Marijuana's boom and bust across the Oregon-Idaho state line

The New York Times reported last week from Ontario, Oregon, population 11,366, and on the state line with Idaho.  The headline is "Oregon Town’s Marijuana Boom Yields Envy in Idaho," and the subhead is "Tax revenue has surged since cannabis stores opened in Ontario, Ore., fueling a push in neighboring Idaho to legalize sales and get in on the action."  Here's an excerpt focusing on the good economic news out of Ontario:

The cannabis boom is helping to drive a thriving local economy — and tax revenues that have paid for new police positions, emergency response vehicles, and park and trail improvements.

Missing out on the action has become increasingly frustrating to some politicians and longtime residents in Idaho, where the population and living costs have surged in recent years.

Here's the big picture background on the legalization of marijuana at the state level: 

Because the sale or possession of marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, many states — and in this case neighboring ones — have landed on drastically different approaches for whether and how to decriminalize, regulate and tax cannabis. Since 2012, 23 states have legalized it for recreational use, and more than three dozen allow medical marijuana.

Eleven states, mostly conservative-leaning, have enacted extremely limited medical marijuana laws. Aside from cannabis-derived drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for limited medical use, Idaho has not legalized any cannabis sales — a prohibition that has helped its more progressive neighbors.

The story quotes the Ontario mayor, Debbie Folden: 

Our cannabis market caters almost exclusively to Idaho residents.  This has been an economic boom unlike any this city has seen.

So, Oregon--and the City of Ontario, in particular--is getting the benefit of the state's lax marijuana laws, while neighboring Idaho is missing out on the revenues that flow from the sale of marijuana and cannabis products.  It's a contemporary parallel to a long-time issue associated with "dry counties," those where alcohol sales are prohibited.  A principle argument in favor of making those counties "wet" has been that people are going to drive across county lines (and sometimes state lines) to get the alcohol anyway; thus dry counties are missing out on the revenue associated with alcohol sales and thus simply hurting themselves.

Recent posts about Oregon and Idaho politics are here, here, and here.