One of the reasons opponents of marijuana legalization state most often is that legalization would make it more accessible to our children. I believe they are 180 degrees off on this point.
In the current situation, there are tens of thousands (millions?) of pushers who make their living selling grass to both children and adults. If ganja were treated exactly like alcohol and tobacco, the financial incentive to sell it would be taken away. When was the last time you were approached by a moon-shiner offering to sell you some “rhumatis medicine”?
The taxes generated on alcohol sales in the US in 2006 were $5.4 billion [1]. In an ABC News report, they estimated that the value of marijuana produced in this country in 2006 at almost $40 billion. A 10% tax would generate $4 billion each year. [2]
If even a tiny fraction of the tax were spent on drug eduction and treatment, it would almost certainly have a far greater effect on keeping our kids off of cannabis, out of the criminal justice system and in school.
We could possibly save as much as $10 billion each year in law enforcement costs if they quit checking ash trays for roaches and spent more time tracking down murders. Since 1992, there have been roughly 6 million persons arrested for marijuana crimes, 87% for simple possession. How many billions are we spending each year to have the police chase potheads, have the courts try them and have the prisons house them? [3]
Estimates are that 100,000 deaths per year are due to the effects of alcohol, 17,602 due to drunk driving crashes in 2006, 60% of homicides, 40% of accidental deaths and huge numbers of health related deaths. [4] Cancer.org reports that tobacco is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths and is the leading, preventable cause of premature deaths. [5] The US Surgeon General warns about marijuana effects on “perception and skilled performance” but fails to give any estimate of the death toll. [6] In contrast they list 443,000 deaths from tobacco. [7] If people were dropping dead by the dozen from pot, they would be screaming about it.
How big a bite would be taken out of organized crime's profits if one of their largest income streams were suddenly truncated? How many little kids are told each year that their parent won't be home for 10 years because the cops found pot plants growing in the garden?
Isn't it time we stopped squandering untold billions on cops, courts and prisons, failing to scoop up billions in tax revenues and ruining millions of lives by enforcing laws even more stupid than the 1919 prohibition on alcohol?
My $0.02,
BrianP
[1]: www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=399
[2]: abcnews.go.com/business/story?id=2735017&page=1
[3]: skeptically.org/recdrugs/id8.html
[4]: wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_alcohol_related_deaths_occur_each_year
[5]: www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_10_2X_Cigarette_Smoking.asp?sitearea=PED
Comments (7)
Marijuana should be legalized to benefit the wonderful George Soros.
George Soros spent a lot of money to get Obama elected.
By legalizing marijuana Soros will be able to become the worlds major supplier of legal marijuana.
Please discuss this in an existing topic.
That value number of $40 billion would drop precipitously were marijuana be made legal, as much of the current price is due to the premium that must be paid to smugglers, Mexican law enforcement officials, etc.
Parents need to be more responsible for their children. They shouldn't allow them to drink alcohol or smoke pot. Yet... kids are doing meth, smoking pot, drinking booze and I hear heroine has made a come back. The FACT is that the war on drugs has cost billions and caused huge drug cartels to rise up. How to stop them? Legalize marijuana, regulate it and tax it.
Never used it, but some of my adult children claim that they have. Many of my former employees also have used if casually. I have never seen any case where it was as dangerous as alcohol. It should be put on the open market and taxed.
http://www.illuminati-news.com/marijuana-conspiracy.htm
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html
Good stuff here
From Police Chief Norm Stamper, comes this:
http://bit.ly/gYEPG
I think it’s just time that we recognize that we’re just being very very foolish and we’re spending huge sums of money on law enforcement in general but on marijuana in particular.
If we really want to take care of the drug problem, we will regulate the drug. We will legalize it so that we can regulate it and then we can control it. We can’t do that otherwise. We have spent one trillion dollars prosecuting the drug war since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971. Another 69 billion dollars a year down the rathole, and what do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available today, at lower prices and higher levels of potency than in the history of the drug war.