To: davesdude
The biggest problem I see with this report is that they use the ONDCP's estimate on what Americans spend on marijuana. The ONDCP estimated that Americans spent 10.5 billion dollars on marijuana in 2000. They came up with this figure solely from data from SAMHSA's NSDUH, the government's national survey on drug use. They did not look at all users from the report either, only those who admitted use within the past 30 days, so they cut out several million pot smokers up front. On the survey people were asked how much pot they smoke and the average for those who admitted smoking in the last 30 days was about 7 grams. They then came up with an average price for that much marijuana and multiplied it by the number of people who admitted smoking within 30 days prior to the June 2000 survey to come up with a total for how much Americans spend on marijuana. The total "consumption estimate" of the total amount of marijuana consumed by Americans that year came to about 1009 metric tons (may have been 1019 tons, I'm doing this from memory).
The problem is that far more than 1009 metric tons of marijuana are seized every year by local, state, and federal authorities. To believe the ONDCP's numbers, you'd have to believe that we seize a lot more marijuana than makes it to the streets. That's laughable. That doesn't doesn't happen. Even the ONDCP knows better than this. They also calculate what Americans spend on cocaine and they will not rely on SAMHSA's drug survey numbers to calculate what Americans spend on cocaine because they know the numbers are way low. As it turns out, the ONDCP's "consumption estimates" for cocaine just about match the "supply estimates" for cocaine done by another government agency. There are also supply estimates for marijuana. I don't know off the top of my head what they were for the year 2000, although I'm thinking I recall the estimate being between 10,000 and 22,000 metric tons, but I am quite certain that the estimate for 2003 was that there were between 12,000 and 25,000 metric tons of marijuana available on the market in this country in the year 2003 after the government seized all it was going to seize. That's quite a bit more than the 1009 metric ton consumption estimate by the ONDCP.
The ONDCP consumption estimate is no doubt way low. There is no way in the world the government is seizing far more marijuana than is getting through to consumers. Law enforcement don't even believe that. Most will estimate they are getting something like 10% of what's out there. The feds alone seize something like 1,200 or 1,300 metric tons of marijuana every year, and state and local authorities seize a lot as well. They seize thousands of pounds every year off the highway in the small town where I work. I know this because the public defender office where I work gets almost all the drug mule cases and we handle thousands of pounds worth of pot cases every year. A DEA agent once told me that the actual number in my county is in the tens of thousands of pounds per year but we don't see a lot of it because a lot of these guys will do "controlled deliveries" where they go on and deliver the loads to the other states and law enforcement bust the people at the other end.
It may very well be that the supply estimate of 12,000 to 25,000 metric tons is high, but there is no doubt in my mind that the 1009 metric ton consumption estimate is way off. It could very well be that Americans are really consuming 10, 20 or more times as much marijuana as the ONDCP consumption estimate reflects. The true number has to be at least several times the ONDCP estimate. If that is the case, and there is no doubt in my mind that it is, these economists numbers with respect to taxes are way off. We could probably actually collect several times as much in taxes as these economists estimate.
120 posted on
04/24/2006 3:21:59 PM PDT by
TKDietz
To: TKDietz
I said: "On the survey people were asked how much pot they smoke and the average for those who admitted smoking in the last 30 days was about 7 grams."
I should have said: "On the survey people were asked how much pot they smoke and the average for those who admitted smoking in the last 30 days was about 7 grams _per month_."
123 posted on
04/24/2006 3:25:33 PM PDT by
TKDietz
To: TKDietz; All
197 posted on
04/24/2006 6:13:19 PM PDT by
davesdude
(Don't criticize what you don't understand)
To: TKDietz
"It could very well be that Americans are really consuming 10, 20 or more times as much marijuana as the ONDCP consumption estimate reflects."70 - 140 grams/month? Average?
What does that work out to? 2-5 joints/day, every day, on average?
C'mon.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson