I mentioned 10 billion would be partially recovered annually from marijuana law enforcement. That includes the highway enforcement you mentioned.
Regarding the difficulty of growing marijuana. I could describe orchid growing in ways that make what you mentioned sound simple, but it’s my experience that orchid can be as difficult or easy as you make it. Orchid Growing is Easy is the equivalent of Growing Marijuana Indoors & Outdoors - Easy steps That Teaches You How To Grow Marijuana In Your Own House Or Closet! If marijuana were legal and I could charge 10% of today’s prices, I could probably make car payments with my 10’ * 25’ orchid house with very little work.
You listed revenue from commercial grower salaries as a potential benefit, but that’s the same as income from today’s illegal growers. And since the sales price will go down, it doesn’t even fully replace it. Sure, there’d also be tax income tax generated, at least from the portion that’s over the taxable threshold, but that’s money that’s now going directly into the economy, bypassing federal hands.
Another issue you raised, if pot radically becomes stronger, even occasional users are more likely to be operating with a debilitating buzz. That adds to greater social costs.
It’s not my experience that social costs can be dismissed by simply saying that dope smokers are not as bad as chronic alcoholics, heroin addicts, crack heads etc… In addition to their effect I mentioned on the military, I use to install custom lighting with a talented electrician who smoked a few times at lunch in my presence. It was kind of pathetic seeing the difference in his abilities before and after lunch. Sure, he could function, but he was relatively forgetful, unfocused generally unimpressive. I was just a newbie between college semesters, but almost as capable as him on some jobs when he was stoned. I also have a relative who graduated St John College Annapolis 10 years ago who used a variety of drugs, but claims for most of the time since graduation she only smoked marijuana (and now claims to be off that too). But she’s been working as waitress and living in her parents basement with her son for the last 8 years. She doesn’t drive either. Socially, she’s a brilliant girl, but regular pot use has a way of draining away people’s drive and motivation and to delay gratification and pursue goals that actualize their abilities. It has a lingering effect on their short term memory, their ability to concentrate, their judgment and I think to their ability to accurately reason sequentially. For better or for worse, it leads people to deconstruct their values that I mentioned, and chronic users tend to replace them with a kind of cynical rejection of success, often forming a somewhat paranoid or conspiratorial image of society from their crippled thinking. Sure there are exceptions, like there are among healthy smokers and drinkers, but I think that’s the most common psychological effect of regular use. Regular users generally don’t excel at school, work or in their personal lives. There’s more on that here: Cannabus link to mental illness strengthenedAccording to this survey, casual users are twice as likely to be unemployed, and daily users (accounting for about 12% of total users) are more than 3 times as likely. I see they’re all more likely than not to be cigarette smokers, bringing all those problems along. And I read there that only about half of daily users are addicted to other drugs or alcohol.
If the marijuana market size numbers you last posted are correct, there must be other problems. If 25,000 metric tons/year are consumed a year, that’s about 55 million pounds, equaling 882 million ounces or 25 billion grams. That’s about 2 billion grams per month. And if the average user smokes 7 grams per month, then there’d need to be a lot of waste or 295 million marijuana users in the US.
Considering such a profound policy change as legalization, we should at least follow through with some kind of simple model of our assumptions to see if the additional taxes are worth any offset from the social and economic costs of any increase in use. Do we raise my previous lower count of marijuana users to match the higher estimates of the market size that you introduced? Or do we estimate people are smoking a whole lot more than a quarter ounce per month? If we radically increase either, then taxes received would be greater, but the cost of 25% more use/users would be multiplied by the same amount. So maybe instead of $2.7 billion in additional tax revenue, there’s $10 billion. But instead of the social and economic cost of 250k more chronic users, we deal with the price of 1 million additional Americans sabotaging their potential.
To make do more than talk past one another making wild guess, we need to model what we know and assume and support those assumptions. If they have to become increasingly radical in one direction to support our position, we know something’s wrong.
I understand your productivity complaint with this discussion. It probably doesn’t speak well for me spending so much time on a subject I have so little interest in. If it goes on, I’ll be included in the statistics of lives ruined by marijuana.
There are limits to how strong marijuana can be though. It is claimed that they’ve actually found some indoor grown marijuana that was over 30% THC. I don’t know whether I believe that or not. The government loves to exaggerate and employ less than honest scare tactics when talking about marijuana. I do know though that most of the indoor stuff they find growing in this country is not over 15%, but they do find some over 20% THC. It may be possible to grow it over 30%, but I doubt it could be much stronger than that. Most of the THC is actually on the outside of buds and leaves in and around the buds. It’s in the resin that comes out of tiny little hairs growing from the plant material. The resin is not anywhere close to 100% THC. It’s what they make hash out of, and hashish is rarely anywhere close to 30% THC. Most comes from North Africa and isn’t nearly as strong on average as indoor grown marijuana. It’s closer in strength to cheap Mexican pot. But from what I’ve read sometimes hash can be a little stronger than 30% THC if it is made from resin that comes from premium indoor grown marijuana. I’ve also read that growers have real problems with mold when they grow the really powerful stuff. It tends to have dense sticky resin frosted buds that will get moldy if it’s too humid or if they get wet. The strongest stuff is not suitable for growing outdoors. I don’t think they could get it much stronger than the strongest out there today because it would be even more difficult to grow without major mold problems, and because there has to be a significant amount plant material to make all this THC containing resin that isn’t anywhere close to 100% THC in the first place.
If marijuana was legal, I doubt there would be much grown indoors under artificial lights. Commercial growers would grow it outside, and for the most part probably would not focus on hard to grow high THC varieties, but would look for hardy uniform varieties that could be grown, harvested, and processed with as much mechanization and as little human labor as possible. I could also see them using multipurpose plants, ones they grow for fiber and/or seed, harvest mechanically, remove the resin for processing into hash, and then use the fiber for textiles and industrial purposes and seed for food or animal feed products, cooking oil, cosmetics, etc. With hash producers would be able to produce a more uniform product, blending various resins and additives to come up with a consistent product that always looks and smells and tastes the same, with a much longer shelf life, and potency levels that are the same for every batch. I would think it would be easier to mechanize the entire process if they went that route, and it does seem to be the American way to process the heck out of everything we consume. My bet is that unless hash remains illegal after they legalize marijuana or tax or regulatory problems get in the way hash will end up becoming more common than raw marijuana in the legal shops. Pretty hand manicured buds grown in greenhouses will be comparatively expensive, like fine wine or single malt Scotch.
I see what you are saying about just how much 25,000 metric tons is. I doubt that much is consumed here. The actual amount consumed has to be considerably more than the 1006 metric tons they estimated people consumed when they did the last consumption estimates though. We seize a good bit more than that every year and there is no way law enforcement are seizing more than half of the marijuana on the market. It may be that people consume closer to the lower end of the supply estimate, closer to 12,000 metric tons.
Personally, I don’t believe the government survey results on drug use. I think people lie on these surveys about whether they currently use drugs and in many cases about whether they have ever used drugs. I don’t doubt at all that they underreport how much they use either. Studies have shown that people tend to significantly underreport how much alcohol and tobacco they consume on these types of surveys too. I don’t know how much the average pot smoker consumes in a month, but I do know that there are pot smokers out there who smoke a good bit more than 7 grams every single day. There are heavy pot smokers that smoke several pounds a year. Although most pot smokers probably don’t smoke more than a quarter ounce a month on their own, the actual average is quite likely higher than 7 grams a month just because of the minority who smoke several times that every month, or maybe even every week. Seven grams isn’t that much. It’s a quarter of an ounce, about how much the tobacco weighs in 8 or 9 filtered cigarettes.
As for people ruining their lives with marijuana, I don’t doubt that happens, but I think it happens a lot less than you think it does. I used to smoke pot when I was younger. I’ve known a lot of pot smokers over the years. I still have some friends that I know smoke marijuana, and there are probably others I deal with that smoke it who don’t let me or hardly anyone else in on their secret. And I deal with a lot of people who use every type of drug as a public defender. I’ve never really known anyone though who has ruined his life with marijuana, except for those who’ve gotten in serious legal troubles for being involved with it. I hear about people who have messed themselves up with marijuana, but I’m always a little suspicious of that. I’ll talk to family members of clients, their preachers, friends, etc., and will sometimes hear that my clients have ruined themselves with marijuana. What I generally find though is that these people aren’t just smoking marijuana. They’re usually heavy drinkers and/or on other much worse drugs in addition to being pot smokers. People just think they’re only smoking marijuana, or they don’t want to talk about the other stuff, and of course the people with problems with these substances don’t want to tell everyone about their problems. A lot of them are in denial and don’t even think they have a problem. Admitting that they smoke marijuana is one thing because it’s not that big of a deal. Admitting that they smoke crack or stick needles in their arms is another thing altogether.
Some people it seems just have some sort of “need” to get just wasted. They’re likely to be the ones that overdo it with any intoxicant they use, and they’re likely to be the ones who for some reason feel like they need to be on something all the time. I don’t know how much of this is just a psychological problem, all in their minds, or if it’s just that people are wired differently. But some people are just a lot more prone to substance abuse problems than most. They’re more likely to become addicted, and more likely to have real problems from substance abuse. Usually it seems people like this don’t just stick with one drug, they’ll take just about anything they can get their hands on. Some do just stick with one drug though for the most part. If it’s alcohol that they stick with, they’ll have major problems. If it is just marijuana that they go overboard with, they probably won’t live up to their potential and probably won’t lead particularly productive lives, but I don’t think the problems they’ll experience (and inflict on others) are likely to be nearly as damaging to them or others as they would be if their “drug of choice” was alcohol or something like prescription pain killers or drugs like meth, cocaine or heroin. It will also be a lot easier for them to kick their destructive habit than it would be for an alcoholic, or someone addicted to pain killers, meth, cocaine or heroin. I wouldn’t say marijuana is not addictive, but it isn’t nearly as addictive as these other drugs I’ve mentioned. Only a small percentage of marijuana users become addicted and it’s not an addiction that is particularly hard to overcome for most who do become addicted.
Your relative living in her parent’s basement, do you think she’s being honest about the extent of her drug use? Having dealt with an awful lot of drug addicts, I kind of doubt it. If she was a big time party girl in college using all kinds of drugs and she’s still single with a kid and living in her parents basement I doubt she wasn’t doing anything but smoking a little pot after college. Does she go out partying much still?
Then again, maybe she’s just a screw up. Maybe she would never have been able to hold it together very well even if she hadn’t partied so much in college. Maybe all the partying was just a way of medicating herself because she has some deep psychological/emotional problems. Mental illness and substance abuse go hand in hand. People with psychological problems do not tend to be the happiest people and they’ll often turn to intoxicants to try to get happy, or at least be numb to their pain. Although there is no doubt that substance abuse causes people problems, it is often going to be a symptom of psychological or emotional problems that already exist, and even if the person in question had not started abusing intoxicants their lives wouldn’t exactly have been just peachy anyway.
I just don’t see pot as being as debilitating as you do. You say that it “leads people to deconstruct their values” and that “chronic users tend to replace them with a kind of cynical rejection of success, often forming a somewhat paranoid or conspiratorial image of society from their crippled thinking.” I think you are describing screw ups in general who can’t seem to get their lives together. I think that the person who smokes dope constantly to the point that it has a serious negative impact on their lives is in the minority. You’ve read some propaganda that says casual pot smokers are twice as likely to be unemployed and daily users three times as likely. That’s probably true, but then again regular drinkers are probably a lot more likely than non drinkers to be unemployed too, just as other drug users are probably a several times more likely to be unemployed than non drug users. That really doesn’t tell us much. Bums will be bums and people with too much time on their hands are liable to get themselves in trouble. The fact is though that the overwhelming majority of marijuana smokers work full time jobs. Look at SAMHSA’s numbers for pot smokers 26 and older. For 2005 they said that about 7,508,000 people 26 and older would admit use of marijuana in the month preceding the survey and 5,221,000 of those were working full time jobs. Only 839,000 were working part time jobs, and only 415,000 were unemployed. (The rest were in the “other” category which I assume would cover students, people on disability, and retired persons.) See Table 1.36A http://oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k5NSDUH/tabs/Sect1peTabs1to66.htm#Tab1.36A
If you scroll down to Table 1.36B you’ll see that slightly more than 50% of people 26 and older who are full time employed will admit having used marijuana in the past and around 8.5% admit using it in the year leading up to the survey, the percentage would be higher if you didn’t include people over 55 or so who grew up before marijuana really became popular. I bet the real numbers are a good bit higher still for all age groups because I doubt everyone is all that honest about illegal conduct when speaking to government workers who come knocking on their doors asking questions. I’ve also seen SAMHSA numbers indicating that something like 11% of all people with children under 18 smoke marijuana. And of course the percentage of people for people 18 to 25 who admit use is really high. I won’t look much at that age group for full time employment because so many are still in school or otherwise haven’t settled into a career yet. But look at males in that group. Scroll up on the same page to Table 1.35B and you’ll see that close to one third of all males in that age group would admit on a government survey that they’ve smoked marijuana within a the past year, and more than a fifth will admit use within the past month. Are all of these millions of people just ruining their lives? Are most of them? I don’t think so. Most of the young ones will go through their wild stage and grow up and leave the marijuana behind. Most of those who keep smoking it will be moderate smokers who hold down full time jobs, just regular hard working people who happen to like to smoke a little weed now and again to unwind. Very few will be knuckleheads that smoke morning noon and night and let this activity impede their performance in life.
What most people see of pot smokers are the worst case scenarios. You hear about people getting in trouble. You hear about losers who can’t pull their lives together and you hear people blaming that on marijuana. You see jerks like the electrician you worked with who think it’s okay to smoke pot at work. You don’t really hear about all the productive people who are doing just fine in life who happen to smoke a little pot. They aren’t talking about it. That’s the kind of thing most people would keep to themselves, especially if they have good jobs and reputation to protect. There are probably people in your neighborhood and people that you work with or have regular dealings with that smoke pot, people you respect, and you’d just be shocked if you found out about their little secret. There are millions and millions out there who do it at least occasionally. Some are very successful people, most are just average, but that’s the way it is for people who don’t smoke pot too.
Smoking pot is just not something that is terribly debilitating for most people who do it. Just like drinking though doing it constantly is likely to cause people problems and make them less productive. Most people don’t go crazy with it though. It’s something they do every once in a while or maybe even every evening, but most grown ups who smoke the stuff aren’t doing it morning, noon, and night. Teens and college age kids who smoke it probably go overboard more than older people, just as we see with alcohol, but most people quit as they get older or settle down and moderate their use so that it doesn’t interfere with their lives. There are people who go way overboard with it, and they’re the ones most likely to go way overboard with other intoxicants as well. My guess is that most people with that inclination are already smoking pot if they have any interest in pot smoking. There probably aren’t many like that who want to smoke marijuana but won’t just because it’s illegal. If we see an increase of a few million users when marijuana is legalized, the percentage of problem users among these millions will likely be a good bit lower than the small percentage of current pot smokers who are problem users today. It won’t be a big deal for most of the rest.
It’s late and I have to close. I probably will not be able to spend much time on Freerepublic in the next few weeks, so if you respond to this post I may not be able to return the favor. I’ll be in court most of this week and I have several jury trials scheduled for the next couple of weeks after that. Most of them will get worked out but that will take a lot of time and I know I’m going to have to try at least a couple of them this time around. I’m probably not going to have much free time the rest of this month. I’m covered up. I’ve enjoyed this conversation though. We just disagree on this issue and that’s not likely to change. It’s good though that we can disagree and not have the conversation devolve into a name calling one upping match as so often happens on these threads where people talk about drug laws.
Thanks. I’ll see you around.