FETCHER.

If someone wants to smoke marijuana they'll do it reguardless of wither its legal or not. As much as people think its bad for you it depends on the person. My brothers been smoking for about 12 years and his head isn't pickled yet I have a mate who's a paranoid wreck of a boy due to weed. Nobody has ever died from marijuana use alone either which I think the US government needs to take into consideration.

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My Journal.
Last.Fm if your interested...

Mr November

Here's what I imagine would happen if you legalized marijuana in the US:

Business:
The same people who have been producing medicinal marijuana would continue to grow and would probably increase their production a considerable amount to accommodate the gigantic market that would now be open to them.

Those who had been growing for the illegal market would either continue to sell their product illegally, would give up, or would go to the trouble of becoming or merging with legitimate business (filing taxes, being legally accountable for their product etc). Because there's a cost to becoming a legitimate business, I would imagine that only a minority of the current black market growers would choose the last route.

Existing medicinal growers would probably see investment in their industry, or similar industries might expand into marijuana to take advantage and fill the demand for legal weed.

For the Consumer:
A black market for marijuana would continue, and prices would fall as it would become much easier to grow and distribute even illegally. The black market for marijuana would probably look a lot like the market for illegal cigarettes - only probably larger.

Provided that the market for legal marijuana was keeping up to demand and had enough competition, the legal stuff probably would cost around $13-$20/gram - it would be much higher quality - well grown, regulated, and safe (not laced with anything).

It may become possible to buy your own marijuana plants at certain stores and growing your own might just become legal. It depends on how they go about legalizing it.

For Law Enforcement
With marijuana legalized a considerable chunk of the soft drug market wouldn't need the same degree/kind of policing. Policing marijuana would be much more like policing alcohol and cigarettes (aka don't drink while you're high, don't smoke marijuana within Xnumber of feet of a building or whatever - it would probably still be illegal to smoke weed in public too).

Just like after they stopped the prohibition of alcohol, we would see the crime industry take a hit too. I'm not saying that marijuana sales has the same kind of big black market business behind it that the rum runners did, but I'm pretty sure the effects would be significant.


And the concept of making things legal to reduce crime is perfectly sound. Its better to make something legal and regulated than it is to make it illegal and out of control given that it isn't something really bad like killing people or impaired driving.

blastingas10

I believe Obama has been answering some more questions from youtube recently, and his administration continues to ignore the legalization questions, even though it's the most popular question.

Mr November

There's a republican nominee election doing on right now...

Engine

Interestingly, after I stopped smoking weed recreationally I found that I care very little about this political issue

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Like an arrow,
I was only passing through.

FRED HALE SR.

Fascinating.

Engine

It really is. I mean, I used to care so much .. what happened?

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Like an arrow,
I was only passing through.

FRED HALE SR.

Lack of quality? Its legal here in Cali as i'm on the medicine. I'm ripping the benefits daily, so to speak.

Engine

Yeah, it's pretty much already legal for those who really benefit from it medicinally and also those who just wanna smoke up (by having "back pain" or whatever) if they live in the right state.
My non-smoker opinion is that the only things that should change is to eliminate the potential for jailing casual users (which has mostly already happened) and it would also be nice to let them grow a certain amount of their own stuff no matter where they live.

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Like an arrow,
I was only passing through.

blastingas10

That's the problem. People who don't smoke just don't give a damn. So this violation of peoples rights continues. I quit smoking too but I still care about this subject because it's just wrong that people are allowed to Smoke tobacco and drink alcohol, but they aren't supposed to smoke weed, even though it's less harmful than the other two.