| jv103 said: The only thing I think about legalizing drugs is that, to benefit the state 'hard' drugs would have to be outlawed or production/growing of 'soft' drugs would need to be outlawed. I think alcohol and tobacco are different from marijuana simply because of a production issue. While I believe people would still buy marijuana from retailers if it was legalized, I think many would simply grow it. Marijuana is extremeley easy to grow and has high yields, especially since most people wouldn't smoke the equivalent of two packs of ciggarettes worth everyday. I know the plant turn around takes a while so, of course people would still need to buy it for convenience sake. The problem with that is to have people buying it prices would drop dramatically for even weed. Which last time I checked was like between $20-30 /gram between $300-$600 /oz (quality) etc. Now if a plant can yield 1/2 lb fully grown, you are lookin at 8 oz or around 2000 dollars street price probably (could be a lot higher, its been about 5 years). Point being, for it to be worth people buying weed at stores, it would have to be around cigarrette prices, or maybe double that. Problem is that most people aren't going to smoke 20 joints in a day, (some obviously may) so you wouldn't have the volume like cigarettes. Basically the government would have to do what they did with liquor, and that is ban production. Distillation is illegal last time I checked, for an individual to do (though you can ferment stuff and make beer, wine [ive done it, and it takes a while and isnt cost effective]). Now if the government wants to legalize cocaine/heroin/meth etc. Then that would be cost effective for people because of the amount of processing (although there are a lot of meth labs). I just don't see Marijuana bringing in a ton of revenue as a high taxed item, unless they outlaw growing. I'm all for it being legal though, but if it is legal how can we use drug money to fund guerillas and death squads? |
Do you honestly think that if marijuana was legal people would buy home-grown drugs/grow their own? HELL NO!
If there is one thing that is more consistent than anything else in America it is the average person's laziness. Marijuana is currently priced close to 6x on the black market what it would probably cost you to buy at the store. Mass production through legal venues will make marijuana cost about as much as cigarettes, if only slightly more.
The cost of marijuana is as high as it is because it is illegal. You are admitting yourself that it is easy to grow. Doesn't that mean that if it is easy to grow then it won't cost that much to produce?
I guarantee you if you could by marijuana at the store for 1/3 of the price it currently sells at, almost no current marijuana users would grow their own or buy it anywhere except the store. Not to mention pot smokers are lazy! Not to mention the quality of the marijuana in stores would probably be much higher than what you could buy "illegally". There is no reason to make growing marijuana illegal. You don't see people going around and growing their own tobacco do you?
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
