The state will go to pot
Posted on 11/04/2009 6:53:21 AM PST by YoungGunConservativeRadio
California is bankrupt. Ten weeks after a nasty budget fight concluding in a compromise everyone hates, the state is broke. They’ve legalized gambling and the state is still broke. They’ve raised the alcohol tax and the state is still broke. They’ve raised the tobacco tax and the state is still broke.
So the new push: Legalize pot, tax it and we’ll all be saved.
Don’t get me wrong: if you want to legalize Mary Jane, go ahead. I don’t have a problem with the drug or people who smoke it. But if you think this will be the magical fix-all, give me a break.You want to legalize pot and tax it so the state can make money? Why would I do that when I can grow it in my basement for almost free? Most potheads are doing this already. Making it legal will only make it legal.
You also have to factor in that the minute you make it legal, the price of marijuana is going to DROP. The only reason it’s expensive now is because it’s a controlled substance. Most of the cost on the street comes from the rarity of the product and attempts to keep the cops out of the deals. Once pot is available at every 7-11 it’ll be a lot cheaper.
(Excerpt) Read more at younggunconservative.com ...
This is hysterical. My mom and I were discussing this last night.
More and more smokers of cigarettes are getting ostricized, and getting thrown around, but they are going to legalize smoking pot. Are the voters crazy, or what sometimes.
Legalized pot ==> More potheads
More potheads ==> Less productive workers
Less productive workers ==> Less income earned
Less income earned ==> Less tax revenue
So, if they legalize pot, the state will go further into debt, but nobody will care.
Has California ever thought of cutting spending? Pass a State Constitution Amendment prohibiting govermental debt?
Breckenridge CO just legalized weed for everyone over 21.
Weed is so easy to grow that most serious smokers will just grow their own.
Marijauna is pretty easy to grow.
errrr, so I’ve heard
;)
That’s what I’ve always said.
Why do they think it’s called “weed”?
Sure they care.
They’ll get even more addle minded democrap voters.
That’s all that matters to them.
Riiiiight.
Because, nobody can get pot now, since it’s illegal.
And the flipside is also true. People gripe about the gubmint getting "tough on tobacco" yet they support the gubmint getting tough on marijuana. But hey, this is a country that managed to BAN alcohol by constitutional amendment only a few generations ago.
Your oversimplification reminds me a lot of how the pro-abortion lobby equates anti-abortion laws to the deaths of women to bleed to death for using a coat hanger to self-abort. You forgot to add how much the states will save $ & prison space by not enforcing anti-marijuana laws, & will strengthen their ability to fight REAL crime.
Are you sure about that? Wouldn't supply and demand suggest that if there is a decrease in the supply of productive workers, wages for productive workers will increase? If there are less of them, they can demand more money, right?
Also, does a loss of productivity lead to less income earned? I'm not so sure that's true. It seems to me they'd be earning the same thing for producing less, which is actually an INCREASE in earnings.
Would overall business productivity go down? Maybe not. Perhaps it would create incentive for more automation, robotics, etc, which would lead to greater overal productivity, lower prices, etc.
Anyway, if you believe in a free market, why not let the market sort it out?
Yo. Cap. Ever heard of moonshine? Revenuers? Quite a tussle over home production of a taxed resource.
Go ahead and grow it. The JBTs will find you, break your door down and shoot your dog. Just like they do today.
If "most potheads" already do this, then why is there so much commercial trade in marijuana?
This article seems to be based on unfounded conjecture and ignorance.
If the price would drop upon legalization, the idea is to use taxation to keep the prices relatively stable (compared to what they are now.) Except the profit would go to the gov't and not to criminals.
I don't know if it would work or not, but it makes more sense than putting people into jail for their choice of intoxicant.
Legalized pot ==> More potheads
More potheads ==> Less productive workers
Less productive workers ==> Less income earned
Less income earned ==> Less tax revenue
===>MORE lowlives on the dole, voting for DEMOCRATS
“I strongly disagree w/ tobacco smokers being ostracized, but as a pot smoker (& a former tobacco addict for 20 yrs) it angers me having to face the fear of losing my job, being arrested, or a whole host of other things for simply possessing marijuana or having its by-products in your urine weeks after the the high is gone. I wish the gov’t would leave the smokers of BOTH products alone as long as we act responsibly while using them.”
-Respectfully I have to say that by using a mind-altering substance, “acting responsibly” fades away. I mean, isn’t THAT the whole point of getting high???
This is one of the few issues I have determined that the Republicans could easily take from the democrats without compromising their principles.
So everyone who drinks alcohol should lose his job and go to jail?
If we associate acting responsibly with "judgment," then I don't think using marijuana would be any different than moderate use of alcohol.
But maybe you do, though.
That’s the whole point from my prespective. Pot is much easier to bootleg then whiskey. Why bother with paying tax when you can get it where you have always gotten it or grow it yourself.
They say we will spend less money enforcing the laws but that is not the case. Now instead of looking for illegal use they will be looking for people avoiding tax. They will end up spending more money looking for bootleggers then they do now looking for illegal use.
John
Nicotine in tobacco is a mind-altering substance, too. It provides a calming effect, but even worse, it is strongly ADDICTIVE, which actually enslaves the mind to the drug. That cannot be said about marijuana, because it isn't addictive.
Alcohol is a mind-altering drug, too. Does that mean that the "Drink Responsively" commercials I watched on TV years ago were lies? Add the fact that it is also a drug that induces many people to violent behavior, then IMO that makes it worse than marijuana, because marijuana doesn't do that. Both tobacco & alcohol have terribly negative effects that marijuana can't even touch (other that the fact that it is illegal as I write this).
I think only a few regular users will grow their own. I believe most users will find it much easier and more convenient to buy it. People can make their own beer and wine, but it doesn’t put a dent in the beer and wine industry.
That is really why it’s legalisation is being pushed, plus, initially, it will probably generate big revenues.
The state will go to pot
Do you honestly believe that the reason people use marijuana is to not act responsibly? Do you drink alcohol? If so, why?
once they legalize it, big agriculture will step in and patent the varieties and then create seedless varieties to make it harder for people to grow their own.
In the novel "Unintended Consequences" there is a small plot thread showing that when Prohibition ended, the Treasury Dept had a lot of agents on hand who no longer had much to do. It was the Depression, and these men needed jobs. Voila! The 1934 National Firearms Act which imposd a $200 tax on the sale of certain guns. The BATF was off and running, tracking down tax cheats!
The Branch Davideans at Waco were killed over taxes. Randy Weaver's wife and son were killed over taxes.
The government likes control -- and although making things illegal is one way to control society, taxation is an even better way to get government to look over your shoulder.
Considering the massive size of CA’s financial problems, I doubt if the revenues raised from RE-legalization will make THAT much of a difference, but it will help.
Put down the dope and use your brain. Legalizing pot will INCREASE the use of pot. Not because people will be able to get it easier, but because they won’t be deterred by the fear of being arrested. An increase of drug users will INCREASE the amount of crime, not lesson it. Drug users tend get out of hand and commit crime, in case you didn’t notice. Thus, there will be MORE prisoners, not less. The Law of Unintended Consequences will always rear it’s ugly head.
I believe it would, plus what was mentioned earlier about less being spent on law enforcement, jails and courts, probably won’t hurt either. It’s better than relying on govt to cut costs, ‘cause we all know that just doesn’t happen, no matter who or what party is in office.
You can observe a loopy person, hopped up on Vicodin, Xanax, Percodin, etc just as you can listen to someone drunk slur their words.
And yet, they have somehow been given imprimatur to stand in judgment of others because their doctor wrote them a legal prescription to get high?
My pharmacist is the local bartender.
I think you’ll find far more people drink too much and then get “out of hand” than those getting stoned.
Unless you consider putting Cap’n Crunch on top of ice cream to be a crime.
You sound like an authority on the subject, so I guess you are right.
I have smoked for 20 years. Admittedly, I am not a good salesman for the stuff. I can go months without smoking and I will probably through the pack away after a few days. It tastes stale to me.
I also can’t seem to puff on more than 2, maybe 3 cigarettes in an evening.
I don’t buy that they are addictive. One may have an addictive personality or a smoker who goes through a pack or 2 or 3 in a day, may be looking for ways to waste time but, I don’t see how smoking that many cigarettes is addiction.
It is just a way to pass time and a lot of it.
If it takes 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette and you go through a pack a day(20 sticks), you have just killed the better part of 1 hour and a half.
That doesn’t take into account going outside to smoke and all the other things one may have to do light up. So the real time killer could be closer to 2 hours, for a single pack!
How someone has the time to go through 2 or three in a day is beyond me. The would mean 4-6 hours to feed your habit to check out for 5 minutes at a time.
Still, I don’t think it is addictive. I think people develop habits and sometimes attenuate or focus on them to the point of disproportion.
Pot use has increased in spite of to billions of $ spent trying to fight it. You cannot stop us. We are going to continue growing & smoking it regardless of what the law says. Marijuana is NOT a violence-inducing drug. Going out & hurting someone else is the last thing on my mind when I'm high....99.9% of the time, all I want to do on those occasions is enjoy the company of my friends & call for pizza delivery.
You should be locked up.
The price won’t drop. The government mafia will see that it is taxed appropriately.
What they need to do is legalize oil.
You, like many people, don't know the facts about marijuana.
MJ users become mellow and passive; they don't get out of hand and commit crimes!
As for other arguments about potheads driving: they tend to drive extremely slow (that's how police spot them) and carefully. Heck, the comedian Sinbad jokes that “only a pothead can make a car go 2 mph!”
There ARE negative medical issues with MJ, but none as severe as with alcohol, and President Nixon's “Blue Ribbon Commission” researching drugs, recommended that it be legalized, taxed, and controlled like alcohol.
No, I can speak personally about the addictiveness of nicotine. I smoked well over a pack a day for 20 yrs & couldn’t go more than 90 min w/o craving another one...& it wasn’t just mental, either.
It took me 4 & 1/2 months of pure hell to kick nicotine. I knew it was going to be difficult because I half-assed tried a few times in the past. But this time I made up my mind to finally quit about 5 months in advance & moved into a non-smoking family member’s house out in the boondocks.
So there are all these potential pot abusers out there who are so law-abiding, they are waiting for the law to change to take up the habit. And once the law changes, these law-abiding people will then... lose their fear of arrest and turn to crime??
As with SoothingDave, you sound like an authority on the subject, so I guess you are right.
Keep smoking, Ken. Keep smoking.
Why?
/MLF logic
Just keep smoking...
Ad hominem is a poor excuse for an argument.
I also have attended, as part of my job, several drug awareness seminars conducted by federal drug prevention and treatment officials. If you ask them about dangerous drugs, they'll tell right out—marijuana isn't one of them. Nor, contrary to popular myth, is it a “gateway drug” leading to harsher drugs; that's as bogus an argument as saying that drinking beer leads to drinking whiskey. They don't consider MJ to be a problem because its effects are rather benign and it is nonaddictive.
You seem quite smug and satisfied about your ignorance on the subject though,
I hope to stay ignorant on the subject of pot smoking, thank you very much.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.