Posted on 10/27/2009 7:53:18 AM PDT by La Lydia
...The U.S. (federal and states) will spend about $47 billion this year on drug enforcement, clogging our court systems and overcrowding our prisons, in many cases dooming young men to a life in the underclass...And I don’t think we’re getting a good value for our $47 billion. In fact, I think our efforts may be counterproductive, and that we should explore a more sensible route, the same one we use for alcohol and tobacco. In short, legalize it, regulate it and tax it.
Legalization would quickly shrink that $47 billion annual cost of law enforcement to a small fraction of its present level. In its place, we’d have federal quality control inspectors to keep tabs on the legal producers (thus reducing poisonings and overdoses). Entrepreneurs would spring up out of the woodwork to become producers, and with the increased supply prices would fall to more reasonable levels. Profits would drop. And organized crime would soon be out of the business.
A 2008 study by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron estimated that legalizing drugs would inject $76.8 billion a year into the U.S. economy--$44.1 billion from law enforcement savings, and at least $32.7 billion in tax revenue ($6.7 billion from marijuana, $22.5 billion from cocaine and heroin, the remainder from other drugs). I’m not ready to argue for legalizing those harder drugs, but I do think a country as deep in debt as ours should stop giving money away on unproductive projects and start looking for positive cash flows.
Leading the way already is our country’s lifestyle pioneer, California. This past July, 80% of Oakland, California voters chose to impose a tax of 1.8% on medical marijuana sales, which could bring the cash-strapped city nearly $300,000 next year.
And California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco, introduced legislation that if approved by the California Legislature, would put pot on the same legal footing as alcohol--legalizing its sale and having the state tax it. Ammiano called it "simply nonsensical" to keep marijuana, the state's top cash crop, unregulated and untaxed in light of the state's massive financial problems.
The value of California's marijuana crop is estimated at $14 billion annually. That’s almost twice the combined value of vegetables and grapes, the state's second and third most-valuable crops. Ammiano estimated passage of his pot legalization proposal could generate more than $1.3 billion for state coffers....
I think it’s healthy to look at Prohibition as the study case for this. Sure, frat boys are getting trashed, but we don’t have armed mobs shooting up neighborhoods over booze anymore...
"tax the hell out of it" and send in the ATF to enforce the tax codes when people grow their own?
Regulate it like tobacco to say that it cannot be flavored, cannot be smoked on a porch or in a residence or in a car with children or...
Even Amsterdam banned smoking tobacco in public.
Of course, we're desperately trying to grow our economy, increase our productivity, and compete in a global marketplace.
So I'm not sure that becoming a nation of stoners is quite what we need right now.
I'll add that the banking crisis was a manufactured crisis and a deliberate looting of the American economy to forever shackle us with a nationalized socialist system. Welcome to America 2.0, comrade.
I will point out, in return, that there are not nearly as many people that use, or would contemplate trying, cocaine and heroin as there are that use, or would use if legal, marijuana.
I knew I should have patented my Marijuana Powered Skateboard!
We have armed black muslims in California smashing up liquor stores. There are still prohibitionists in our midst.
Meh...that's cool because those are next in line for social acceptance, God help us all.
So, the "war" on drugs will turn into a "war" on tax evaders as people continue to grow and sell dope without paying the taxes. Hell, people still steal and smuggle cigarettes because of the commie taxes.
Wrong if done correctly the tax revenue from legalization would be put to good use hiring more LE or DEA agents... But this is in a perfect world... In reality the tax revenue would go to building Mosque and welfare babies...
But where would over the counter xanex fall on that “scale”?
And cocaine abuse is back bigtime in the bars.
Pot does something totally different than coke. I don’t think you can do enough of one to get the side effects of the other.
If it were true, then liquor stores would be selling heroin & cocaine.
I support states rights and the Bill of Rights, therefore, I support the decriminalization of all drugs.
And, I don't even drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. So, I have no stake in this argument except as a free citizen. The War on Some Drugs is unconstitutional and criminal.
Those numbers won't take too long to turn around and start ramping up.
I knew I should have patented my Marijuana Powered Skateboard!
I don’t have any problems with legalization of marijuana but I wish its fervent supporters would be realistic about it.
Legalization won’t mean less laws. It will mean a whole rainbow of new laws. About the only laws you would get rid of are those that deal with possession of small amounts. Instead you’ll get laws regarding driving under the influence of marijuana, laws regarding minors in possession of marijuana and God knows how many other laws.
Before anyone tells me that doing away with possession laws will prevent millions from going to prison, think again. How many people really go to prison for possession of small amounts as the only charge? I’ve been busted for possession twice myself and never spent a day in jail.
3....2....1.... until the word “statist” is thrown out there.
I’m waiting for the Democrats to admit that the trillions of dollars spent on the War On Poverty have not eradicated poverty or even moved significant numbers of people out of poverty. It has just served to keep Democrats in office.
Sure, but wouldn’t all this saved money have to be spent on tax collection and adding new staff to existing regulatory agencies like the FDA?
The only thing I hate about legalization is that wouldn’t it make government even bigger?
Like so many government solutions theysolve one problem by creating another.
Once the Government has a financial interest in marijuana, they will see to it that the price is regulated and maintained at an artificially high level. Every time there is a tax shortfall (which will be every year). They will raise taxes.
Once it is legal, the trial lawyers will start funding research on the damaging health effects of the evil weed. Price will go up again.
Since it is now legal, people will start growing it themselves and for sale to their friends. This will be outlawed as bootlegging and the treasury service will arrest people for tax evasion and put them in jail for longer than marijuana possession now.
Seeing a billion dollar opportunity, Mexicans will sneak marijuana over the border and there will be gunfights in the streets of Tiajana.
Sounds like a good plan.
Milton Friedman was all for legalization due to the economic impact it would have in reducing prices. There are all sorts of societal benefits from a financial perspective in doing so.
It should also be pointed out that it is hypocritical to be against legalizing (some drugs) and complaining about the “nanny state”. You either believe in personal responsibility or you don’t, conservatives need to recognize and reconcile these two positions to gain credibility on the “social” issues.
Personal responsibility means cutting away the government funded safety net.
Can’t have the right to f*** your life up if the taxpayers have to bail your sorry a&& out of the fire.
It is my understanding that the regulatory arm of ATF, under which I think this would fall, is relatively efficient and cost effective. Again, I am not advocating this, I am just saying...
“Instead you’ll get laws regarding driving under the influence of marijuana, laws regarding minors in possession of marijuana and God knows how many other laws.”
Those laws already exist just the severity would change. It’s like saying making certain crimes a “hate crime”, only with the reverse effect by making the punishment more severe.
While this is somewhat logical, I have two questions:
1. Is that any worse than what we already see (specifically on the streets of Tijuana?)
2. Why hasn’t that happened in the case of alchohol?
If you’re going to weigh the economics of prohibition against legalization, you need to weight the consequences of the New Deal “substantial effects” Commerce Clause into the cost of prohibition.
Now you are going to “stir up” the libertarian pot heads.
My big problem with the Libertarian Party is that (theoretically) they want government to be smaller and to get off the backs of the people. But do I ever see the Libertarian Party really talking about smaller government and less regulation? No — except in the case of Legalizing Drugs. I consider the Libertarian Party to be a one issue party — they like drugs. That’s all they really talk about.
Calm and serene a.k.a. stupid and lazy.
That will be a boon to society, hoards of stupid lazy people that sit on the couch and listen to music or play video games
Third World here we come!
I call libertarians stoners who believe in gun rights.
I have no idea, never having taken Xanex.
And cocaine abuse is back bigtime in the bars.
Not being one to frquent bars anymore, I wouldn't know about that.
Pot does something totally different than coke.
Believe me, I know this. I wasn't a choir boy in my younger years,
I don’t think you can do enough of one to get the side effects of the other.
It's not a matter of doing enough of one or the other.
These two drugs, at least, do not mirror each other in any manner.
You still don't have nearly the number of coke users that you do marijuana users and, at least I believe, you wouldn't have even if both were legalized.
I agree, for some of these “users” prison is that safety net. Compare the ongoing cost of incarceration to that of a homeless shelter or churches providing outreach programs. Compare the cost of destroying a repeat drug offenders ability to get a job to simply ignoring his crappy habits so long as he does the job he’s hired to do.
The overall cost to society would likely be far less (police, prisons, court, lawyers, drug related violence, etc) than the cost of letting existing users continue to use. Drug dealers would lose the profit motive and the big boys would move in (and be ripped by advocacy groups publicly just like cigs and alchohol).
Yes, there is a reason they call it being “wasted,” because it can result in people wasting their lives. I know several very bright people, with whom I attended university, who got into pot, dropped out and who have totally wasted their potential. They work at marginal jobs and spend what little money they have on pot and pizza. They also seem to have lowered their IQs.
The Libertarian's foreign policy ideas are well beyond absurd, unrealistic and indefensible. That's probably why you never hear them talking much about that topic.....
Do you really think so?
I don't.
Marijuana is a soft drug, more like tobacco and alcohol than a hard drug like cocaine or heroin.
There are many marijuana users that never graduated to anything else on a regular basis because they didn't like the high they got from the hard drugs.
That's not to say they didn't experiment with other drugs but they didn't stay with them the way they did marijuana.
Even during the free for all of the '60s and '70s cocaine and heroin weren't used nearly to the same degree that marijuana was.
Amen!
Strawman argument and comparing apples to the durian fruit.
In a way it does make sense until one realizes that it would only serve to make government bigger.
I’m sure they would figure out a way to criminalize even more people if it was legal.
On a lighter note, it could take some of the heat off the smokers...
As a conservative libertarian, I would like to point out the dangers to liberty that legalizing and taxing marajuana would bring.
First of all, there is a reason that it’s called “weed”. It is a hardy plant that will grow mostly anywhere, and does.
The state will not take kindly to anyone who chooses to ignore its monopoly taxation power by, say, growing some in his own backyard for his own personal consumption. This will lead to an intrusiveness by state “revnoors” (just ask any Tennessee moonshiner) that will be much more intrusive than the DEA could ever be.
In much of California, growing marajuana for one’s personal consumption has been de facto decriminalized. County sheriffs each set a tacit and unstated limit of how many plants you can have before it becomes cost effective to prosecute you. But imagine how that equation changes when rooting around in everyone’s backyard goes from being a cost to being a revenue enhancer.
Just how much power do you want to give state tax employees to snoop around in your backyard?
The way to solve that would be for the drugs to be dispensed only through legal pharmacies by legally licensed pharmacists.
But then Obama would issue an executive order describing undocumented pharmacists.
That, my FRiend, is apples and bananas.
>That will be a boon to society, hoards of stupid lazy people that sit on the couch and listen to music or play video games<
More Obama voters!
You won’t do away with courts or lawyers. They exist to perpetuate the system.
Politicians bow to the lobbying of lawyers. Lawyers like the laws. It gives them work getting clients off. Judges like the laws too.
Look at alcohol and you can see how it goes.
0.08 BAC is about easier convictions, not about preventing accidents. Some want it down to 0.03. There are also those demanding that employees in bars (including performers) have a BAC of no more than 0.02. Great, bands can’t drink anymore, think they’ll put on as good a show?
But the deck is stacked to take in money. The lawyers get money, the courts get money, the insurance companies get money, the state gets money, and the judges and legislators get contributions. And yet the problem still remains. There have been so many “low” first offender convictions now that they are trying to figure out some new options to clear a bad record. Of course, all of the parties that got money won’t be giving back the money.
In Houston then did away with tobacco in jails. They knew they couldn’t erradicate smoking there but they wanted to have something other than pot that the guards could sell illegally as contraband that would not result in them ALSO going to prison if they got caught.
But fat chance you will do away with any legal enforcements. The system exists to perpetuate itself.
How many people are dying from botched marijuana sold by back alley pharmacists? < /sarc >
Not always. I had a tech working for me back when I was doing cellular who was a big stoner. This guy was really brilliant and had a great work ethic, but he stayed stoned all the time. I met him on a job where he was working for another contractor. After seeing how he worked and how well he knew his business I hired him. Back in those days we were working 100 hour weeks and we were glad to have him. Turned out he was one of the best employees I had in 18 years of running the company....
All of the dopers growing hydro at home would be subject to confiscation laws due to new carbon footprint standards. Those lights take too much electricity.
Also, the idea that legalization causes increased usage is BS, IMHO.
Make them pass an amendment to the Constitution instead of this BS word-smithing of new Federal powers. I don't give a rats a$$ about drugs but I do care about warping the constitution to fit a social agenda. The shoe switches feet all the time, what powers will the current administration “find” because of this hypocrisy?
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