You signed up today to post this, which suggests you’re part of the pot lobby, probably NORML. These are the same talking points, using the same language, that another new sign-up from the pot lobby threw around a few weeks ago... feel free to check my posting history to see my responses.
I’m not going to respond to these same talking points endlessly just because you guys think inundating message boards with them is an effective strategy. Sorry, I don’t do this for a living, so I don’t have that kind of time to piss away.
But I will tell you, as I told the last NORML lobbyist, that in all my years of smoking pot and living in Southern California (and knowing LOTS of other stoners), I saw product from the dispensaries maybe twice. I don’t know anyone who buys their pot from them, mainly because they’re ridiculously expensive. Everybody I knew, in both Los Angeles and San Diego, got their stuff from home growers with grow cards. And the stuff was every bit as potent as the stuff we’d sampled from the dispensaries (which sells for $400 an ounce, minimum).
As far as it being cheaper, even with high taxes, that’s a pipe dream. Anyone who think this government getting into the pot-dealing business expressly for the money is going to make pot cheaper is either being willfully dishonest, or they’re living in a dream world. They’ll have a mandate from the non-pot smoking majority to tax the hell out of it and that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The cost will double, instantly. Guaranteed.
I'm also not new here. I'm TKDietz. I signed up here first in December of 2003. I killed that account by cutting and pasting in a random password I didn't know and signing off. The email account associated with that account was dead so there was no coming back as TKDietz. I was planning on never coming back because I was wasting too much time here, but in a momentary lapse in willpower I signed up again to respond to a couple of posts.
"As far as it being cheaper, even with high taxes, that’s a pipe dream. Anyone who think this government getting into the pot-dealing business expressly for the money is going to make pot cheaper is either being willfully dishonest, or they’re living in a dream world. They’ll have a mandate from the non-pot smoking majority to tax the hell out of it and that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The cost will double, instantly. Guaranteed."
I'm not suggesting the government get involved in the pot dealing business, except to regulate it. Private companies should produce and distribute marijuana. It ought to be regulated similar to the way we regulate alcohol. There will be regulatory costs and taxes, but the cost of marijuana should still drop. It only costs hundreds or even thousands of dollars a pound because it is illegal. You said yourself it's easy to grow. Corporate farmers will mass produce this stuff. They'll bring production costs down to next to nothing, and all the costs associated with it being illegal will go away. It really shouldn't cost that much more than tobacco in bulk wholesale purchases, certainly not hundreds or even thousands of times as much. Companies like Phillip Morris pay about $1.75 a pound for that dried and cured Burley they use to make up the bulk of most cigarettes. Most tobacco is under $2 a pound in bulk wholesale purchases. Pot should cost that much more. Even high quality product grown in greenhouses should even cost hundreds of dollars a pound because they'll grow it in row after row of greenhouses on several acres of land like they do hothouse tomatoes. There will be all sorts of room for taxes.
It is possible that the government would tax it so much that they would increase the price of pot such that consumers pay more than they do today. That would be a stupid thing to do. They ought to start out pretty low because the drastic decreases in pot prices won't happen overnight. There will be all sorts of start up costs for the companies that get involved. It will take them a while to get their systems dialed in. Prices should go down a fair amount pretty quickly because all the risks associated with it being illegal would go away. The government wouldn't be seizing millions of their pot plants and thousands of tons of their finished product. They won't have to pay people a fortune because they are risking prison. They won't have to go through so many middlemen. But it will still take a few years for the industry to become highly competitive and for prices to drop way down.
If it were up to me we'd start out with plain sales taxes, and then start slowly adding in excises. If they do go too crazy with taxes up front and end up with product that is more expensive for consumers than what is available today they won't put much of a dent in the black market. That would be a horrible mistake. It would be better if the legal product started out a fair amount cheaper than current prices for illicit product so they could kill the black market early on. Then they could slowly raise taxes.