Just for fun, I prompted Perplexity about the prospects of Oregon vendors when it comes to escaping Prohibition, which sounds like a 1920s question, and yet it's really from 2025. Like in many states in the Union and like in some UN states such as Canada, restrictions on recreational cannabis use are minimal here, relative to those states of a more punitive nature.
Not only is possession not a crime, but neither is vending. You're basically buying and selling a type of whiskey, a substance not to be sold or shared with minors (people below a specific age).
I notice Perplexity calls this a query, not a prompt, however the idea is the same, to get the ball rolling, to rustle the leaves, to avail of human chatter on the subject, by means of a synthesizing ML/DL bot net. Here's the prompt:
Oregon and other states within the Cascadia bioregion feature a large commercial economy around cannabis, and yet local laws disallow vendors from making use of the usual banking system, meaning customers are not allowed to use credit cards. Given the evolving BRICS payment system, might Oregon vendors look forward to offshoring their transactions to a credit card system that is more open to trade in Pacific products?
The output is relatively long-winded, as one would expect. Ordinary union citizens are expected to be good doobies and remain obedient to Prohibition laws, whereas the rich and powerful already have immunity from prosecution regarding alcohol (whiskey) or whatever consumption.
Any encouraging of vendors, by a chatbot (aka a "chatterbox") to go around the Feds, by transacting outside the American Express / Visa / Mastercard system, presumably keeping more accounts offshore, or in crypto, would go against our expectations rather radically, which is the opposite of what LLMs are all about.
On the other hand, LLMs are permitted a cautionary if not outright prosecutorial tone when prodded to describe activities of dubious legal status per whatever AI bias introduced through raw training data.
In the meantime, Cascadian vendors incur extra risks and live under a Sword of Damocles in being forced to the margins by legal systems and needing to buy the services of sympathetic legislators to keep their businesses in operation. Tax cuts don't really address their core situation.
The psychological costs, not on the books, may be sensed in terms of an increasing distance between westerly and easterly power centers within North America. Prohibition laws dovetail with voter suppression strategies that many in power cannot afford to abandon and/or don't see a way to relinquish.
The former territories, such as Oregon, have a relatively shorter history as Union states and whereas bastions of various types of supremacist have taken refuge here, the sweeping majority is not in need of voter suppression as a core strategy and therefore Prohibition is seen more as a curse and an obstacle to economic growth, and less as a lid on some kind of lurking social chaos.
