Posted on 10/02/2010 1:31:18 AM PDT by South40
No, the black market would become a new growth industry because people wanting to avoid the $50.00 per ounce tax would still prefer to continue giving the profit to the drug dealers rather than to fuel the government police state... it would be less expensive to give the profit to the drug dealers...
Medical marijuana is the same story... There is a huge proliferation of news stories about "medical" growers being arrested because they have more than their government allowance of pot...
Why anyone in their right mind (provided they aren't stoned all the time) would want to register with the government as a pot smoker with their little medical marijuana card and draw attention to themselves, is another question of government intrusion invited by an unsuspecting, uninformed public about the powers of government intrusion into personal privacy.
The better idea would be to just get out a big eraser and wipe all the marijuana laws off the books and stop feeding the ever growing police state.
Believe it?
I KNOW it.
I’ve seen it first hand time and time again.
Dealers usually have other stuff besides weed.
They’ve up uppers, downers, designer drugs.
There is a reason new drug fads among partiers always pop up.
It’s what happens to be going around at the time.
So it’s what the dealers are pushing and what the users are therefore using.
They have personal relationships with their customers.
They say “hey man, I got this blue wizard acid, you wanna try a hit of it?”
And these guys have their guys they get it from, who have their guys.
And if the guys at the top of the chain stop running pot because you can buy a pack of joints at Walgreens for $6.50, then they’re going to find something else. And they tell their guys “weed’s gone dry, but I got this PCP instead.” And if that’s what they got to sell, then that’s what they sell.
Each guy tells his buyer the same thing, down the line. Sure, a lot of business will drop off the bottom, and the dealers who deal to their friends just to support their habit and smoke all their profits anyways will get out of the business, but then again, they’ll just be buying it cheap and legal too, so they have no reason to sell. Maybe they’ll get jobs behind the counters of gas stations and convenient stores...
But the guys above them, the professional runners, and suppliers, they will move into other drugs out of necessity. Chances are they already deal in them, but they will start deal I’m them in much larger quantities to make up for their pot losses, and we’ll see more hard drugs brought in, more violence on the border, and a resurgence of the cocaine gang turf wars of the ‘80s.
There are poisoning issues with pot?
That is absurd. You can grow it in your garden like a tomato without any ill effects if you didn't have some government employee sniffing around.
So we should make liquor illegal again? Takes the heat off of illegal drugs.
I think Obama is more dangerous than MS-13...
What $50 per ounce tax?
Marijuana should be taxed like tobacco, more like $1 an ounce.
I don’t think anything that comes from the natural growth on the earth should be taxed.
If you believe that all the growing, crawling things of the earth are gifts from God to man, what natural right does government have in claiming some patent on it?
That’s not answering the question about the unintended consequences.
Personally, I’m leaning towards favoring Prop 19. But I have this real concern that occurred to me. Which is why I’m presenting it for discussion.
I agree, and as an individual I also have to right to not hire tobacco smokers, beer drinkers, Christians, people with children ...
You can get into more trouble growing tobacco than you would get into from growing marijuana.
There is a huge black market for stolen cigarettes. In fact, there is a huge black market for pharmaceutical drugs and lots of pharmacy robberies just for the drugs...
Pot is sometimes laced.
Usually PCP or something similar when it is.
Of course. But (regarding cigarettes, which are legally available without any prescription) the black market is a fraction of the market as a whole. There’s a black market for stolen ANYTHING
You can get into more trouble growing tobacco than you would get into from growing marijuana.
There is a huge black market for stolen cigarettes. In fact, there is a huge black market for pharmaceutical drugs and lots of pharmacy robberies just for the drugs...
AND...
The local police departments have now instituted a “no questions asked” pharmaceutical drug disposal program because of home invasion robberies and burglaries connected with pharmaceutical drugs...
Never mind that the police should be stopping the robberies and burglaries...
I disagree. Your hypothesis is that if Marijuana is made legal, drug dealers would move to harder drugs.
My point, following your logic, is by making liquor illegal, drug dealers could move from hard drugs to bootlegging liquor. No more drug smuggling.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think marijuana should be treated differently than tomatoes, ideally.
Nonsense...
There are some things from nature that are illegal to own, like ferrets, rattlesnakes, koalas...
I don't notice anyone eating any of those lately, although rattlesnakes if you can catch one aren't too bad for eating.
And ferrets are legal to have as pets in some places. Koalas are only found in Australia, they are mean and they taste terrible...
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