No offense, but marijuana just ain’t that much of a profitable plant. If it’s legalized, anyone could plant it and the price would be 75 cents an ounce.
“Can Marijuana Help Rescue California’s Economy? “
Well, it will increase the sale of munchie foods
No but it will make them feel better while they go bankrupt and belly up.
One thing.
They figure on 14 Billion.
Making it legal would lead to anybody growing it. A lot for their own use. That would drive the price down quite a bit.
The real question is how much further can California slide without disappearing into the abyss of the San Andres sin fault can it go?
was society at the lowest common denominator prior to pot being illegal? Do you also wish for alcohol to become illegal since it wreaks more havoc on society than pot does. And again I am not a pot user. I just see the hypocrisy of alcohol being legal and marijuana illegal. Add to that that hemp, at least, has more benefits to society than alcohol does and hemp is illegal too.
you cud get 50x more money selling crack, so we shud just go with that./.
Marijuana, cocane, crack, and meth should all be legalized for one week before the next congressional and presidential elections.
Guess who will be too high to vote!
Well, if they treat it like they have cigarettes, legalizing it will cause the cost to go up so much most people will quit.
Sure, but at what cost to the Mexican economy?
That’s the topsy-turvy logic of liberal politics. Lets legalize pot (a mind-altering drug with long-term damage to the brain) while doing everything they can to outlaw tobacco. You can smoke a cigarette and still be able to drive a car.
Look for it to go down in quality and priced through the roof if the government mits ever take hold.
Prior to the 1930’s hemp was legal to grow and smoke in all 50 states. Its use increased greatly during Prohibition and to protect the liquor industry, companies like Anhauser Busch lobbied Congress to outlaw it. And then we ended up with EXACTLY the same organized crime families moving from selling alcohol illegally to selling hemp and other drugs illegally.
Also, the social impact of pot is far less than alcohol. Yes, it will inhibit your reasoning and coordination, but I have never seen someone smoke a bit of pot and then go beat up their wife. I don’t do illegal drugs at all, but given the choice, I would decriminalize ALL recreational drugs.
That would do several positive things. First, it would remove thousands of laws aimed at finding and punishing people who sell and use the stuff and free us from crap like RICO which allows ANY law enforcement agency to steal your property under the SUSPICION that it MIGHT be drug related. Second, it would take the money source away from terrorists and criminals. Third, it would let the idiots who take them kill themselves.
Reduces or redirects the cost of a major criminal justice system failure.
I dont think anything can rescue California’s economy
LOL...its easy to see how KA got to where it is today. The state, of course, would license production keeping a tight hold over its cut of the revenue...rather like the ATF and alcohol. Only problem is there would still be those who would grow it apart from the regulatory/tax structure set by the state. So, LE costs will likely be more than + judicial costs for trying the cases. I predict it’ll be far worse then now. Once they have a dog in the fight (tax revenues to lose) I’m sure they’ll vigorously prosecute anyone trying to short them. Oh my, then they’ll need more jails. Then there are the addition accidents (vehicular and others) caused by being high along w/ lost productivity. Then theres the question of how they’d distinguish pot grown in KA under license and imported. Oh, right they’d have tax stamps or some other ID that could easily be counterfeited. The list problems seems pretty big and daunting to me. LOL...
Sounds like a net loss...then again KA math seems to differ considerably from the norm. In reality this plan seems likely to be the straw that broke the camels back.
Illegality is what puts the "cash" value in marijuana as a cash crop. Nicotiana tabacum, in the form of Burley tobacco, used for cigarettes, gets a farmer about $1.75 a pound, after drying.
What is Cannabis sativa going to fetch the farmer when it is just another cash crop? More than tobacco? Certainly at first, but for how long?
Today, somebody used to paying $100 an ounce for "cheap" marijuana, and many times that for hydroponically grown, high THC stuff, might think that a $50.00 an ounce tax, (as proposed in Sacramento) in exchange for legalization, is a great deal. Certainly the knowledge that you won't be arrested, or shot in the head, tryuing to buy dope is worth a lot, and the tax will bring in some money the first few years.
But when the untaxed crop is selling for, let's be crazy and say 10 times as much as tobacco, or $17.50 a pound, how great will a tax of $800 a pound seem then? A tax on retailers under the bill under proposal in Sacramento.
Hmmm. If a guy buys weed from a legal retailer, 97.5% of the dealer's raw material cost is for excise tax. If, on the other hand, the weed buyer buys from a production chain that doesn't pay taxes, well he can pay his non-taxed supplier $408.75 a pound for non-taxed weed, or 23 times the $17.50 a pound the farmer in the tax paid distribution chain gets (which is, remember, 10 times what the tobacco farmer gets), and still pay just half the product cost (much less selling price) of the the legal, taxed retailer.
That doesn't sound like a formula for a vast influx of cash to the State coffers. It sounds like changing the offense for marijuana possession to a revenue crime.
Remember all those movies about moonshiners in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? The Federal Excise Tax on distilled liquor was $12.50 a proof gallon, or what, 50-60% of the retail price of rot gut at a licensed, taxed liquor store? This tax is 90%+. Any bets on whether the State of California (again, after a brief burst of revenue) spends more on beefing up its revenue collection efforts than it actually collects at $800 a pound?
They can all get stoned and forget about all their problems!
I’ll pass on the subject of legalization. Lets talk money.
Pot is a $14 billion industry because it is illegal. Pot prices are based on black market prices. Legalize pot, and the street price falls to 5 cents on the dollar, because seriously, how much does it cost for seeds, water and fertilizer. The cost of pot is no more than the cost to grow tobacco.
So legalize pot and the $14 billion industry goes to a street price of $700 million. Taxes on that will bring in MAYBE $150 million, if they hit it really hard.
Idiots. They have absolutely no capacity to analyze.
This doesn’t include any money they would have to spend to regulate this new industry. Are they using banned chemicals? Are they growing pot near endangered species. Do cartons of pot have all the requisite pregnancy warning labels, addiction, cancer, etc.
Idiots. Clueless bloody idiots. Drill for oil off the coast and they would flood their coffers.