Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
One theory I've heard is that pot is fairly easy to grow & process. If legal, a certain pct. of people would doubtless make it their intoxicant of choice instead of alchohol. If home-grown, it is tax-free, whereas booze is taxed at around a 50% rate.
So legalization of MJ could cost the gov't billions in alcohol tax revenue.
The reason pot is illegal is racial. Go read the history of pot in the US. In the 1930s it was Blacks and Hispanics using pot so the white majority made it illegal.
HAHAHAHAHA! That's the first time I ever heard such a preposterous theory. You should be a comedian.
The reason pot is illegal is racial. Go read the history of pot in the US. In the 1930s it was Blacks and Hispanics using pot so the white majority made it illegal.
Really?!! is this possibly true? It sure didn't take us long to discover it, too and claim it as our own. by "us" I do mean us middle-class, sorta spoiled White kids.
That main reasons likely that it's not legal is because big pharma makes a killing at selling the medical marijuana. It's heavily regulated, and the profit margins are huge.
The second is it's a cash cow for local municipalities. I'm sure one of the most common arrests are for small amount marijuana possession which can lead to huge fines (cash for the municipality) and community service (free labor)
With it legal, big pharma would lose a major cash cow as well as the cities and states.
It all comes down to the $$$
I wasn't under the impression the pharma, like Merck, had anything to do with the medical marijuana business.
Cotton Industry, Paper Industry, Pharma Industry, Oil Industry, Tobacco Industry, Private Prison Industry (CCA for one) and probably a couple others. The is a crapload of money and plenty of Lobbyist against legalization
HAHAHAHAHA! That's the first time I ever heard such a preposterous theory. You should be a comedian.
It's no theory, but true. The propaganda put out against marijuana to get it banned was a totally disgusting farce, and not a laughing matter:
'
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”
“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”
“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”
'
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”
“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing”
“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”
“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”
The biggest reason are the kind of people who are smoking pot. Historically, other than immigrant Mexicans, pot was a drug of choice for nonconforming crowds that were labeled as a threat to American way of life and Western civilization itself (jazz musicians, hippies and "envirowhackos" come to my mind). Pot is harmless. Thus, using draconian drug laws to black mark potentially troublesome and non-conforming element of society could be really handy from the social control stand point. Think about all those pot smoking undesirables infiltrating corporations and government undetected by HR managers.
The drug cartels are bankrolling those opposed to legalization and the lobbyists who represent the opposition.
[legalization would hit the profits of both the cartels and the legal drug, i.e. alcohol/tobacco, providers]
This is exactly it, when they tried to legalize pot in CA many people running medical marijuana dispensaries spoke out against it. I wonder why, hmm... $$$
All the people making money off selling pot oppose legalization because it would dip into their profits. So pot smokers and pot sellers are actually at odds with each other over legalization.
Could I just say for the record that when I examine the implications of taking the road to legalization, we are quite fortunate that it has not come to fruition.
Wrote the following on another forum about 9 months ago. reposting here as it''s relevant to the discussion:
On legalization of pot you have to look pragmatically at the intended consequences levied by state and federal governments and the resulting unintended consequences. Then decide whether the end result leave us better or worse off.
Intended consequences:
· Federal task team/ committee needs to be established to determine how pot will be procured, the safety of such (quality and distribution), and set limits as to quantities that a single entity may be allow to purchase/ consume.
· Must identify any pre-existing conditions in population where an entity would be restricted from use.
· Additional Federal and State employees needed to manage oversight of distribution/ regulation
· Bloated spending in program management that far exceeds tax revenue generated (yes, IMO this is an intended consequence of the FED/ State gub'ment)
Unintended consequences:
· Since some people will want but would not be able to receive legal pot (mental/ physical health risk, minors, no funds, person exceeds max allocation of personal use), some could hope to capitalize on fulfilling the needs of the have not’s, THERE WILL STILL BE AN ENORMOUS BLACK MARKET DEMAND FOR GETTING YOUR HANDS ON SOME GOOD CHIT.
· Now consider that any opportunist that wishes to obtain excess product destined for black market profit knows full and well that the corner drug store is chock full of pharmaceutical grade weed...
· Drug stores invest in fortressing locations, which drive up prices
· Regardless, profiteers may be willing to take a risk at engaging/ confronting obstacles between them and the weed.
· How safe will you feel picking up condoms and KY at the corner drug store knowing there's increased potential for armed robbery?
· Truckers, how safe would you feel transporting/ unloading weed knowing you could be jacked by weed thieves (of course they already transport controlled substances but we're adding another element of risk to that)
· And once the Feds and States have their claws in, how would we distinguish between gov’t issued vs. home cultivated product? (Remember gov’t issued weed will become controlled and regulated, meaning any home cultivation for personal use or sale would be in effect an uncontrolled substance). I’d imagine we’d be headed toward the Feds tagging their product with a genetic marker to distinguish it from street weed (homegrown) and mandate that all levels of law enforcement purchase and utilize 100’s of 1,000 ‘single-use test kits’ at $175.00 each to validate whether someone ‘holding’ possesses genetically marked (legal) vs. the uncontrolled variant. The markered holder walks while the un-markered holder is fined or prosecuted.
· Sounds like more, not less police activity to me ...
All said and done I think we're much better off with a casual sub-culture of illegal weed use...
Fiscal Cost:
Understood that there's a very diverse list of countries that have either legalized or decriminalized pot so I'm not sure how to begin to review each and apply to acceptance within our cultural and practical standards. This did however inspire me to do a little digging and toss out a quick synopsis to see where we are now in California (medical marijuana program) and where we could be with a nationwide implementation of legalization.
California:
Population - 39 MM
New and Existing Cancer patients - about 2MM
Est. Cancer patients that would smoke weed if the opportunity presents - let's be aggressive and say 50% or 1MM
So it's safe to (generously) say that the following figures aide or benefit directly roughly 2.5 % of California's population. I'll also be generous and say that some of the 97.5 % of the population may benefit indirectly with a 'feel good' factor knowing that 2.5 % have a Government controlled and mandated path to find a means to their end...
CA 2008-09 thru 2011-12 budget appropriations for said program (didn't go thru the whole budget for a total dollar amount but here are some rough percentages)
· Expenses have increased roughly 70% to manage the program (3 year span)
· CA is already borrowing money to fund the program (effective from the 2009 budget onward – so they needed to borrow funds to manage this tiny program before they were even into the second year of it).
· The money borrowed has doubled year over year
· In Oakland taxes required to be paid on medicinal weed went up over 1,200 % in 2008.
Now let’s project this model to a nationwide adoption of legal use not just for medicinal purposes, but for everyone.
EST. Nationwide use:
· 6% use regularly
· 10% in the last year
· 41% have tried it in their lifetime
Again let's be generous and say that 25% of all adults would use casually or regularly (Count me in ) . Compared to the 2.5% of medicinal users in CAs population, you would multiply the increased spending, borrowing and taxation by 10 (to accommodate est. 25% of the CA population) Keep in mind that this estimate 25% of casual users are already generally accommodated to a degree by ease of obtainability and low risk of currently illegal product in casual use today.
That's just California; now multiply that by 50 for the Nation. We're talking about a spending explosion of geometric proportions over the long term....
So in the words of Anthony Hopkins 'Joe Black' when addressing Death (Pitt) 'Multiply that by 1,000 and you still won't have any idea of what I'm talking about'
That being said, what is better for the Nation from an economic and budgetary perspective in the long haul? Maintain status quo or go balls deep with all of the above? Conclusion:
The best case scenario for the general public would be to classify small quantity possession and cultivation for personal use as a non-enforceable offense (DUI being an obvious exception and yes I’m aware of the difficulty in identifying recent use levels). Unfortunately I can't see this happening as a shift toward non-enforcement would jeopardize funding for the Dept of Agriculture, FDA, FED and State funds for local and border law enforcement....
Personally I'd love to self cultivate w/o the risk of losing my children to social services; therefore I can't consider going that route.
Last edited by AKA Bubbleup; 02-02-2012 at 09:50 AM..
Reason: sp.
It amazes me how fast people are to jump on others when they have no clue what they are talking about.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
by "us" I do mean us middle-class, sorta spoiled White kids. 
