Might have some effect.
I’d rather let the states decide.
No.
Next question
No because high taxes drive it back underground.
Why stop there? Legalize barbituates, polygamy, prostitution and other vices if you really want to fill the tax coffers!
No, it won’t. They’ll start treating it like tobacco and raise the taxes so high people will start quitting. Then they’ll pass laws making it near impossible to use.
Most all states that raised tobacco taxes in the last decade (for the children of course or was it to get people to quit? But if I quit I’m not helping children! lol Socialism is so stupid) get less in taxes now than back then.
No. Because the elites will find a way to siphon off the money to themselves and their cronies and still want more. People don’t seem to get that we’re being governed by a criminal element that would put the Italian and Russian Mafias to shame. Until they understand this the beast will always be hungry continuously needing to be fed.
What about the billions in additional health care costs caused by the inhalation of carbon monoxide and soot along with carcinogens during the smoking of marijuana? then there would be the reduced productivity by those high on pot. Welfare spending will have to increase because many potheads are as unemployable as alcoholics. Legalizing marijuana would increase the number of automobile accidents with resulting increase in government costs. Marijuana use can cause some to become violent. According to the testimony of a pathologist Trayvon Martin may have attacked George Zimmerman because Martin was high on pot.
We might actually eventually work our way down the list (from #1)in per capita incarceration worldwide.
Probably not, though.
We would undoubtedly make popcorn consumption (or something equally as innocuous or widespread) a jailable offense.
“it would flood government coffers with billions in additional revenue.”
I think they’d find it’s revenue recycled from welfare programs of all sorts.
I still remember how the lottery saved our educational system and... wait... never mind.
There once was a time when 8.7 billion in tax receipts would have a measurable effect on the debt. But like Steely Dan said, those days are gone forever.
Hippie stoner crud from the 60’s.
Been hearing it my whole life.
Get this through your zoned out skull. Legalizing dope will not bring utopia to Earth nor any other panacea.
It’s inevitable, but will just make things better for the Obama’s of the world.
My son is writing an essay on this topic. He’s taking the sife of legalizing it. Gonna send his this article.
He’s funny. We live in California, and he is going to college at Texas A&M. He didn’t want to write a pro-gun essay because he feels like it’s too sterotypical Texan.
He picks pro-legalizing pot which I point out is very appropriate for the kid from California.
Why do you think Prohibition was lifted?
Revenue.
Blaming drugs for drug addiction is like blaming guns for shootings or cars for accidents, and leads to the same kind of destructive, tyrannical "regulate it with government!" mentality.
I say let's outlaw the Federal governmment from interfering with moral/religious choices ranging from charity (welfare), to booze and health habits, to how we passively, peacefully deal with the openly homosexual among us.
As long as man draws breath, there will be temptations and excess, prostitution, gambling, homosexuality, and all the rest. Individuals can only ever go about the business of making choices within the human condition, where morality determines destiny.
Government has intruded such that it has outlawed certain morality, such as practicing the Christian ethic of peacefully living and let live while shunning -- not outlawing, but shunning -- behaviors and choices that the Christian ethic rejects, such as homosexuality, sloth, envy, vengeance, avarice, SLAVERY.
You know why Western Civilization (as opposed to the East, including Islam, where it's legal to take a 9-year-old girl as a "wife") is slave-free? Because many centuries of quietly living and pursuing the Christian ethic made it happen. The founders took the principles, honor and righteousness of "a good Christian" pretty seriously. "Being a good Christian" ultimately made the West slave free. America is a Christian nation, whether Obama agrees or not.
The Founders were Christians, and they didn't outlaw alchohol or gambling or any of those things. They knew that a moral people would deal with it better than government.
Libertarians approve of flooding government coffers with additional billions of tax dollars?
Proves they are Libertine, not small government.
Spending won’t decrease. If we’re lucky, relatively few people additional people will live on the dole while smoking themselves into oblivion.
Legalize for whom? 12 year old kids? Cigarettes are not legal for minors neither is alcohol. Yet look at the average age drug users start. Does anyone really think the local pusher is going to suddenly become a legitimate business man? No the pusher will just sell to younger kids who will become legal users when they reach 16 or 18 or 21. That is actually my problem with legalization. The dynamics of the problem on society are different than tobacco.
Look at the way liberals complain about the advertising from tobacco companies? Why do dopers think that the CEO of Phillip-Morris is less ethical than the head of a drug-cartel? Why do dopers think think legalization would mean they are left alone to get high?
Dopers have never appeared to me to be the brightest bulbs in the lamp and I don’t think they realize that legalization would suddenly convert them from an oppressed minority to people that need a progressive life style coach (parole officer) supplied by the health police.
although I believe pot should be legal, the idea that a runaway government will handle any tax revenue properly is rediculous..the blow everything they get, on crap no one wants and slip it in their pockets in the end..