The Legislature’s enactment legalizing and creating a regulatory structure for marijuana, with the governor’s signature, represents the middle of an important state lawmaking process. The final step, the adoption of administrative regulations by the newly-created Cannabis Regulatory Commission, will complete the three-step process.

Legalizing and regulating marijuana could, of course, have been accomplished by ordinary statutory lawmaking. But when that approach failed, the Legislature turned to our state constitution’s amendment process as a “ tool of lawmaking.” The marijuana amendment, the first step, was not “self-executing,” in that by its terms it required implementing legislation (and administrative regulations) to effectuate its policy changes.