The marijuana market would be HUGE if it was legal. You underestimate how many people smoke it already and how many more would do it if it was legal. Plus you don't need that much to get high, so they could charge relatively high prices (much less than street value now), plus the quality would be so much better.
But that is beside the point. It doesn't have to be a huge industry to help the economy. No one is suggesting it would be a panacea, but why keep something that is 1) not dangerous and 2) for which there is a high demand off the market? That completely goes against free market principles (though ironically you will have many people praise the free market out one side of their mouth and criticize marijuana out the other side).
@Comrade:
No one is advocating legalizing narcotics like cocaine and opium. But drug lords make more money off marijuana than everything else. Marijuana is like the Wal-Mart of drugs. Its just a money making business because of volume. It would cripple many drug cartels if they lost that source of revenue. Even a lot of gangs thrive off the drug trade as it is such easy money (built-in demand). The war on drugs has made the world a much more dangerous place.
What you are suggesting is like trying to wage a war against terrorists. Its difficult if not impossible. There is simply too much money involved. You dethrone one drug cartel and another will rise in its place because you are essentially fighting a war against demand. Its like declaring war on restaurant owners for trying to serve people food. They will serve people food one way or another. What I am suggesting is like preventing the terrorists from being able to support themselves in the first place.
Furthermore, there are very few sociological or scientific arguments that someone can articulate for why marijuana should be illegal that wouldn't also suggest that alcohol should be illegal. If you have any, I would love to hear them.
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
