Economists see a different picture — a multibillion dollar market about to be unfettered with little sense of how consumers will react. Two rules they expect to apply: competition will lower prices and expand the market; businesses will look for ways to get ahead of the pack.

One recent study predicted California marijuana would underprice high-quality Mexican imports in virtually every city in the United States, even including the costs of smuggling and state taxes.

The reaction of drug cartels behind vast imports into the United States is anybody's guess, from abandoning the field to doubling down in a legal market where they can plow profits into political campaigns for legitimate allies.

But fear of the effects of legal California 'bud' already has made its way to the streets of Tijuana, the Mexican sister city to San Diego and a major gateway of drugs into the United States. "We're screwed," said Juan V., a street dealer in the grimy border city of around 2 million people. "They are going to want us to lower prices," he said. "We'll just have to sell more here."

It's the economy
California's climate is perfect for growing almost anything, but the best marijuana 'grow' is a private world completely divorced from nature that produces a drug with 10 or 15 times the punch as your hippie grandparents' weed.

Mexican drug cartels grow good quality product in California national and state parks, which are the target of frequent police raids and less frequent arrests. Well-heeled consumers buy marijuana "medicine" grown indoors in an environment often devoid of dirt, sun or bugs. In about 10 weeks, a cutting from a mother plant can be grown into a bush of buds, harvested, and sealed in a turkey basting bag, known for its ability to contain the pungent smell of pot.

Big medical marijuana dispensaries offer dozens of types of marijuana, with a spectrum of colors from deep purple to tangerine orange and different tastes to boot. Years and decades of breeding marijuana has produced superior pot, growers say, and once they get a strain right, they stick with it, making cuttings of the perfect bush and then teasing them to the brink of horticultural bliss.

"What you are dealing with is frustrated sex for plants," says Wilcox, explaining how the goal is to grow female plants to the point they are yearning for fertilization, producing a sticky substance full of mind-bending chemical THC.

The process typically begins in a musky smelling basement dripping with tropical heat from high-powered grow lights, which have contributed greatly to fires in Oakland, city officials say. Clippings from the perfect mother plant, known as clones, are brushed in rooting compound. They are then set in a pot of rock wool in a tub that is regularly flooded with nutrient-enriched water.