With all the talk about the bad economy and how to fix it, I have always thought that if you legalized it in all its forms, that it would generate a lot of jobs and a lot of money.
If you break cannabis down into three categories: medicinal, recreational and commercial, how much money and how many jobs would it potentially produce in each different category?
Commercial = ?
Recreational = ?
Medicinal = ?
I do not understand the category of “commercial”. Wouldn’t one grow pot as a commercial product for medicinal and recreational use? I’m failing to think of a third use.
I would assume “commercial” is comprised of the people who grow, tend and harvest the weed.
Recreational would compel people to stay at home, play video games and eat junk food. Not exactly the biggest boon to the economy, unless you’re a night shift clerk at 7-11.
Medicinal might be good for the distributors (doctors, even here in Canada push pills a lot harder than I’ve ever seen any dope dealer push grass. Dope dealers don’t even push grass. Grass sells itself!) but it’s not going to get cancer patients back into the workforce. There’s a large gulf between “I can cross the room without puking!” to “I should get a job!”
FWIW I am pro-legalization. I just don’t think much changes, except the direction the money flows in. And around here the first thing politicians do with a windfall is give themselves a raise.
But the growers and distributors would be essentially the same for the other two categories. And the other two categories are consumers, which fuels the industry with money but doesn’t create any jobs per se. There won’t be people whose job it is to consume pot (though I would appply for it), nor will there be people in doctor’s offices or pharmacies whose sole job is to hand out pot. I would assume that medicinal pot would be just another item at a pharmacy.
Probably the amount of product sold in the US wouldn’t change signiicantly, but more would be locally produced and there would be taxes paid both on the income produced during the production and distribution process and on the purchase of the product.
A quick google finds this article from 1994.
Thinking about it though …
Some of that tax revenue would have to be diverted to regulating the market for quality and safety. OTOH a larger amount could be saved that is currently used in prosecuting the war against this drug. About half of all arrests for drug abuse involve marijuana and half of those are for possession alone. That’s a lot of dollars spent on police work, interdiction, and on an extremely overstressed prison system. I am fairly sure that the balance would be a net cost savings but it would be interested in seeing some real numbers if any one has access to them. My WAG is that the bigger economic benefit would not be in the substantial tax revenues generated (per the above cite at least $2.5 billion and possibly many times that) and the local legal jobs created but in the monies currently expended by various governmental levels saved.
Commercially produced cannabis would probably be more cheaply produced by fewer laborers thanks to the economies of scale. All of the individual, private manufacturers currently in business would find themselves non-competitive and be forced out of business.
Saving money (in the short term) always equates to putting people out of work. During an economic downturn, saving money and spending thriftily are exactly what you don’t want.
I’m pretty sure that the production costs of cannabis are already pretty damn low. The distribution network costs some, mainly because of the number of middlemen involved, each marking up the price on the product substantially commensurate with the risk involved. None of that income is currently taxed albeit some gets reinvested into the legit economy. Better though to replace those jobs with a slightly fewer number of jobs which have taxable incomes. In addition legal distribution channels would include some monies spent on marketing and product differentiation, which also creates jobs.
Indeed it is even possible that there may be less of a call for a few new prisons to be constructed at taxpayer expense (and a loss of those jobs) and a reduction of total hours at various levels of the interdiction/arrest/prosecution/prison staff chain - perhaps lost jobs there. Somehow though I do not think of those jobs as the best way to stimulate the economy and finding ways to spend tax dollars a bit more thriftily is exactly what we want at this point of the economic cycle. Especially for many state budgets - perhaps cutting some of those hours could help preserve a few teachers’ hours and a few other cuts currently being made that actually are better investments in our society’s future than more police and prison guards enforcing laws that are arguably more harm than good.