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State Store system perfect model for legalized pot

Hey, Gov. Corbett. I know you're still determined to sell off the State Store system, even to the point of threatening funding for schools and other essentials if you don't get your way. The prospect of raising more than a billion dollars from selling off private liquor licenses must look irresistible in the face of a $1.4 billion budget shortfall.

A wine and spirits store on Columbus Boulevard. A state Senate supporter of legalizing pot says infrastructure is already in place.
A wine and spirits store on Columbus Boulevard. A state Senate supporter of legalizing pot says infrastructure is already in place.Read moreDAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

Hey, Gov. Corbett. I know you're still determined to sell off the State Store system, even to the point of threatening funding for schools and other essentials if you don't get your way. The prospect of raising more than a billion dollars from selling off private liquor licenses must look irresistible in the face of a $1.4 billion budget shortfall.

The thing is, you couldn't have picked a worse time for another death struggle with that Great White Whale of Pennsylvania Republicans, libertarians, and wine snobs everywhere.

Why? I'll answer with one word:  marijuana. 

Peer just a bit into the future, and it should be easy to see the connection - even if you can't quite picture "Pocono Pink" alongside the single-malt Scotch at your neighborhood liquorama.

Medical marijuana is already legal in more than 20 states, and even you've cracked open the door to that. Meanwhile, Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational weed and are expecting a big infusion of tax revenue. It's safe to say that Pennsylvania won't be the third state to take that step. But if those voter-mandated experiments don't flop, it also won't be the last.

Meanwhile, we're sitting on a system ideal for moving cautiously - Pennsylvania-style, that is - into the future. And you want to get rid of it?

I'm hardly the first to mention this. Three senators, led by Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery), offered a bill last year that would allow State Stores to sell pot.

"We have a preexisting infrastructure that's already familiar with dealing with an intoxicant - dealing with checking customers' ages, dealing with tax collection," Leach told me last week. "We don't have to reinvent the wheel."

Leach's first priority, though, is medical marijuana, because patients are suffering without a nontoxic treatment their doctors want them to have. He and a cosponsor, Sen. Mike Folmer (R., Lebanon), have been meeting with you and your staff, and hope you and they are close to agreement.

I know the step past that is more controversial, especially for an ex-prosecutor. But Leach, for one, thinks that might not last long.

A key reason is demographics. For everyone from baby boomers on down, Reefer Madness is more a silly flick than a serious warning.

"This is going to be like marriage equality," Leach says. "It reaches a tipping point, and then it just happens. Keep in mind there was only one place you could gamble 40 years ago - Las Vegas. Now you can gamble in some form in 48 states."

Look, I understand why many voters, not to mention most of my friends and colleagues, dislike the State Store system. After 32 years in Pennsylvania, I'm no closer to understanding the supposed wisdom of our post-Prohibition alcohol rules than I was the day I arrived.

Sure, making customers go to those dingy, old, hole-in-the-wall State Stores made buying booze anything but attractive - but they're mostly gone. And if the state's aim was to discourage alcohol use for public-health purposes, why did it make me buy an entire case of beer just to avoid getting gouged for a sixpack at a bar or deli?

So if you and the legislature reach a deal that, say, allows beer and wine sale in groceries, no argument here. I'm only trying to think ahead - including about our revenue needs, just like you.

Chris Goldstein, cochair of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, tells me that the state spends $100 million a year on enforcing marijuana prohibition. Former Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hanger - yes, I know he was a harsh critic - says that, based on Colorado's experience, ending the prohibition could add $300 million a year in revenue, on top of those savings.

Neither Goldstein nor Hanger puts money at the top of his list when talking about reform, to be sure. Instead, they talk about injustice - about the insanity of jailing so many people for possessing a substance safer than alcohol and in widespread use. In Philadelphia, the racial disparity in arrests is stunning - one reason City Council here just voted for pot's decriminalization.

So here's my proposal: Keep the State Stores - and your mind - open. The other Prohibition didn't last, either.

215-854-2776 @jeffgelles