Let me first get this out of the way: I have never, nor intend to smoke pot, marijuana, cigarettes, or any other substance that is smoked.
There is currently a big push among younger people to legalize drugs. While they may be right when they say that prohibition doesn’t work, and medical marijuana is useful, their latest argument that legalizing marijuana so you can tax it will save the economy. This is just downright silly. If you think that one product is going to save the economy, you’re insane.
Making marijuana legal would have some good effects: you can tax it, you spend less money on cops to enforce it, etc. While it would have a few positive affects, what would you do with those that have already been convicted with possession of illegal substances like marijuana? Would you just let them go? Hardened by prison, do you think it’s safe to just let them out of jail? How do you think they would feel towards law enforcement after they were released?
In a lot of ways it makes sense to legalize marijuana, but in a lot of ways it makes sense to keep prohibition active. I don’t support the use of narcotics, I think it’s a waste of time and money, but I’ll leave the decision on whether to legalize it or not up to those who have done more research on it.
#1 by Cubd - April 26th, 2009 at 15:37
If you look at its history, it is very unfortunate that marijuana was ever made illegal in the first place. Basically, hemp (other name for the marijuana plant) had so many uses that certain industries felt threatened and began pushing for criminalization. A couple of these uses were an alternative form of paper (lower cost than traditional paper made from trees) and fuel (imagine your car running on hemp gasoline).
So instead of trying to compete, the industries lobbied for marijuana to become illegal and through much propaganda (blaming pot on Mexican murders, Reefer Madness, etc.) eventually forced the government to outlaw hemp. This is a good read: http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/pot/blunderof37.html
TL;DR: Industries felt threatened by the usefulness of the hemp plant so they lied to people and made it illegal.
While legalizing marijuana will not save the economy alone, it certainly would not hurt. We spend about $70 billion/year on the war on drugs. Imagine now reversing this trend and making an entire industry out of the legalization of marijuana (think an industry similar to alcohol and tobacco). If you think about it, there is an insane amount of jobs that would be created (advertising, quality control, growing, selling, etc.). Think about how many jobs involved in alcohol and tobacco there are. If we created this industry and taxed and regulated it, it would actually decrease availability to teens (pretty much any teen right now can buy pot from a dealer if he knows the right people). It is a lot harder, however for that same teen to get a hold of alcohol simply because it is so strictly regulated. Another argument that naive people tend to bring up is that everyone would just grow their own, but if it is not illegal to grow your own food, why hasn’t the agricultural industry gone out of business? Simply put, most people don’t have the time/interest/resources to grow their own food.
Another reason to legalize marijuana is that it would take a lot of power away from the drug cartels. The cartels use marijuana as a major funding resource. If we taxed and regulated the product, it would either force them out of business or force them to become a legitimate business in which millions of new jobs would be created and billions of dollars in taxes would be collected from those businesses.
I see absolutely no reason for prohibition to continue and I think we should look to our past to decide how we should deal with those currently in prison (what did we do to the moonshiners?). The war on drugs is over 30 years old and is a complete failure. There is a saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. After all these years, you’d think we’d wake up and decide to do something different instead of bankrupting ourselves.
Sry bro, just wanted to make sure you get at least some facts in before you call legalizing marijuana “downright silly”. Do some research on the effects of marijuana vs. alcohol or other drugs and I’m sure all the brainwashing that is still going on in school will start to wear off.
#2 by Snowy - April 26th, 2009 at 17:24
Greetings cubd,
While I do agree that alcohol, cigarettes and other substances are much more dangerous than marijuana, I don’t believe that it will be as easy to tax and regulate it. Nor do I believe that it will slow down teen possession. Regulating substances such as dipping tabacco and cigarettes, does not keep it out of teens hands any easier than if it were not regulated. If someone wants to get weed, tobacco, or anything else, they’ll get it. Doesn’t matter if it’s regulated, has an age restriction, or is down right illegal.
As far as it creating millions of new jobs, doubt it. There’s only so much supply/demand.
You’re right, prohibition doesn’t work. It didn’t work back with alcohol, and it’s not working now. The only thing that works is education. Put that $70 billion/year into our education system instead.
I’m not saying that marijuana is bad, but I’m saying to the people that think the economy would turn around just on one product is a bit silly. Could it help? Maybe. Help enough? Definitely not. Keep it illegal? No idea. Legalize it? I’ll leave that decision up to those that have done further research.