Make Peace With Pot

NY Times ^ | April 26, 2004 | ERIC SCHLOSSER

[tacticalogic]

Not the way you fool around with an answer. Actually, I didn't expect one.

The question was carefully crafted to create a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation - ie loaded. You probably didn't expect an answer because you know my response to such is to "tag and bag". If TD wants to play your games, he's welcome to, but I suspect he's smarter than that.

[robertpaulsen]

"Regulating grain markets using the guise of commerce clause 'power' is unconstitutional on its face."

You are correct.

"In 1936 the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) unconstitutional. The majority of judges (6-3) ruled that it was illegal to levy a tax on one group (the processors) in order to pay it to another (the farmers). In 1938, another AAA was passed without the processing tax. It was financed out of general taxation and was therefore acceptable to the Supreme Court.

"By the 1920s, European agriculture had recovered and American farmers found it more difficult to find export markets for their goods. Farmers continued to produce more food than could be consumed and consequently prices began to fall. The decline in agricultural profits meant that many farmers had difficulty paying the heavy mortgages on their farms. By the 1930s many American farmers were in serious financial difficulties.

"Farmers in the Mid-West faced another serious problem. During the First World War, farmers grew wheat on land normally used for grazing animals. This intensive farming destroyed the protective cover of vegetation and the hot dry summers began to turn the soil into dust. High winds in 1934 turned an area of some 50 million acres into a giant dust bowl."
-- spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USARagriculture.htm

Still feel that the AAA should not have been passed? Still feel that farmers should have been allowed to grow as much wheat as they wanted?

[AxelPaulsenJr]

LOL, sounds like you got problems. But then we all do, looks like W. is going down. Too Bad. Shoulda stayed out of Iraq.

[tdadams]

I see you're going to do all you can to evade my point. I must compliment you... you're quite a dancer.

[robertpaulsen]

You are trying to say that marijuana is illegal because it is a Schedule I drug. That is not true.

Congress has an 8-point criteria for judging the legality or illegality of a drug. Marijuana was deemed illegal. In addition, it was placed into Schedule I along with 82 other drugs.

What more can I say?

Now, will you answer my question?

[tdadams]

Now, will you answer my question?

Well, I asked you a question that you never answered, but remind me again what your question was?

[jmc813]

looks like W. is going down. Too Bad. Shoulda stayed out of Iraq.

I disagree on both counts.

[P_A_I]

robertpaulsen wrote:

But IF the government chooses to constitutionally regulate the interstate commerce of a product with the interests of the nation in mind, and with the approval of the people, are you saying that individuals and/or states should be allowed to subvert, undermine, and negate Congress' efforts?

Who's side are you on?

Should Filburn and the rest of the wheat farmers have been allowed to grow as much wheat as they wanted?
Bad regulation is not necessarily unconstitutional, you know.

---

Regulating grain markets using the guise of commerce clause 'power' is unconstitutional on its face.

In a free republic with free markets Filburn and the rest of the wheat farmers could grow as much wheat as they wanted, & individuals and/or states should be allowed to subvert, undermine, and negate unconstitutional Congressional efforts to restrain free trade.

Who's side are you on?

1,014 P_A_I

---

You are correct.

"In 1936 the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) unconstitutional. The majority of judges (6-3) ruled that it was illegal to levy a tax on one group (the processors) in order to pay it to another (the farmers).

In 1938, another AAA was passed without the processing tax. It was financed out of general taxation and was therefore acceptable to the Supreme Court.

"By the 1920s, European agriculture had recovered and American farmers found it more difficult to find export markets for their goods. Farmers continued to produce more food than could be consumed and consequently prices began to fall. The decline in agricultural profits meant that many farmers had difficulty paying the heavy mortgages on their farms. By the 1930s many American farmers were in serious financial difficulties.
"Farmers in the Mid-West faced another serious problem. During the First World War, farmers grew wheat on land normally used for grazing animals. This intensive farming destroyed the protective cover of vegetation and the hot dry summers began to turn the soil into dust. High winds in 1934 turned an area of some 50 million acres into a giant dust bowl."
-- spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USARagriculture.htm


Still feel that the AAA should not have been passed? Still feel that farmers should have been allowed to grow as much wheat as they wanted?

1,022 robertpaulsen

---

Yes.. -- The second version of the AAA was as unconstitutional as the first, and should not have passed.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) is unconstitutional. It was & is illegal to levy a general tax in order to pay price supports to farmers, and to thereby attempt to 'regulate' free markets.

Who's side are you on, the taxpayers or overproducing farmers?

[William Terrell]

I'm much to bashful to show my source code.

[ActionNewsBill]

"1965. The first year the male population at FSU was larger than the female population."
"BTW, the liquor in those flasks was not obtained legally as we were only 18."
1980
Miami Seaquarium celebrates its 25th Anniversary. Tampa opens its own $6.2 million water theme park, Adventure Island. Bill raising drinking age from 18 to 19 is passed. All military personnel are excluded.

http://www.house.gov/boyd/pages/main/history.html

[TKDietz]

"TK, I believe you had some conflicting information?"

I believe what we were arguing about was whether pot could be cheap if it was mass produced like other agricultural products are today. Holland was used as an example for legalized pot and I said that growing and importing marijuana is still illegal in Holland. It's not a good example because they don't have large legal commercial growing operations. These tiny five plant closet grows are certainly not an example of large scale commercial production.

Now, if you believe that these five plant grows are what is supplying the coffeeshops, I have a bridge I'll sell you. The reality is that much of the hash and pot is sold in the coffeeshops is smuggled in from places like Jamaica, Thailand, Columbia, Lebanon, Morocco and other parts of Africa. When I went to Amsterdam in the 1980's, most of what was sold in coffeeshops came from places like the ones I listed. I understand that has changed somewhat now and that more and more local product is being sold at these shops. But these are businesses. They want a steady supply of product with uniform quality. It is my understanding that most of the local product they get is coming from larger indoor producers, not from people with tiny closet grows. The guy with five plants in his closet is lucky if he's able to supply himself and a couple of buddies.

And by the way, even the little five plants or less grows aren't technically legal. The police just don't mess with them.

[Ken H]

Is it fair to say that the 5 plant operations are a regulated, above ground, and quasi-legal market, small though it may be?

Disclaimer-- I'm making ballpark guesses about the following figures. We can substitute more accurate figures if they get posted. My point is to see how much money a 5 plant operation could make selling to the coffee houses.

I remember you guys discussing coffee shop prices. IIRC it worked out to about $300/oz retail, so I'll use that figure until I hear otherwise.

Now to yield. I'm going to use a figure of one pound per plant with five plants producing a crop 3 times per year. That works out to 15 lbs, or 240 ounces/year.

Of course the small growers will not get $300/oz. They should be able to get somewhere near the black market price. They can't go too much higher and there's no reason to go much lower.

That works out to $36,000 gross. If my numbers are anywhere in the ballpark, it's a significant incentive for small operations.

[Ken H]

- the so-called 'grow shops' - have been of strategic importance for the unprecedented growth of small pseudo or part-time entrepreneurs in the last decade of the twentieth century. Where less than 10 of these grow shops were counted in the early nineties, no less than 300 of them existed at the end of the decade.

Click

[Ken H]

Left out one small detail. I assumed the growers would get $150/oz, giving the coffee shops a 100% mark up. Again, pure ballpark and open to revision.

[robertpaulsen]

"I remember you guys discussing coffee shop prices. IIRC it worked out to about $300/oz retail"

I believe that was on a thread where the discussion was about how the user price would drop dramatically if marijuana were legalized. You know, "it's just a weed", "it grows anywhere", "will be as cheap as tobacco", yada yada.

$300/oz. retail? That's almost double illegal prices!

[AxelPaulsenJr]

I disagree on both counts.

Oh I so hope that you are correct.

[cinFLA]

1965, not 1980.

[cinFLA]

You forgot to include the "growers license fee" and "mob protection surcharge"

[robertpaulsen]

I have to apologize. I never saw the question.

"If it's your theory, Robert, that with legalization there would be hordes of people rushing to use drugs, then answer me this... why aren't there hordes of people rushing to buy spray paint to sniff? It's really cheap and gives you a serious high (from what I've read)."

My statement (was you call "theory") was that if marijuana is legalized, more people will smoke it. You have a problem with this? You don't think this would happen?

Let me address your 'spray paint' scenario first. It is illegal (state law) to sniff spray paint. If you are caught, you can be jailed or fined. So this is a bad analogy.

From what I've read, huffing is mostly done by those under 21. Even if this activity were made legal for those 21 and over, it would only affect a small number of users -- it would still be illegal for the majority of users.

Back to marijuana. At it's peak in 1979, 13.2% of those 12 and older smoked marijuana on a monthly basis. That dropped to 4.7% (a 60% drop!) in 1999.

Why? What changed?

I submit to you that it was a combination of factors: attitude, education, and enforcement among them. IF marijuana were made legal -- in other words, society sees nothing wrong with it -- why wouldn't the use go back to at least 13.2%?

Another example would be the end of Prohibition.

[cinFLA]

That's pretty awesome. If you don't mind sharing it, I would love to take a look at the source code for it. I can FReepmail you my regular e-mail addy for that if you'd like.

It's not awesome. Just a bunch of ASCII parsing and simple data manipulation. It took me about 30 minutes to put mine together and he saw mine and got the idea for his.

First you do a "copy" to get the data into the clipboard and then the program reads the clipboard and you use available string functions to find the start of each post with a do loop. Search each post for the data and then write the data to text and then copy to FR.