According to The Los Angeles Times, in the two-plus years that recreational marijuana use was made broadly legal, an expected tax windfall has not materialized. This is because a huge black market sprang up after a majority of California cities chose not to allow pot shops. On top of that, legal sellers say, state, county, and local sales taxes, which can reach higher than 30 percent, nearly price legitimate shops out of the recreational market. Able to underprice legitimate sellers, untaxed home-delivery services quickly stepped in. 

As far as cultivation goes, California’s example is not so good either. Burdensome licensing rules have thwarted many farmers who would otherwise take part. And because of the vibrant black market, there is no reason for longtime illicit suppliers to change business models.

In our own Suffolk County, there is some interest in an expected component of the state’s looming legalization that would allow counties, large towns, and cities to decide for themselves whether to allow weed shops. As in California, untaxed and unregulated home delivery would thrive under this condition, while weed buyers would just jump in their cars to drive to wherever retail shops were legal.

One of the other problems with the way Gov. Andrew Cuomo is thought to be leaning is in preferring that marijuana be grown indoors. This would all but shut out the state’s small farms, handing a massive windfall to well-funded investors who could cover the sky-high startup costs. Indoor growing is far from green, too, consuming massive amounts of electricity for lighting, heat, and air circulation, frequently relying on chemical fertilizers, and producing greenhouse gases while consuming and potentially contaminating massive quantities of water. From the governor’s perspective, it might make sense: Large marijuana concerns would likely be hearty political donors. However, it would kill smaller green producers or push them into the black market.

California’s example is a cautionary tale of how not to legalize recreational marijuana. As New York lawmakers consider their own version, they should look west to see what works and what does not and for lessons about the pitfalls of poorly crafted regulations.

One of the good things here in 2018 could just as easily have turned out to be a tangled mess. After chemicals known to be harmful to health and the environment were found in groundwater in Wainscott, East Hampton Town, county officials, and the Suffolk Water Authority moved with remarkable speed to protect residents.

While the physical source of the contamination has not been identified, and may never be, residents were offered bottled water immediately and a water main’s extension went into overdrive. Now, just over a year since the scope of the challenge became evident, contractors are near completion of eight-and-a-half miles of new water main, able to provide safe drinking water to the approximately 520 properties in the area affected by compounds used in industrial applications and, perhaps most relevant, firefighting foam.

Questions remain to be answered, however. Some will be dealt with in court, in lawsuits by the town, state, and county against the foam manufacturers and fire departments that used the foam in the past at a practice site near East Hampton Airport. Other issues include the high cost of connecting houses to the water mains, which can run into tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the distance and complexity of the terrain. Also of concern is what might lurk in drinking water elsewhere in New York. Similar contamination has been identified upstate in Newburgh, Plattsburgh, and Rome, and on Long Island in Patchogue, Islip, Bohemia, Bethpage, and Medford. The list goes on.

Then there is a big unknown of the long-term effect on wildlife. Groundwater in the affected area tends to move toward Georgica and Wainscott Ponds. PFOS and PFOA, as the chemicals are called, accumulate in air-breathing animals, increasing in concentration as they move up the food chain. The long-term environmental impact might be years away from becoming known.

Right in time for New Year’s Eve, Utah police took zero tolerance for drunken driving to a new low — .05 percent blood-alcohol level. The message is clear: The state’s legislature and governor believe that drinking and driving in any amount is a threat to public safety. Utah is backed in this by the National Transportation Safety Board, which also has advocated a 0.05 percent impairment threshold. 

The new level is indeed low; it would take about three 12-ounce Budweisers for a 180-pound person to be defined as drunk in Utah, less than two glasses of wine for a 130-pound person. But people vary; one beer is enough to set some lighter drinkers reeling.

No surprise, opposition has come from bars and restaurants — and the American Beverage Institute, whose communications director just this week made the dimwitted claim that since many Utah residents are Mormons, who do not drink, they did not know what they were talking about when they passed the law. What? So one has to be a murderer to pass laws saying murder is wrong? Who knew? 

Anyway, the industry is scared. Between tougher driving-while-intoxicated laws and the creeping legalization of recreational pot, the fear is that consumption could move sharply downward. In the industry’s favor, however, the polling organization Gallup says the share of Americans who drink has been more or less steady since 1939. Police in Utah say that the new 0.05 level will not change the way they work; driver stops will be based on observing signs of impairment. 

From our perspective, reporting on sometimes double-digit D.W.I. incidents each week, a further encouragement for the use of taxis, ride-hailing services, and designated drivers is very welcome. Important, as well, is giving courts a new way to get repeat offenders off the road.

Watching the confirmation hearing this week for William Barr as attorney general, we were struck that for the most part the senators stuck to their four-minute limits, often making note of the remaining seconds. This is in particular contrast to regularly held hearings in East Hampton Town Hall, where the three-minute countdown clock for individual speakers is mostly ignored. We have an idea that might help.

It is in the interest of comity for the town board to allow those members of the public who care to address it in person a little latitude on time. However, there are some individuals whose, shall we say, abiding interest in civic engagement compels them to rise and make comments on just about everything that comes up. For this, we have two words: poker chips.

Each person who plans to speak at a meeting of the town board would be handed two or three chips at the outset, redeemable each time they approach the microphone. When one’s chips were used up, he or she would have to find another way to express opinions, for example, in a protest march, or Facebook hoo-rah, or, yes, in a letter to the editor of The Star. Chips, of course, could not be shared with another person nor hoarded for the next meeting.

If the United States Senate can mind the minutes and maintain good order, so too can East Hampton Town Hall, one would think. It’s chips or find money in the budget to buy Town Clerk Carole Brennan a huge metal gong. Now that’s something we really would like to see.

Montauk residents rose up at Town Hall this week, alarmed that new, long-term planning for the hamlet was about to become law. More than a few of those who spoke complained they had not been told anything about the multiyear project now nearing completion. Ah, the information age.

One of the things governments and newspapers must contend with today is that they can no longer expect everyone to come to them. Rather, information must be walked directly to an increasingly fractured audience, wherever and however each segment of the public finds out about the world beyond their homes. Long gone are the days when the nightly newscasts on the big three TV networks told us how it was. Today, even for the civic-minded, there are too many distractions.

The Star learned this when the Army Corps Montauk sandbag fiasco began some years ago. Despite advance coverage running well past 100,000 words, when the bulldozers began tearing up a natural dune, surprise and outrage followed, expressed largely on social media, particularly via Instagram. We felt flat-footed.

As to the current hamlet work, The Star first started reporting on these studies about three years ago. As early as February of last year, this page lauded a blockbuster concept of moving Montauk’s motels and residences threatened by erosion inland. “This is headline-grabbing stuff,” we declared. Well, perhaps not. Perhaps we, like government officials, should seek additional pathways, or platforms, for bringing attention to the big stuff.

The natural reaction for those who worked for months and years on the hamlet studies, as well as those of us in the news media, is to be peeved when the cries of “Why weren’t we told!” ring out. Yes, it would be better if people were more knowledgeable about what was going on in their neighborhood, hamlet, or town, but ordinary, daily things get in the way. Busy lives, multiple jobs, a desire to step back from national and international problems by binge- watching Netflix all contribute to the gap between what we should be aware of and the extent to which we are in the dark.

A hypothetical document like the Montauk Hamlet Study or any of the others recently completed is less than likely to draw widespread attention until it is completed. Such is the nature of modern life, and perhaps human nature itself. Still, there were elements that The Star and Town Hall could have made a bigger deal about. To be charitable, it is an education for all of us when every new bit of tech or mobile app comes along. But the public, too, has its own obligation to stay informed, at least when they have the time.

Explanations vary about the cause of a storm of dust that flowed on and off in the past week into downtown Amagansett. The known source was a large farm field just beyond the north side of the municipal parking lot. According to the most common account, late rains messed up this year’s harvest on the field. Then the farmer who rents it was delayed in getting a cover crop down and geese gobbled up the seedlings. That may be so, but it does not account for dust having blown off the field in previous years or for similar dust-ups off Long Lane in East Hampton. Notably, much larger fields at Town Lane in Amagansett have not been affected in a similar situation.

Given alarm about past practices on farmland, a great deal of concern is warranted. Substances, both naturally occurring and manmade, have been found on other agricultural properties on the South Fork. Dust itself, even absent potential toxins, is a health risk, particularly for the elderly and young children who might live nearby or attend the school just down the road. 

To what extent a town or county legislative response is possible is unclear. For the most part, matters involving farming fall under the purview of state regulators. Compounding the confusion is a lawsuit filed by members of the Bistrian family, who own the land, seeking to force East Hampton Town to build a road over which a residential development they plan there would be reached. 

Another wrinkle is that the town owns a portion of the dust source, an inverted “L” reaching up like a woodstove chimney smack in the middle of the field, from the municipal parking lot to Windmill Lane. Over the years, town officials tried to buy the land for preservation, but the Bistrians rejected the offers as too low for land that is already divided on paper into about 10 separate buildable lots. The last time the parties were in active negotiation, the family felt the town was low-balling the potential purchase by at least $10 million. 

One solution that many Amagansett residents might not like is for the Bistrians’ residential development plan for the properties to go forward, with the town living up to its obligation to open a road, as promised, to Windmill Lane. If the remaining family owners are unhappy with the town’s offer, as we have noted before, property in the center of the Amagansett business district is not really the wrong location for a handful of new houses. At least lawns would not be likely to dry up and blow dust into houses and shops.

If the Amagansett dust bowl is in any way the result of the long impasse between the property owners and the town, no effort should be spared to force all the parties to a speedy resolution.

When it comes time to repair the town docks, Ed Michels, East Hampton Town’s chief harbormaster, will order taller pilings. This, as he said in a jaw-dropper of a story here by Christopher Walsh, is because sea level rise has made existing pilings too short during excessively high tides. And just like that, the town and many of its residents will begin to adjust.

Warming of the atmosphere caused by human activity is largely absorbed by the oceans, which, for a variety of reasons including the melting of the polar ice caps, is causing average water levels to rise. Ordinary northeaster storms now regularly flood the bays and harbors, Mr. Michels said. A bulkhead at Three Mile Harbor must be replaced with one much taller. Salt water threatens electricity supply pedestals at boat slips. The bellwether Napeague Meadow Road, which used to flood once or twice a year, now has water on it regularly. Gerard Drive in Springs is in dire need of help after a succession of destructive storms.

In addition to property damage, warmer, wetter winters have contributed to a rise in tick-borne illnesses. Where the oddball allergy to red meat caused by the bite of the lone-star tick was all but unknown, now the number of cases seen at one East Hampton medical practice alone exceeds 700. Other people suffer from far more dangerous illnesses, such as babesiosis and Lyme disease, which were once rare.

“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper,” T.S. Eliot said, and in a sense, his doomsday poem predicted the incremental changes we now see. It is as simple as storm tides’ exceeding their usual bounds and as complex as doing something to end it.

If President Trump managed one thing with his televised pitch on Tuesday — ostensibly for his signature border wall — he pushed the Russian election-interference investigation out of the top news for a couple of days. Not surprisingly, his last-ditch effort came at a time when the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives was getting itself gathered to direct its own attention to the president, his family, and his associates, and the Mueller investigation continued to pile up evidence — and guilty pleas.

Returning to the theme that launched his campaign, Mr. Trump made a number of demonstrably false claims. It was a filibuster of sorts, since even he must understand that a wall between the United States and Mexico would have only a marginal effect on already declining illegal immigration. Major networks and newspapers lost no time on Tuesday night debunking what he said about the numbers, drugs, and the effect on U.S. jobs. Also, even Mr. Trump must have understood that the wall had become a losing issue after his “caravan” mania leading up to the November election was shrugged off by voters in a solid Democratic rout.

This leaves distraction. If there is one thing the president knows it is the power of a shiny object. It is too bad for him that Robert Mueller and the House Democrats are not about to take the bait.

New York State’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, made public her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination this week in an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” This made national news, but in East Hampton, the announcement seemed to draw little notice. 

Ms. Gillibrand had been a member of the House of Representatives from the upstate district that includes Albany before her appointment as senator in 2009 by Gov. David Paterson. She was little known statewide at that point and that she was to succeed Hillary Clinton, whom President Obama had made secretary of state in his first term, surprised many observers. Time proved that Mr. Paterson was onto something in selecting her; since winning a special election in 2010 to fill out Mrs. Clinton’s term, she has scored landslide wins over her Republican rivals.

Yet 10 years later, Ms. Gillibrand might be as unfamiliar to East End residents as she was when she represented New York’s 20th Congressional District. From her start in the Senate, she has seen her role as that of a national figure, working on such issues as sexual violence within the military and health measures for 9/11 responders. Ms. Gillibrand has made few visits to East Hampton during her time in the Senate, but then, her colleague, Senator Charles Schumer, has not been around much either.

It is fitting perhaps that she chose to make her presidential bid known in a television appearance. At least Mr. Colbert’s show is seen throughout the state.

Amid a period of transition following the appointment of Andrea Grover as its director, there has been one charming constant at Guild Hall, the annual Student Art Festival. The program opened last week with a round of performances. A show of paintings, small sculpture, photography, drawing, and collage will be on view Fridays through Mondays, through Feb. 24. Workshops led by educators from Golden Eagle Artist Supply will be held on Saturday.

The exhibition itself is a pleasure, year in and year out. High schoolers produce highly accomplished work, often quite serious in tone and theme. Younger students’ work is a riot of color, pattern, and joy. One of the fascinating things about the whole K-through-12 extravaganza is how different each school’s entries are. Tiny Wainscott’s pieces are always standouts. Springs, as perhaps befits a place where the legendary Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Willem and Elaine de Kooning painted, are wildly expressive — plus the Springs School’s epic fourth-grade opera is staged each fall. 

Art matters. Educators say over and over again that such creative activities are not simply a luxury for the most well-off districts, they are an essential building block of many of the qualities needed in adulthood for success and satisfaction. These include the hand-eye skills developed in a toddler’s scribbling and even decision-making, as simple as the choice of which color to use where when coloring. As children get a little older, art sparks inventiveness, the kind of thinking increasingly important in our complex, digital present. Cultural awareness is boosted, as they learn about artistic expression down through time and around the world. 

Finally, time and again, studies have demonstrated a powerful link between the arts and other achievement. A report by Americans for the Arts found that children who do nine hours of art a week are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to enter a math or science fair, or win a writing award. And if that were not enough, art is simply fun. Thank you to Guild Hall for always being there for our kids.