Posted on 06/05/2014 1:27:21 PM PDT by Wolfie
Tobacco industry once had high hopes for marijuana business
USA -- Richard Nixon was in the White House, his "war on drugs" was in full swing, yet Big Tobacco was secretly exploring the possibility of becoming Big Pot. Newly discovered documents from tobacco company archives at UC San Francisco show that major companies in the cigarette industry investigated joining the marijuana business in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The companies were driven then by the same shift in public attitudes that is now pushing legalization around the country. One company even asked a federal counter-narcotics official to secretly secure marijuana from the government for research.
"We request that there be no publicity whatsoever," a Philip Morris vice president wrote in late 1969 to Milton Joffee, drug sciences chief at the Justice Department's narcotics bureau. "We will provide the results to you on a confidential basis, and request that you not identify in the form of any public announcement where the work has been done."
Joffee responded that Philip Morris could skip Food and Drug Administration review of its application for government pot. "I do not feel there is any bar to maintaining the confidentiality you request," he wrote.
The documents, discovered by public health researchers, were disclosed Tuesday in the Milbank Quarterly, a health policy journal. They not only shed new light on the Nixon era, but appear when some Wall Street analysts and health advocates say tobacco companies may again be considering the expanding market for legalized weed.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
If not them, then the drug cartels from Mehico or others even more unsavory.
Tobacco industry once had high hopes for marijuana business
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I’m sure they still do. Their prodct has killed millions and cost us billions.
What they wouldn’t do to get on board with legal marijuana and futher injure this nation.
my classmate’s aunt makes $68 every hour on the computer . She has been fired for 7 months but last month her paycheck was $15495 just working on the computer for a few hours. visit the site . . .
They still have high hopes. No pot dealer in the world has the distribution network of RJR or PM. If it goes nationally legal they win.
Of course it will be regulated and taxed. That’s actually part of the reason to want legalization, quality control and white market prices. Unless the fed goes crazy on the taxes (like they are with cigs) pot will still wind up cheaper.
Et tu, Jeff?
If the government actually wanted to take the wind out of the cartels’ sails they would legalize personal cultivation of pot.
I’m dead set against pot smoking but the idea of an illegal weed is just bizarre.
“taste the rainbow!”
“smell the loudness!”
“Oh crap, I forgot the link. “
LOL. That’s what pot does to you. Just the mere mention of it....
Now I get it.
Just how long do you think fedzilla is going to resist that urge? And what will their constituents do about it anyway? Vote Republican?
There will be a lot more social costs associated with widespread pot use than there ever were with widespread tobacco use.
Who knows. But that’s life with a legal product, you never know when the fed is going to go stupid. But even then you wind up with a black market like the untax stamped cig market, which isn’t nearly as violent as the current pot black market.
I doubt there will be more use. With it legal and regulated it actually gets harder for various classes to get than with it illegal. It’s a lot easier now for a teen to get pot than beer, because people selling beer have liquor licenses they wish to protect, and people selling are already breaking the law and don’t really care.
It’s really all about picking your poison. People that are going to smoke pot are going to smoke pot, the questions you need to ask yourself is would you rather the money go to Mexican drug cartels or the neighborhood liquor stores; and would you rather the seller have some sort of rules to follow or do whatever they want.
Sometimes I think the best solution to the war on drugs is to give the druggies whatever they want, as much as they want, at nominal cost and let Darwin take care of them.
For harder drugs, I also think the draconian solution they have in Singapore also has more appeal than the present status quo.
The WOD is probably doing more to erase the line than legalization ever would. At this point the government is a full fledged participant in most of the worst parts of the drug trade. They are an armed combatant, they pick sides (confidential informants), they help keep the prices artificially inflated, and periodically they kill innocent bystanders because they can’t read a map. Not to mention how much easier the poppy flow has gotten out of Afghanistan since we invaded. If anything legalized actually REDUCES the level of government involvement because a white market will be ruled by large corporations who already regularly bribe the government to get out of the way.
Singapore is a police state. If we have to become them to get people not to do drugs that’s the cure being worse than the disease.
And genetically engineered to decrease potency? I could envision a situation with very stiff fines for growing pot without a license.
Did the pro-drug crowd really think they'd get legalization without government control? What were they smoking?
Probably genetically engineered to have a variety of potencies, which already happens with pot and cigs. Not everybody wants the big buzz.
I’d guess it’ll go similar to home brew rules. Depending on the state you’re in you’re allowed to make certain amounts of certain types of booze, mostly you can’t sell without a license (some places you can sell very little), some places you can’t even gift.
I think the only people who expected a free for all were the anti-legalization crowd. All the pro-legalization people I know consider regulation and taxation to be part of what they want. Turning drugs into a profit center for the government is better than them being a budget black hole, and if alcohol and smokes tell us anything the BEST way to keep kids off drugs is to sell them at the liquor store.
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