“The purpose of the industry is not tax revenues. Taxes are a given though. The government taxes everything. They regulate everything too and regulation costs money. People who choose to partake in marijuana should bear the costs of that regulation. The way it is now the government blows billions of dollars a year of our money trying in vain to enforce the ban on marijuana. Those who smoke marijuana aren’t paying any of that except for the tiny minority who are fined, and their arrests and the prosecution of their cases probably costs more than the fines they pay.
And having a legal industry is not “creating” an industry. There is already a massive marijuana industry. It’s just an illegal industry run largely by organized crime instead of a legal one run by tax paying law abiding Americans, an industry run by the bad guys instead of the good guys. We wouldn’t be creating an industry if we legalized production and sales. We’d be taking this massive and highly profitable industry away from the bad guys.”
By legalizing personal use and cultivation, you shift the illegal activity to a legal one, and more importantly localize supply negating the need for other sources. Creating a “government regulated industry” when you can simply endow people with a personal right and get out of the way is misguided. BTW, a similar bad guy argument is also used for the tax code, that we catch the “bad guys” through tax evasion and therefore must keep the convoluted tax code.
“I never said that. All I’m saying is that we’d end up with the same types of regulations we’d have on other agricultural products meant for human consumption. As it is they’ll discover these big grows by Mexican organized crime in our national forests and find all sorts of pesticides and whatnot that are not made to be used on plants intended for human consumption. Some pot probably would be certified organic, and people who choose organic product would probably pay a premium for that. I don’t think the government should require organic pot though. Commercial marijuana producers should have the same sorts of standards required of them that other producers of products meant for human consumption have.”
Oh great, let’s recreate our flawed agricultural system for a previously illegal crop, you’re batting a thousand buddy. Will we subsidize it too? We need personal rights and personal responsibility with government simply protecting those rights, not more government control and bigger government. You either believe in these tenets or you don’t.
“Why do you object to having a commercial marijuana industry so much if you do not care if people grow their own and smoke it? What you are proposing is still big government. They’re still going to be busting anyone carrying pot. They’re still going to have to be out there making sure people aren’t growing more than they need for their own personal use. They’re still going to be busting the majority of pot smokers who will just buy from the black market. We’re still going to be putting a lot of people in prison. All of this takes up the time of our police, our jails, our court systems. It’s all very expensive and it is all very much “big government.”
I’m not proposing big government at all. I’m proposing personal rights and responsibility. Marijuana possession arrests would disappear taking pressure off the legal system, foreign and domestic demand would drop and law enforcement could focus their efforts on harder drug interdiction with a smaller budget. We have current laws that are being enforced, but the focus will change dramatically. There is a distinction already made between personal use and intent to distribute. Empower people with rights and create local demand and local supply.
“You are making that up. I’ve been to the Netherlands four times. Most of them are fine with their drug policies. The marijuana polices haven’t changed their culture. They’re still the same pragmatic and tolerant people. They’d have the drugs whether they had their current policies or not, just like we have them. They know that.”
Not making anything up. They changed the number of cafes and their proximity to schools for a reason. Drugs have definitely had an impact on their culture as drug use has risen. Anyone with half a brain can see that there is a clear drug culture in Amsterdam. I’ve lived with people from Holland and the majority of them are hard working people who want nothing to do with the drug culture. As cool as you may think Amsterdam is, it’s not something we want here in this country.
“Where has this ever happened? It was legal to possess it in your home and grow your own in Alaska for years, yet they still had a thriving black market. Anywhere people can grow their own they still have a thriving black market. It takes months to grow pot. It’s not so easy. It’s not so easy to have vegetable gardens either and only a very small minority vegetable eaters have those. Only a small minority of pot smokers will grow their own. It would be bigger than the small minority who grow their own in this country now, but it’s still going to be a small minority. There are several places in the world where it is allowed now, or has been decriminalized and the cops don’t bother people who do it. In every instance only a small minority of pot smokers actually grow their own, and that’s exactly what what happen if we legalized growing a few plants for personal use here.”
Legalization reduces illegal activity, that’s a fact. BTW, cigarettes are legal and there is a black market for cigarettes, same with alcohol. Again, you’re using the lazy defense, people won’t do it, so let’s accommodate them. At the very least, foreign demand would be replaced by local grow houses, which is preferable to foreign sources. However, we can make the laws stronger against distribution. The people I know who smoke, would grow their own. You sound a little like a gay marriage proponent. It’s not enough to have a right to a civil union, you want it to be endorsed by the state as a legal enterprise equal to other commercial endeavors.
I think it would probably cut into the big business of marijuana selling by organized crime some, both because people would be sharing what they grow, and because many would be selling it as long as the prices stay high.
“The high demand will remain. If local suppliers can supply that demand there won’t be so much demand for pot brought in from other places. You are dreaming though if you think there won’t be marijuana selling going on. A small percentage of pot smokers will grow it. The rest will mooch pot from those who grow it whenever they can and they’ll buy it went they can’t get it free, and they’ll pay good money for it too, especially if it’s good. We’ll have a lot more indoor grown product on the market, and there will still be pot dealers who either get their supply from several homegrowers producing only small amounts, or just buy from a regular source that will probably be supplying them pot from the Mexicans or some other organization that produces and distributes it on a larger scale. And people will still buy Mexican, because it’s cheap. Prices of the potent indoor grown stuff will drop some because so much will be being grown, and we’ll just have a thriving black market with the same low grade Mexican and more of the potent stuff at better prices than we see today”.
Whether demand stays high or not doesn’t matter, what matters is that local supply satisfies that demand so that there is no demand for Mexican drug cartels’ product and we can get away from the war on drugs. Strengthen laws against selling and distribution and people will grow their own. They’ve been given what they want, the right to smoke it legally. Will people share? Sure, but law enforcement can focus its efforts in the right place and we can relieve pressure on our system; which we all want.
“All you have here is a concept, and it is flawed.”
Giving people personal rights predicated on personal responsibility is never flawed. This is Free Republic by the way.
This argument is pointless. Legalizing possession and allowing people to grow a few plants would be better than what we have now. It would allow more freedom. It would cut into the black market some and would hurt organized crime some because production and sales would become more localized negating some of the need for product brought in from somewhere else. It would help with some of the problems. It wouldn’t work like you think it would, but there is no convincing you of that and it’s not worth it for me to continue to try.