Massachusetts Decriminalizes Pot

OK so you have no problem with school kids injecting marijuana into their veins, but what about the police officer tripping out on reefers and surgeons hopped up on goofballs? Surely you are not so blind to this drug menace. Drugs are an illegal narcotic!

"That explains a lot. You're not a conservative you're a liberal statist. You don't believe in property rights. You don't expect me to have sympathy for a communist do you."

Blah, blah, blah. I've offended you so I'm a communist? I stand by my charges of paranoia and you just put the exclamation mark on the end of it.

I've been on FR for a while. Check out my contributions. You'll see how ridiculous your statements are. Not that I really care, but you're embarrassing yourself with such dribble.

Oh, by the way, I missed where you cited the proof where pot enhances coordination. And did you suggest children are "property"? Your rant got a bit confusing. Are you one of those parents who blow shotguns to toddlers (since they're you property).

"That explains a lot. You're not a conservative you're a liberal statist. You don't believe in property rights. You don't expect me to have sympathy for a communist do you."

Blah, blah, blah. I've offended you so I'm a communist? I stand by my charges of paranoia and you just put the exclamation mark at the end of it.

I've been on FR for a while. Check out my contributions. You'll see how ridiculous your statements are. Not that I really care, but you're embarrassing yourself with such dribble.

Oh, by the way, I missed where you cited the proof where pot enhances coordination. And did you suggest children are "property"? Your rant got a bit confusing. Are you one of those parents who blow shotguns to toddlers (since they're your property), or do you just let them enjoy the burning aromas in passing since it's proven to enhance their health and well being?

What a ridiculous post.

OK so you have no problem with school kids injecting marijuana into their veins, but what about the police officer tripping out on reefers and surgeons hopped up on goofballs? Surely you are not so blind to this drug menace. Drugs are an illegal narcotic!

You, sir, are a great American!

What I have no doubt of is that legalizing dope will not not eliminate the illegal trade in drugs. If weed is legalized, it will be be closely monitored, controlled, and heavily taxed by the government. Only a few authorized and licensed growers and producers will be allowed to distribue the stuff. So unlicensed growers will still distribute the stuff to avoid the government taxes, just as there are still moonshiners today. And don't kid yourself, legal weed will end up being very expensive, another incentive for unlicensed growers to get into the business.

It also raises the question about just who will do the growing and distribution? Will it be the government, who will then be accused of being a drug dealer? Will it be individuals? No. The government will want its slice of the pie. Will it be the tobacco companies? With their reputations, and the hostility generated against them about their profits in cigarettes, that is unlikely. Drug companies? I doubt if they want to be tagged with the "dope peddler" label, either. I guarantee that most of the rest of the world will not favorably receive a major nation becoming a legal producer and potential exporter of canabis either.

There is hardly any commercial market for moonshine. Most all alcohol sold is taxed. I think the same would be true for pot. There is no reason for it to be incredibly expensive. Prohibition is the only things making it cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars for a single pound of dried buds that could be produced for a few dollars a pound, if that, if it were being grown on large farms using modern agricultural methods. The only thing that will keep the price of pot up is taxes. It can be grown in most parts of the country and they can produce a good thousand pounds of buds per acre, and it's not extremely difficult to grow. A relative of marijuana, the hop plant, produces a couple of thousand pounds of hop cones, buds, per acre per year and must be picked by hand like marijuana and hops go for two or three bucks an ounce retail. Hops have to be grown on trellises and the cones have to be picked from the top of the bines which can reach heights in excess of 20 feet. Then the hops that are picked have to be dried, similar to pot buds. Pot should probably be cheaper to produce than hops when it is done on modern commercial farms.

I really don't think there is any reason to believe we couldn't regulate and that people would all want to buy black market product. It's actually pretty cheap today for the most part if you look at it on a per use basis. Most of it is cheaper than beer. People that smoke it would love to be able to go to a nice clean store and choose from a wide variety of quality product. As long as we allow for competitive legal production and try not to tax it so much that it becomes really expensive people aren't going to want to buy it in dark alleys from shady people. They're not going to want to buy product that may have been treated with unsafe chemicals. They'll just go to the “pot store” and get it and pretty soon they'll have their favorite brands and they won't want any part of any sketchy homegrown from the black market, anymore than people want to buy rot gut corn liquor.

The growers would probably be corporate growers for the most part and some smaller boutique operations. They'd have to be licensed. I don't know which corporations would do it, but given that Americans consume tens of billions of dollars worth of marijuana a year it is not likely that no one is going to want to grow it.

As for other nations, I suspect Mexico and Canada would legalize it soon after we do it, if they don't do it before us. Both countries already supply us marijuana and I bet they'd want to try to participate in our legal market rather than lose out on the billions of American dollars coming into their countries every year. The governments in both countries have talked about legalization and have received stern warnings against it from our government. Our government estimates Mexican drug trafficking organizations make about $8.6 billion a year selling marijuana to Americans. The Canadians make less, but according to Canadian polls the Canadian people are already a lot more supportive of the idea of legalization than we are. Their senate recommended legalization a few years back but there was a lot of grumbling from our government and people there were worried about trade sanctions. If we legalize, they'll legalize. And if they don't, so what? Both countries already produce a lot more marijuana than they consume. They don't need our pot. And Europe and other parts of the world already produce plenty of pot or have producers nearby who can sell it to them much cheaper than we'd be able to sell it to them. On top of that, our marijuana industry would be regulated and it would be illegal for these licensed producers to sell it abroad in countries where it is not legal so they'd be risking their licenses and worse if they did it. This is really a non issue.

Bravo Sierra. The logistics of legalizing weed will turn out to be a nightmare. Alaska tried it back in the 80’s and it attracted lowlifes from around the world, just as it did for Nepal in the 1960 and 70’s. The history of drug legalization has been of failure, and of re-instituting penalties for possession and distribution, using harsher penalties. It almost ruined Persia prior to the Shah making canabis and opium illegal in the 1920’s. Even liberal Holland has severly restricted it, from its once quasi-legal status, and is slowly ratcheting up enforcement for both canabis and other drugs.

The war on drugs has turned out to be a nightmare. Alcohol was legalized and the sky didn't fall in. I don't think horribly addictive drugs like opiates, cocaine and meth should be legal. But legalizing marijuana isn't going to cause us a lot of problems. You mention Alaska and a lot of foreign countries examples. I don't know anything about Iran or Nepal, but marijuana hasn't really been legal in Alaska or the Netherlands, not to the extent where there is actually a legal industry with legal production and sales. In the Netherlands they actually allow it to be sold from shops, but commercial production is illegal. The shops with permits to sell it have to buy it from the black market, which naturally encourages organized crime be involved with supplying these “coffeeshops” that sell pot. Of course that's going to cause some problems.

I think legalization could work here as long as we legalized and regulated production as well as retail sales. I don't even think use would go up that much. According to all the statistics a much lower percentage of the Dutch smoke marijuana than Americans or the people in several of the EU nations. Per capita marijuana use in the Netherlands is middle of the road for EU nations and a good bit lower than per capita marijuana use here in the U.S. You no doubt disagree, but I think most of the people who want to smoke marijuana already smoke it. If we legalized it we'd end up putting warning labels on the packages, forbidding sales to minors, and we'd be doing other things to discourage use just like we do with cigarettes today. Use of tobacco has plummeted in recent years even though it is a legal product. Reductions in tobacco use have been more substantial than any reductions we've ever seen in marijuana use in this country. We have no control over marijuana in this country because it's illegal. We'd have more control if it were regulated.

More Americans use marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined. The market for it is huge. It is already relatively cheap. For decades now we've spent a fortune trying to eradicate it, to make it expensive and difficult to find, yet it is still easy to find everywhere in this country and for most people a single use will cost them pennies, maybe two or three bucks if they buy the really expensive stuff. Millions of people use it though and many billions of dollars are up for grabs every year for supplying all the people who use it. Organized crime is cleaning up. They're making a fortune. For these Mexican drug trafficking organizations we hear about a lot lately marijuana is their cash cow.

We're just spinning our wheels trying to keep this ban in effect, wasting a fortune and causing more problems than we solve. People are figuring this out too. Around 40% of Americans surveyed now agree that marijuana should be legal and regulated similar to alcohol. As the years go on that percentage keeps increasing, by about one percentage point a year on average. Eventually, we're going to see marijuana legalized here. My bet is it happens within 20 years, maybe a little longer, but not by much if at all. A lot of people like you are going to panic when this happens. You'll think it's going to be the end of the world. I bet though than in time we'll be kicking ourselves for not doing it much sooner.