical Marijuana Inc. doesn't sell on the NASDAQ or NYSE, but over-the-counter. And not over-the-counter drugs but stocks, which are listed under CVIV and currently sit at $1.13 per share, the highest it has ever been, man.

Medical Marijuana Inc. does have some issues that will scare would-be investors. Its CEO, Bruce Perlowin, is a convicted smuggler who claims to have brought in millions of pounds of pot. Also, the company has yet to make a profit or show that it can make a profit or all that other stuff that investors find important. But if it does become big, the floodgates could open. As casinos have shown, if there is a buck to be made, corporate America is not far behind.

At the moment Medical Marijuana is a huge gamble, but it shows that the legalize-it crowd is getting smart and appealing to what Americans care about the most -- their pocketbooks.