Posted on 04/20/2007 5:56:08 AM PDT by tang0r
Jeffery A. Miron finds that by decriminalizing cannabis, the federal government would generate $2.4 billion in federal tax revenue annually, and that an additional $7.7 billion would be saved as the cost of incarceration, policing, and processing offenders. Now, that's too much money to for the human brain to fully conceptualize, given the air quality around April 20th, so your friends at the Prometheus Institute have provided this handy quantitive index in order show exactly how much the U.S. can earn each year from cannabis decriminalization. The math: $2.4 billion per year + $7.7 billion per year = $10.1 billion gained in total per year. You're welcome.
The $10.1 billion dollars could, for those who are interested, do any of the following:
• Subsidize a school voucher system for half of the U.S., for good reason • Build three nuclear reactors, because Greenpeace will be high and won't notice • Extend health insurance to one million uninsured Americans, and doesn't that make everyone happy? • Purchase eight Stealth Bombers, or 2 Minitz class aircraft carriers, because we can
(Excerpt) Read more at prometheusinstitute.net ...
This assertion, of course, contradicts 3000 years of human experience...but go for it!
So...do you see anyone suggesting we restrict their use less?
Better than liver failure and heart complications caused by prescription medications.
That’s kind of like saying you’d be opposed to letting people have firecrackers because it would be a launching pad for the argument to legalize all manner of explosive devices. It won’t happen. There are a few people out there who would like to legalize all drugs, but it’s such a tiny minority and they’ll never get much support in their efforts. I’m all for legalizing marijuana. It would have saved us a lot of problems if we would have done it a long time ago, or never made it illegal in the first place. I would be vehemently opposed to legalizing drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin though. Those drugs are just too dangerous to society at large. When people get involved with those drugs they are subjecting the rest of us to substantial risks, unnecessary risks of serious harm. Those drugs are incredibly addictive, and the addiction to them is so powerful. The effects of these drugs on addicts are debilitating, making them at a minimum a nuisance to the rest of us. Drugs like cocaine and meth especially tend to make addicts irrational, excitable, reckless, and in too many cases violent. The addictions are so powerful that addicts tend to do whatever they have to do to feed their addictions, even if that involves criminal conduct. I could go on and on, but the fact is that most of us know how horrible these drugs are. We will never let these drugs be legal. We don’t want them for sale at the corner store at a fraction of their current price. That would be insane. I think that while perhaps not quite a majority of Americans would agree with me that marijuana should be legal, the vast and overwhelming majority would stand firm with those of us who would fight like hell against legalization of drugs like meth, cocaine, and heroin.
I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
That’s a pretty good argument, but not so much for marijuana. Marijuana isn’t harmless, but it’s not particularly debilitating to the vast majority of people who smoke it. According to government survey results, in the neighborhood of a 100 million people in this country have smoked marijuana. And the government numbers are probably low because there will always be some percentage of folks not willing to admit illegal conduct to government workers who come to their homes. Most who smoke marijuana only do it some when they are young and then they grow out of their wild youthfulness and leave it alone. Some continue to smoke, but really only a very tiny percentage of those who smoke it are actually debilitated to the point that they become a drain on the system. It’s just not a particularly addictive or debilitating drug. Most smoke a little after work, on weekends or whatever, or even just on special occasions, no different than the way people drink alcohol. And its effects really don’t tend to be as debilitating as alcohol. Too much of either are bad for the user and those around him, but again the vast majority aren’t just going crazy on the stuff. According to the government numbers the vast majority who admit use are full time employed. They’re regular working Americans who happen to enjoy smoking a little weed. Your argument works for a drug like heroin or some other drugs that turns most regular users into burdens on society, but it falls flat when it comes to marijuana.
People can grow tomoatoes on their door step, yet the grocery store is amazingly full of them for sale.
I hear after smoking pot it causes you to rape white women and listen to negro jazz music!
For once, I agree with your blog spam. Pot was made illegal using racism and lies.
Why do either?
How? Our experience is that banning drugs only creates crime and exacerbates the problem of the drugs themselves. It doesn't result in a reduction of drug use. That is unless you have a totalitarian state where the people have no rights, in which case your drug prohibition might be successful.
“you obviously know nothing about MJ”
Young man I knew about MJ before you were born and used it to.
Difficult to argue with the math, but for all the DUI “accidents” that should be figured in as well.
Unless you think that there are just all sorts of people out there just dying to smoke marijuana but won’t simply because it is illegal, we’re already bearing the costs of these DUI accidents.
All you pro-marijuana people need to quit fooling yourself. It isn’t about government control. It’s about getting high.
There’s no justification for legalizing it. You only want it so you can get high. For the relatively few who suffer from painful glaucoma, I have no objection of it being used as a medically prescribed pain-killer.
If it causes:
- loss/degredation of motor function,
- loss/degredation of reasoning and judgment,
then it needs to be regulated or banned. Yes, I believe that applies to alcohol, too. The brain’s craving for the high overides the judgment to use it, and once it is used the judgment, reasoning and motor function needed to function in society is lost.
If you want to use it on your property, that is no business of mine. But, can you guarantee that your use will NOT impact society in any way? Since use of these drugs impairs your judgement and reasoning capacity, there is NO WAY that you can gurantee that you will not be a negative impact on society.
You say there are no good reasons for legalizing marijuana, and then you mentioned a couple right in your post. You talked about legitimate medical reason why people might want to use it, and then you said marijuana ought to be at least regulated. I agree that it should be regulated. As it is the marijuana industry is entirely unregulated and run by a bunch of criminals who make a lot of money they use to fund other criminal enterprises. If it was legal, the industry would be regulated. Regulators could help insure that the product is as safe as it’s can be. The shops that sell it can be regulated and face stiff penalties for selling to anyone under the legal age, and so on. The increased ability to actually regulate the industry is one of the “justifications” for legalizing it. There are plenty of other good reasons for legalizing it. You may not agree with any of these arguments, but a lot of us, whether we smoke pot or not, do agree with a lot of the various arguments for legalizing marijuana. That does not make us all “pot heads” or or “pro-druggies.”
When the DEA attempts to generate $2.4 billion in tomato taxes from a small minority of teenage and lower income tomato-heads, they’ll be all but gone on the shelves.
Absolutely. In the 80s, people were booted from the Marines after their second marijuana offense. (And their first ruined their career.) The thing that most kept me clean was the $17k of college benefits I had from 4 years in the Marines, but I had to be eligible for reenlistment to get them (aka, no drug convictions). I don’t think a major accounting firm like one I worked in would hire someone with a recent marijuana conviction. I presume it’s the same across a wide range of industry. People may or may not be in those kinds of jobs, but many if not most imagine they could be one day.
I might get high on occasion if it was legal, but I don’t want to deal with the risks, much less the drug culture. There are good arguments for legalization, but no increase in use is not one of them.
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