If pot is legalized and regulated there will still be street sales of all other drugs. If THC content is regulated, dealers will sell high potency pot. They'll sell pot laced with other drugs. They'll sell to the under-aged. They'll sell it untaxed.
“If THC content is regulated, dealers will sell high potency pot.”
It won’t be, so you can rest easier now. I know you were worried.
“They’ll sell it untaxed.”
One more time - there will be no legal sales, and therefore there will be NO TAXES. Do you work for the IRS?
“They’ll sell to the under-aged.”
Ooops, almost missed this gem.
Yah, that’s why we have this current rash of street liquor dealers - man I can’t believe they charge $100 for a bottle of Chivas.
Really.
Yes, this is true... although they'd be somewhat lower as the availability of a partial substitute good would lure some of the demand away. But that's like saying that if you buy a burglar alarm, your house may still burn down. Yes, and?
If THC content is regulated, dealers will sell high potency pot.
And if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather. I'm all for requirements to label pot for potency... just as we do with alcohol and tobacco. Why should the government mandate certain potencies?
They'll sell pot laced with other drugs.
Rather like saying that there's a thriving black market in baggies, which drug dealers sell laced with marijuana.
They'll sell to the under-aged.
Indeed... although the underaged would find it harder to get pot, with much of the supply going to licensed dealers with a strong financial incentive not to sell to minors. Nowadays, 100% of marijuana is sold by dealers who don't check ID. And, of course, if law enforcement didn't have to spend so many resources tracking down and arresting responsible adult consumers, they'd have that much more to devote to busting the scum who sell to kids.
They'll sell it untaxed.
Which is why our cities are infested with low-life scum peddling untaxed alcohol on the streets, right? Got news for you, sport: supplying a black market is expensive. There are costs to keeping one's operation clandestine, to bribing law enforcement and judicial officers, opportunity costs to the necessary small-scale production forgoing economies of scale, and of course the cost of purchasing weapons and hiring enforcers to resolve disputes in a market which cannot use the civil court system. Black markets cannot be price-competitive with free markets, and taxes could be ridiculously high (as they are on alcohol and tobacco) without making illicit drugs a good buy for the consumer.