Opponents of Marijuana Legalization Will Say Anything
This letter in the Montgomery Advertiser is a mind-numbing illustration of the vivid imaginations that local anti-drug activists can frequently be found to possess:
Assume the government legalizes pot. It will be taxed (federal and state) and regulated for THC content. Do drug cartels just fold their tent? Hardly. Simply offer a more potent product at a lower cost -- tax-free, of course. Higher THC content is the goal of all serious pot smokers -- check out any issue of High Times, or the myriad of Internet sites offering more potent seeds.
Note to prohibitionists: the second you find yourself arguing that no one will buy legal pot, you've gone off the rails badly. If you wanna talk about the advertisers in High Times, what about the ones that make money hand over fist selling legal herbs that merely look like pot? Legal pot will be an extremely popular product among people who like pot. You don't have to worry about that.
And if you find yourself arguing that drug cartels can stay in business despite sudden widespread competition by simply improving their product and lowering their prices, maybe you should stop to consider how ridiculous that sounds. If they do that, they'll go broke overnight, hence you just accidentally stumbled across the exact reason why legalizing marijuana will annihilate the black market for pot.
It really shouldn’t be necessary to explain that drug cartels thrive on astronomical black market inflation. Everything they are and everything they do revolves around the massive drug monopoly that prohibition bestows upon them. If you take that away, they are nothing.
But if the fundamentals of black market economics continue to escape anyone, I suppose we could always just agree to legalize potent pot as well.
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redditMyths of Moral and Social Decay
Comment posted by Giordano on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 12:42pmIt is always amusing to hear prohibs describe the kind of society they think the U.S. will become with marijuana legalization. Their bleak and bizarre descriptions always seem to take on a kind of Blade Runner quality. Doom and gloom is the only option. The sky will fall.
The doomsayers need only buy the ticket and take the ride to Amsterdam to see for themselves what a system of pot quasi-legalization looks like in a free society. There they will find quaint, peaceful coffee shops plying the marijuana and hash trade with none of the attendant violence and other problems associated with liquor sales in America. And there are no government controls in Holland to regulate THC content, just as there are no government controls to regulate the caffeine content of coffee and soft drinks.
Sure, pot costs less in the Netherlands because weed is not prohibited per se, but it’s not cheap, either. Cannabis sales add in many different ways to the economy of a Dutch city. Besides retail sales, tourists and locals need public places to sit and relax and smoke cannabis the same way people need commercial areas set aside to drink alcohol. Since 1976, the hundreds of coffee shops in Amsterdam have not only generated jobs, major profits and tax revenues, but they function as oases of calm in a bustling and very popular European tourist destination.
Giordano
They might make a good point
Comment posted by glenstark on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 4:41amThe good point being that they should be careful not to over regulate cannabis.
While there is certainly some tipping point where no-one will care if the weed is stronger or not, there is no compelling reason to regulate the THC content of pot. So don't. As for the taxes: don't tax it so heavily that it's worth having a black market. If we tax cannabis at the level we tax tobacco, I don't see there being any issue.
It's also vital that it's legal to grow your own. The regulation should only be on the distribution of cannabis.
www.glenstark.net