A DISCUSSION ABOUT LEGALIZED MARIJUANA should start with a joke, except that one-liners on the subject mostly amuse folks who are stoned.

Recreational marijuana use by adults is the subject here, and now there’s a local connection. This state has already passed legislation to make medicinal marijuana available to at least some of the people who may benefit from it. A few decades from now we will have enough data to wonder why we put so much faith in the plant’s ability to lessen pain or work cures.

Or, just as likely, we’ll wonder why we demonized such a remarkable drug and needlessly prolonged suffering it could have treated. By then we’ll admit that marijuana’s bad reputation was rooted in racism and politics more than in science. Will the next generations think any of this matters? Read more…

IF YOU PLAN TO ATTEND an annual meeting of the Columbia Economic Development Corporation, bring a calendar. Otherwise this year looks a lot like the last few years’ event. Having the calendar allays fears that the next white man wearing a tie who comes to the podium will welcome you to the Twilight Zone.

If you’re a little jittery because the featured speaker looks familiar, he should. The honored guest at the non-profit CEDC’s signature public event April 30 was investment advisor Hugh Johnson. He’s the same person who spoke the last couple of years. And this year his message sounded similar to what he’d said before, and his predictions have been accurate.

Mr. Johnson knows more than most humans about how markets and investors behave. He’s a very entertaining speaker who spices his cloudbursts of data with self-deprecating humor. We’re still in the longest economic expansion in the nation’s history and he told us that “investors continue to believe the expansion will continue.” But right now we’re “somewhat near the end of this cycle,” which will lead to a slowdown in 2020 or 2021. Enter that on your calendar. It’s a much better guess than the predictions of others. Read more…

WITH THIS ISSUE we begin our 11th year in print. Technically speaking that makes us an adolescent… the paper not the staff.

The well-thumbed “Random House Dictionary of the English Language Second Edition–Unabridged” that sits next to this laptop defines adolescence as “a period or stage of development … preceding maturity.” Okay. I’m in no rush to grow up.

A literal back-of-an-envelope estimate says there have been about 580 issues of The Columbia Paper since the first one appeared April 16, 2009. That’s well over 12,000 pages which, when laid out end to end, would stretch (drum roll) 41 miles. All of it recyclable. Read more…