The case for a domestic marijuana industry

[newusername 10+ year member]

There are a number of threads you can almost guarantee I'll be in (anything remotely scientific, political, religious, or sports related). Cannabis is a favourite of mine because there is so much misinformation. Also, I really like hot-button issues. My posting habits make it sound like I'm high 24/7, but I prefer smaller less frequent usage as it's a method of expanding consciousness to me, and sometimes a valuable anti-depressant.

 

[mazzasec 5,000+ posts]

There are a number of threads you can almost guarantee I'll be in (anything remotely scientific, political, religious, or sports related). Cannabis is a favourite of mine because there is so much misinformation. Also, I really like hot-button issues. My posting habits make it sound like I'm high 24/7, but I prefer smaller less frequent usage as it's a method of expanding consciousness to me, and sometimes a valuable anti-depressant.

I like your post on cannabis because your the only person Toasted1, Faulkton, Duece1212 listen to

 

[newusername 10+ year member]

I assure you that none of the CT members listen to me. When they're posting in these threads, they are trying to get you guys to say or act stupid. 9 times out of 10, they are trolling (and I know this) but I post seriously to ensure that anyone reading the thread will get accurate information regardless.

 

[tyler_fitz 10+ year member]

at the very least they should legalize hemp production.

 

[duece212 5,000+ posts]

hippies.....dirty stinky hippies

 

[Rashaddd 5,000+ posts]

its actually not that hard, and the quality can be just as good or better. growing your own would save you alot of money if you smoke alot, instead of buying it for probably $50+ an eighth from a store.

If it was a legalized industry it would cost nowhere near 50 an eighth unless it was some insanely enhanced strand that could get you high from smelling it or some shit

prices would come wayyy the fvck down for the average smoker, as of right now, the smoker is paying for the risk that the high-medium-and low level dealers are taking along the way to get it to them.

 

[Rashaddd 5,000+ posts]

There are a number of threads you can almost guarantee I'll be in (anything remotely scientific, political, religious, or sports related). Cannabis is a favourite of mine because there is so much misinformation. Also, I really like hot-button issues. My posting habits make it sound like I'm high 24/7, but I prefer smaller less frequent usage as it's a method of expanding consciousness to me, and sometimes a valuable anti-depressant.

word

 

[wu36ca 10+ year member]

If it was a legalized industry it would cost nowhere near 50 an eighth unless it was some insanely enhanced strand that could get you high from smelling it or some shit
prices would come wayyy the fvck down for the average smoker, as of right now, the smoker is paying for the risk that the high-medium-and low level dealers are taking along the way to get it to them.

Initially it will probably be somewhat expensive because the taxes on it will be stupid high. That may change. This is all conjecture though. I think initially it will be cheaper than street stuff, but not by too much.

 

[Rashaddd 5,000+ posts]

Initially it will probably be somewhat expensive because the taxes on it will be stupid high. That may change. This is all conjecture though. I think initially it will be cheaper than street stuff, but not by too much.

Possibly, but keep in mind that at the top of the current chain, growers sell at a per-gram rate not even 1/5th of what the end user pays typically. With actual companies massproducing in warehouses (much more efficiently and on a larger scale than any current growers do), that current price will probably be cut by more than half, and then on top of that, distributors will not be marking it up anywhere near as much, and you will probably end with a product that costs the same to the end user as it currently does to the highest dealers, if even that. Then, like you said, factor in tax, which I thought I read they are saying 50/oz, or in other words maybe an extra 50%

I think it's more than safe to say the cost to the average consumer will be tremendously decreased, especially in areas where it's not easy to get good weed and prices are currently very high

round here I can get good for 150-200/oz, about half what the dime and dub buyers are paying, after legalization and factoring in taxes, I think dime and dub users can expect to pay less than that 150/oz for good weed.

 

[perfecxionX 10+ year member]

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13237193&source=hptextfeature

edited:

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and ************ to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.

What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.

By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.

A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?

 

[tyler_fitz 10+ year member]

round here I can get good for 150-200/oz, about half what the dime and dub buyers are paying, after legalization and factoring in taxes, I think dime and dub users can expect to pay less than that 150/oz for good weed.

hook a brotha up, its $300-350 over here

 

[perfecxionX 10+ year member]

how about other drugs? opiates? cocaine? hallucinogens?

 

[wu36ca 10+ year member]

I don't like the idea of legalizing everything, but I think the legalization of bud could possibly help reduce use of harder stuff.

 

[newusername 10+ year member]

how about other drugs? opiates? cocaine? hallucinogens?

Should they be legalized and regulated? Yes, for all the same reasons we've already discussed.

 

[mazdakid 5,000+ posts]

hook a brotha up, its $300-350 over here

yup here too, sometime 400. so hopefully price goes down a good bit at a store.