Marijuana Top U.S. Cash Crop at $35 Billion

NewsMax ^ | Dec. 18, 2006 | Reuters

[smonk]

why is it difficult for me to digest any reasoning designed to enhance tax revenues?

[smonk]

---Gettman's figures were based on several government reports between 2002 and 2005 estimating the United States produced more than 10,000 metric tons of marijuana annually.---

how reliable is an estimate of an illegal crop?

[CDHart]

A rather extreme reaction, don't you think? I'll bet you know a lot of "potheads" but just don't know it.

Carolyn

[Muzzle_em]

Would be a bigger problem than folks stealing watermelons, that is for SURE!

[1Old Pro]

Any idiot can grow smokable marijuana if they have the right seeds.

Exactly, about like growing tomato plants.

[newcats]

Stranger tells me to STFU, I don't wait till recess. I do whats necessary and take the suspension

Must have happened quite often.

[Trailerpark Badass]

If it's lame, I'm gonna call it lame. Sorry if that hurt your feelings, tough guy!

[Phantom Lord]

Legalize it... then tax the hell outta it!!

I agree. But only if it is treated as beer is and people are allowed X amount to be produced at home for personal and friends consumption. I believe one is allowed to brew 35 gallons of beer per year tax free.

[Rb ver. 2.0]

Legalizing weed would cut off the millions in funding LEO's receive each year from cash and property seizures. It would send local LEO departments into a tailspin in trying to determine how to recoup lost funding, possibly even to the point of personnel reductions.

[Phantom Lord]

But tell me, why did I have a couple buddies in college that just COULD NOT STOP smoking weed?

Because they were in college?

[Vaquero]

right back at you Badass.

[Wormwood]

Legalizing weed would cut off the millions in funding LEO's receive each year from cash and property seizures. It would send local LEO departments into a tailspin in trying to determine how to recoup lost funding, possibly even to the point of personnel reductions.

From your lips to God's ears.

[Phantom Lord]

Your making an invalid comparrison. The prediction that if MJ was legalized that the price would plummet is likely dead on accurate.

To say it is a false prediction because California legalized it for "medical" reasons and made it legal to grow your own but not sell it and the price didn't drop.

Several problems with your comparrison.

1) Federal law still reigns supreme on drug matters and federal law still says MJ is illegal and growing it is illegal.

2) Legitimate Medical MJ is a small, insignificant percent of MJ smokers.

3) California is but one state, and #1 still overrides California's laws.

If the Federal government removed the laws banning MJ cultivation, consumption, and sale, farms producing the product would explode and massive multinational companies would be buying up the contracts for the mature plants to process, package, and sell all over the country.

Small specialty shops would be popping up all over the place with their own grown rooms and supply souces.

And weekend users would have their own plants going in the basement, attic, and back yard. Friends and family would be trading their products with eachother for comparrison.

Actual street value of MJ for an individual, private transaction would plummet.

Retail price may be another story though as taxes, regulation, marketing, shipping, etc... would keep that cost up a good amount over the living room transaction.

[Phantom Lord]

Because people spend money on being potheads. I hate pot, I hate the users. This is a miserable thing that people poison their minds when they should know the risks of addiction involved.

Swap out pot for cigarettes, alcohol, pain killers, etc...

The list is virtually endless.

[Phantom Lord]

Oh go shove your pot. There's been plenty of studies showing that only a COMPLETE MORON would ever try it. Fitting I guess, every single pothead I've ever known was a loser.

Damn those founding fathers and their evil weed! And the fact that they grew it should have gotten them a death sentence.

[Phantom Lord]

Speaking of open containers and legislatures over zealous need to "protect" us from ourselves.

Open container laws are pretty common but not universal. A couple years ago a town passed a new open container law. One of the strictest in the country.

There was a problem though. In their zeal to "do something" and look like heros to the voting public they came up with a doozy of an open container law. It was so strict that it made it impossible to return empties for the deposit! Because to do so, you had to transport an open container.

They had to change it to make some exceptions.

[Armedanddangerous]

THAT'S why pizza shops and twinkies are soo popular in Cali.......potheads!

[DungeonMaster]

That ends up being a lot of hate.

[DungeonMaster]

Where is this fair city?

[Phantom Lord]

Speaking of pot smoking dirtbag criminals who are complete morons, President George H W Bush (41) should likely have been executed for nominating a pot smoking criminal moron, Robert Bork, for the Supreme Court.