Can legalizing marijuana solve the economic crisis for the long term?

Any answers to the original question seem absent from the subsequent posts. So here goes........No.

First off, I'm the guy who says we are not in an "economic crisis". An economic change yes. Crisis? No. We are simply reaping the harvest of our mis-guided behaviors. You can't fix or "solve" the economy and anyone taking credit for doing so is full of shet. You could double the revenue any government takes in, and by the end of the fiscal year some department would need more. The "fix" will get here naturally over time. We can do certian things to help it along but it is a gradual process. A process that has thousands of contributing factors, not the least of which is our behavior.
 
It never ceases to amaze me what people will post about themselves on the internet. :smt009
 
I think it should be legalized and taxed. Sure the Feds are going to get some revenue and probably the states would have their own tax on top of that. who ever wants to smoke is going to smoke it and no laws are going to stop it. That is obvious, so why fight it when you can turn it into an advantage?

Agree that billions have been pissed off trying to stop a very mild drug, less destructive than alcohol abuse, IMO.

If it is legalized, it is more likely to reduce the crime related to its importation and sales, and I see this as the biggest argument for legalization. When was the last time you bought a bottle of bootleg Whiskey? Same thing would happen if they legalized pot.

I smoke it once in college, but I did not inhale :)
 
I personally never partake - it's just not interesting to me. But...

Do you really want the government having that much control over your lives where they tell you what you can and can't put into your own bodies? Drug laws, like all nanny laws, are devised from a bunch of lawyers sitting in a room using 'ought' language. The conversation would follow as - 'People ought not to smoke pot because I hear it makes them homicidal maniacs. OK, enact a law - pot is illegal.' 'People ought not to drive a car without a seatbelt because they might get hurt. People ought not drive a motorcycle without a helmet. People ought not drive a boat without always wearing a lifejacket. People ought not be allowed in anything greater than 2 foot seas without wearting a helmet because they might get hurt. People shouldn't have salty foods in their diet because it might cause high blood pressure leading to a heart attack.

And now you see the slippery slope - it can go on and on down that path of legislating safety to the dumb masses (you and I) but often it's misdirected. Whatever happened to personal choice that adults make? Have we regressed so far that we need some faceless beuracrat in the G to tell us what's good for us or bad for us?

Marijuana, Opium, Heroin, Alcohol etc are all substances that humans have ingested into their bodies for thousands of generations. Whether you personally agree with it or not, almost every person I know enjoys an altered state of reality every now and again and the method by which they arrived there, whether beer, Jack, or Coke is their choice to make.

By the way, assuming that you are a BO voter if you prefer the decriminalization of pot is silly. I've never seen such an abject failure in my life as I do today in our president - as a matter of fact, it is a very left wing BO-like policy to institute a war on a societal ill, i.e. war on drugs, poverty, great society, etc whose intentions are holy as hell but their actual results are miserable failures - which brings us back to his holiness, BO.

You have to step back and ask yourself, 'As a self-conscious adult, from which ills am I not smart enough/unable to protect myself against and therefore require the government to step in and protect me?'

For example, if societal safety were truly the rationale behind the war on drugs, don't you think that we'd start with the dangerous stuff first? I want anybody on here to show me a documented case of anybody dying from overdosing on pot. It's a rhetorical question, so don't bother Googling. There hasn't ever been a death from overdosing on pot, but I could point to thousands every year that die from alcohol poisoning.

Am I saying that Pot should be legal simply because alcohol is? No, but I am saying that when some poor kid rushing a fraternity kills himself from drinking too much, hey may have done so because alcohol has a misleading veil of safeness because society has given alcohol its imprimatur by not criminalizing it.

What I am saying is that no amount of laws in the world are going to keep people from making poor personal lifestyle choices. Whether that's sitting in your dorm room smoking pot instead of studying for a physics final or skipping going to the gym today because you're rafting off and drinking beer and eating hot dogs with your friends at the sand bar. It's just not possible to legislate personal responsiblity, but the G makes a HELL of a lot of money by keeping drugs illegal so don't expect that to change.

The answer is by decriminalizing drugs, you take the profit motive out of drug dealing. You'll never see turf wars that end up in violent shoot outs over who gets to sell Marlboro's on this corner or that. But if you ever make cigarettes illegal, you can rest assured that you would see a black market evolve around distribution of tobacco and bring with it all of the violent encumbrances that follow black market initiatives.

My philosophy - do whatever you good or ill you wish upon yourselves, so long in the process that you are not doing any harm to others. In my mind, an adult getting high, drunk, etc has every right to do so and until they do something that endangers me, like get behind the wheel after, they have caused me no harm.
 
I wonder how long it would take for any production to be outsourced to China after all of the current growers realized there wasn't enough money in it to make it worth their while after the taxes actually hit....
:smt021:smt021:smt021
 
I personally never partake - it's just not interesting to me. But...

Do you really want the government having that much control over your lives where they tell you what you can and can't put into your own bodies? .............

Very well said, and probably the best response to a holding tank topic I have read.
 
Very well said, and probably the best response to a holding tank topic I have read.

Bill, I'd seriously consider revisiting your definitions of standards and quality, haha. :grin:

Joking aside, thanks for the compliment - I operate from the Walter Williams and Mark Levin schools of living.

-Tim
 
I have no interest in 420 myself but I want to share an experience I had 3 weeks ago.

I went to Amsterdam for business and the vendor took me out to dinner in the Red Light District to this Asian restaraunt. Best Asian food I've ever had by the way. It blew American Asian food out of the water. Anyway, while walking to and from the spot, they have 'coffee' shops which serve no coffee at all. In fact they are 420 lounges. You physically select the 420 of your choice and they have plush couches or chairs where you can smoke and drink. I saw and smelled more 420 in the small amount of time I was there as compared to my entire life so far. What did I observe? Out of the 1000's of people smoking and drinking at the bars, I found not a single person making a disturbance. Not one person was drawing attention to themselves. Not one person was making a scene. Not a single fight. Nothing. I was amazed.

I never thought about it in the past, but after that week I pondered what would happen if they legalized it in the States. I wonder if things would change? I wonder what it would do to crime rates? Taxes? Etc.

Doug
 
It never ceases to amaze me what people will post about themselves on the internet. :smt009

You're tellin me. i found this the other day.
 
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:lol: I dont "support" Obama per se, but will wait until the 4 year term before giving a final "good job/bad job". For now, lets just say I have given the same consideration (both dem and rep) to any president we have ever had regardless of if I wanted him to win or not.

After 4 years, I can most certainly make that call.

I was just kidding ya! I didn't vote for him, not wishing everything to go bad. I can tell you I can't stand Pelosi or Reid though!

On pot, I don't know where I stand. I have 3 teenage kids so I'm a little reluctant to make it "ok" to use.
 
In my mind, an adult getting high, drunk, etc has every right to do so and until they do something that endangers me, like get behind the wheel after, they have caused me no harm.

Great post Tim. Especially the last sentence highlighted above.

The negative connotation of a typical smoker is that we want to legalize it and just go from party to party, and just sit under any tree anytime and smoke, but in reality, I would want some stiffer laws regarding unlawful usage.

If you are caught driving under the influence, then to jail you go, do not pass go. I would be fine for even saying this is not for public use. For example, you cant just go to a beach and plop down anywhere and smoke.

What I am for is the decriminalization of the purchase of small amounts for personal use, and the ability to be able to smoke anywhere in my own home without worrying about anything.
 
I was just kidding ya! I didn't vote for him, not wishing everything to go bad. I can tell you I can't stand Pelosi or Reid though!

On pot, I don't know where I stand. I have 3 teenage kids so I'm a little reluctant to make it "ok" to use.

I dont think even Pelosi can stand Pelosi :)

I understand, and it isnt something you SHOULD ok for kids. I will keep that from my kids as long as humanly possible. They will never see me smoke until they are adults.

The main point for me is that as an adult, I should be able to smoke. I dont really drink much, smoking is my "martini", which really, it is the same thing imo. I can have 3 drinks and be ripped (im a lightweight!) and be utterly borderline incoherent. I can smoke and still be able to do anything I could before I smoked (except DRIVE of course. I would never drive a car this way, obviously)
 
I have no interest in 420 myself but I want to share an experience I had 3 weeks ago.

I went to Amsterdam for business and the vendor took me out to dinner in the Red Light District to this Asian restaraunt. Best Asian food I've ever had by the way. It blew American Asian food out of the water. Anyway, while walking to and from the spot, they have 'coffee' shops which serve no coffee at all. In fact they are 420 lounges. You physically select the 420 of your choice and they have plush couches or chairs where you can smoke and drink. I saw and smelled more 420 in the small amount of time I was there as compared to my entire life so far. What did I observe? Out of the 1000's of people smoking and drinking at the bars, I found not a single person making a disturbance. Not one person was drawing attention to themselves. Not one person was making a scene. Not a single fight. Nothing. I was amazed.

I never thought about it in the past, but after that week I pondered what would happen if they legalized it in the States. I wonder if things would change? I wonder what it would do to crime rates? Taxes? Etc.

Doug

I had a good friend who I lost contact with a few years ago, but he worked in one of those places for a year when he moved there. THis was about, geez, 20 years ago?

His thoughts echoed yours almost exactly.
 
This an interesting discussion. I'm not a user and don't condone anything illegal; however with the murder and mayhem associated with the illegal aspect of pot, one "could" reflect back on prohibition and draw some parallels.

A loser is a loser no matter what their vice. Sure, I don't want some doper driving down the road next to me, or taking my daughter out, but I can apply the same thought process to an abusive drinker.
 

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