[pmoriarty]

I really don't see why the alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies can't themselves move in to production and sale of marijuana, once it becomes legal.

In fact, I'd bet this is exactly what will happen. They're even likely to come to dominate the market, much like Google did the phone market once they came out with Android, and Microsoft did the console market once they came out with the Xbox.

[chimeracoder]

> I really don't see why the alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies can't themselves move in to production and sale of marijuana, once it becomes legal.

That's exactly what I'm saying. The tobacco industry would love to leverage their existing assets into a lateral move into the marijuana industry. But until it's legal, they have to sit by and watch their lunch get eaten by smaller firms with larger risk appetites because they have less to lose if things blow up in their faces. That's what's already happening.

[WalterSear]

Pharma can't make money on comoditized, public domain medicine. The alcohol industry doesn't have a relevant infrastructure or supply chain. Tobacco is the only industry that's in a position to pivot, but the profit margins on mass cannabis are much less than tobacco, since it consumption is inherently lower. That said, Philip Morris purchased a few hundred thousand acres of Humboldt county in the early ninties, in anticipation of legalization.