So let's game this out a few decades.
See this as an example of dynamics when business and government look at their revenue vs what is going in the black market:
Big Tobacco urges Canada to ensure legal nicotine competitive with black market
"About 70 per cent of the price of a pack of cigarettes is taxes, he said, and the illegal market in Canada represents 25 per cent of sales and billions a year in lost revenue for governments."
So let's take Mondieus pessimistic view as completely accurate, and for sake of argument, say the proportions are reversed to start with:, 25% legal and 75% black market. To make the math easy let's say the market is worth $100 Billion total
1. Legalization starts with all the bullshit in the policy.
2. Government starts getting millions in revenue from the legal market.
3. Businesses start making millions in revenue from the legal market.
4. Consumers start buying but too many stay with the convenience and benefits they see sticking with black market fly by night dispensaries and neighbourhood guys. Black Market is 75% of the market.
5. Canadian government sees 75 billion in sales not being taxed.
6. Growing new business interests, WeedBO in Ontario, shoppers - see 75 billion they aren't getting.
7. Consumers still aren't happy with legal price and convenience.
Maybe you can see the dynamics that are going to come about?
We are going to have business revenue potential, tax revenue potential, and voter pressure all work in concert to steadily erode the size of the black market. Businesses won't have to lobby too hard when they point out the tax revenue opportunities that are directly tied to their lost business revenue. Studies will show overly restrictive policies keep the black market flush. Provinces with smaller black markets by dint of their less restricted policy mix will show other provinces they are missing out on $$. Also the sky won't fall and the pearl clutchers won't be able to suggest it might anymore.
It's pretty much in everyone's best interest to see the black market shrink and we should see more dynamics pushing for black market erosion than black market growth until a new, tobacco like equilibrium is reached, and then we may see some years in the future when Conservatives want to roll back the pendulum the other way, some scenario where dynamics will lead to future black market bumps, just as tobacco policy continues to do in fits and starts over the decades, as tobacco restrictions and taxes rise and fall.
This is the new game for the next decades, and Canada is better off for reasons of personal freedom and the bottom line and social justice, to be playing this game over the old one.
In the game of Prohibition, everyone loses.