One seed under one light with a couple of sheets of tin foil will produce about 1 1/2 ounces of marijuana, if done properly (and I did it properly on my first try with no help). That’s enough to last the average hard-core stoner about three months.
Tell me which spirit I can manufacture a three month supply of as easily, and how it’s done.
50 grams does not threaten the tax revenue. I think the conversation started there, being a threat to government revenues.
If a hundred thousand people growing pot threatened those revenues, then the government would crack down and start enforcing the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act or whatever it was called in the 1930’s. A person growing a pound or two would be seen as a threat and BATFEW would sniff you out like a pot of sour mash.
Distilling a liter or four of brandy does not threaten them either and it’s as easy as pouring wine (even cheap wine) into an old pressure cooker with a condenser attached. Distill it on the stove. If you use your own wine (like a batch that didn’t turn out well) it’s pretty economical too. Quicker than pot, no watering, and your legal exposure is much shorter.
And if you make your own wine, you have all the stuff you need to crack corn, mix with Klages malt and some sugar, and ferment into a smelly sour mash...or so I’m told.
That's after several months of taking care of your plant and will only happen for you if you are lucky enough to get a female plant from that seed and if the bugs don't get your plant and your buds don't get moldy and your light doesn't fall into your plant and you don't leave for a few days and neglect to water your plant, and so on.
You said an ounce and a half is enough to last a hardcore stoner about three months. That works out to slightly less than a half gram a day. In a legal environment a gram of good quality smoke could easily cost in the $5 to $10 dollar range, or less, even with really high taxes. That works out to about $2268 to $4536 a pound for a product that should only cost a few bucks a pound to produce. It's only going to cost in the neighborhood of $5 to $10 a gram if the taxes are really high. The hardcore stoner who averages a little less than a half gram of pot a day would spend a little less than $2.50 to $5 a day if he just bought his bought. That's not a lot of money. That's not enough for most to go to the trouble of growing their own, and prices like that would certainly not be high enough to warrant home growing from a lot of less than hardcore smokers who consume less than that. After big corporate producers and distributors get going and competition drives prices down taxes of a few dollars a gram would not be so unreasonable.
I think the federal government along with state and local governments could raise substantial tax revenues from sales taxes and excises on marijuana, and there will also be a lot of income taxes paid on money made by people working in the industry. These people would also pay property taxes on their real and personal property they purchase with their legal marijuana income and they'll pay sales taxes for goods and services they purchase with their income. There will be a lot of tax revenues.
I understand you don't like the tax angle, but taxes are a fact of life, and it's better for the government to generate tax revenues from the marijuana industry than for them to just blow billions of our money failing miserably at keeping up the ban on marijuana. I don't like taxes either, but when they legalize it they are going to tax it. They'll tax it to generate revenues and they'll tax it to keep the cost to consumers propped up so that marijuana doesn't get too much cheaper than it is today. This is just a given. Since we know they'd tax the crap out of it, there is nothing wrong with pointing out the fact that they will generate a lot of income that way, and save billions they are currently blowing to boot. This is after all our money we're talking about here. This is our money they are blowing, and we and our children are going to have to pay off all the debt they are incurring.
I agree that the government should let people make their own choices on something like this but the economic arguments are also valid, as is the argument that legalizing marijuana would seriously damage Mexican organized crime and that legalizing it would lessen the rift between a large portion of our population and law enforcement and would alleviate some of the erosion of respect for the rule of law in general that having a law that is commonly broken and has in fact been broken by more than 100 million Americans causes. The ban on marijuana does not work. It's already cheaper than beer on a per use basis in most cases. It's incredibly easily available everywhere in this country despite the ban. We are accomplishing nothing good keeping it illegal. To the contrary, we are actually causing a lot more harm than good with our laws. There are a lot of good valid reasons for making it legal and the economic reasons are certainly part of that.