Ok, maybe this debate will be better.
If the United States decided to legalize Marijuana, what do you think would happen to our economy?
In my opinion I think it would kill our internal crop market and we would have to import everything because all farmers would want to grow pot because it’s more profitable (at first).
Your thoughts?
It won’t be that profitable. Pot is extremely easy to produce - much easier than, say, tobacco - and the total volume sold will not increase all that much from its current point. Prices will probably drop hard, even with, say 30% tax.
It’ll be a nice extra crop, but it’s not going to make anyone filthy rich except the few companies who can manage to sell their brand really well (think tobacco, soda, beer etc). I’d also suspect a big increase in people growing the stuff at home. An occasional smoker can get more than enough weed for a year from one or two plants with absolutely minimal effort.
Sales of home hydroponics kits would skyrocket.
Major manufacturers would fumigate to kill any seeds before sale. Someone’d get sloppy with the methyl bromide and thousands would get sick.
The Feds’d get tied up for years deciding what constitutes ‘organic’ marijuana, but unscrupulous dealers would still charge double for material with a green label.
“Nobody’s growing vegetables any more: they’re too profitable.”
Seriously, the supply-and-demand dynamic would take care of this problem.
What might (MIGHT!) happen is that some growers of corn and soybeans would stop growing corn and soybeans, switching over to pot. As a result, we’d see a small increase in the price of high-fructose corn syrup and beef.
At the same time, some of the growers of animal-feed corn would switch to growing corn for human consumption, to satisfy the increased demand for Doritos.
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I wonder if there’s even any point in trying that, AFAIK nobody’s doing that in the Netherlands anyway. And there are plenty of addresses where you can legally order cheap good seeds right now. AFAIK you’re just not currently allowed to import them to the US.
Haven’t you heard? Methyl iodide is the new methyl bromide. 
It’s easy to produce in the same way that tomatoes are easy to produce so most people won’t want to bother, especially the occasional smoker who can just go to the store twice a year.
Prices should drop because more people will get into the business and sales will be out in the open.
The US will get some tax revenue but it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the deficit.
I think a “craft pot” market would spring up, much like the current craft beer market that exists now.
Tomatoes and carrots and such are a pretty good example. You can buy them in stores, but they are cheap because they’re easy to make and because there’s competition from home gardens. Sure, most people just buy their tomatoes from the store, but that’s because they are sold so cheaply that growing your own only makes sense if you’re doing it as a hobby or to get what you think will be higher quality.
Pot grows anywhere. It’s a weed that grows quickly in all kinds of soil. Pot cultivation is a huge industry despite draconian punishments against it partly because it’s so damn easy to do that even, well, a pothead can do it.
So… Pot will either be dirt cheap and available in stores, or it will be taxed and regulation, in which case people will grow it at home.
That’s why I can see pot use being decriminalized, but pot cultivation and selling will remain illegal, or the sale being heavily regulated with home cultivation remaining illegal.
Actually, the most likely course I see is the one advocated by none other than Sarah Palin. She thinks pot should remain illegal, but the cops should not enforce the law for mere possession, and should cut way back on enforcement efforts against pot-related crimes in favor of other crimes that actually hurt people.
The money saved in law enforcement , trips through the judicial department and the money spent jailing people would also be saved. Then turf wars and violence would be diminished.
All drugs cause those problems and the corruption of our cops, lawyers and judges too. Hell drugs finance corrupt governments across the globe. I would love to see that end.
The ratings for children’s programming go up because, like, Spongebob is, like, awesome, dude!
I read that here all the time - and apparently always from US posters. I still don’t see it.
Follow along, please:
Most US states have comparatively high age limits on the sale and consumption of alcohol. (For instance, in most of Western Europe the age limit is 16 for non-spirits). There also appears to be much less of a Beer “culture” than there is in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany or the UK.
Yet, as far as I’m aware, it’s still perfectly legal in almost all US states to brew your own wine (and wine is piss-easy) or beer at home, with no draconian regulations at all.
Huge savings in the justice system. Not much affect on farming, no where near the volume of major crops. Disrupts the illegal drug distribution system. If it’s taxed, lots of new revenue. Increase in underage use of marijuana because it will be more available, like beer. Increase in prosecutions for DUI of marijuana, and problems related to determining marijuana intoxication. Increase in use of new or old voque drugs. Lots of movie and television references. Increased sales of couches and bathrobes.
When I was in high school a lot of people smoked pot because it was so much easier to get than beer.
How much more pot consumption will there be?
It might be that we’d see a lot more pot use, but still, if you can find me a guy who doesn’t know a guy who knows a guy who can get pot, then you’ve found someone who wouldn’t smoke pot even if it were legal.
Pot is easy to grow. If lots of farmers switch to pot, what happens to the price of pot? It plummets, right? And that means it’s not very profitable to grow anymore. Farmers will switch to growing pot until it’s less profitable to grow pot than other crops. It seems to me that legal pot would cost less ounce for ounce than tobacco or hops.
There’s no reason for hydroponic indoor systems with artificial light, except that pot is illegal. If it was legal it would be grown like any other plant.
Then you’ve found a guy who knows where to get JWH-018. 
Bullshit!
It takes several months to grow outdoors and can only be planted in the Spring and harvested in the Fall. If grown indoors the cycle can be reduced to a couple of months and you can begin the process whenever you want.
In addition, lots of people don’t have yards but can set up a little grow operation in a closet and then don’t have the additional worry of someone stealing their plants right before harvest.
Yes, you can increase yields by indoor growing. Same as you can for carrots and tomatoes. So why don’t commerical carrot growers grow carrots indoors? I’ll admit to sometimes seeing hydroponic tomatoes advertised. But if pot were legal you’d be just as likely to see someone steal your organic tomatoes or strawberries as your backyard cannabis. More likely, since raccoons probably won’t steal your pot. Although my wife was younger she used to have a friend whose mom sold pot. And they had a pet raccoon, and the raccoon loved to eat pot seeds and sit on the couch and watch TV. So maybe the raccoons would steal pot. OK, you got me there.
But one thing, hothouse tomatoes are notoriously fragile. Pot you dry and it keeps on the shelf for months. So there’s no need for a continuous supply of fresh pot year round, any more than there’s a need for fresh tobacco year round.
It also occurs to me that for a guy who never ever smokes pot I have seem to have a lot of opinions about pot. So yeah.
I’d love to follow along, but your point is obscure.
What does the age limit on beer and wine sale have to do with home brewing? I would assume that if you’re going to set up to brew beer in your home, you’re going to have a hard time doing it without your parent’s permission - just like you’d need to have them buy you beer outright and let you drink it at home.
None of this has anything to do with the economics of what I was talking about. Let me clarify:
Tobacco is a good example of this. Black markets in tobacco spring up all over the place. The native bands in Canada almost came into armed conflict with the government over their tobacco production and sale. But most people can’t grow their own tobacco because it has to be processed in special ways to get the right flavors, and because people tend to smoke a lot of it so they’d have to grow a lot of it. Pot is not like this. A couple of plants can keep an average user in pot indefinitely, and the only preparation is to remove the leaves and let them dry out.
Now, the state could simply say pot is legal, period. Grow it, sell it, whatever. If it did that, pot would become amazingly inexpensive. But then they wouldn’t make any money off it.
Read my post again. I didn’t say anything about yields.
Nor did I say anything about pests although caterpillars and mold are a big problem with outdoor grows.
Wrong again. Pot does get stale. In any event you still have failed to address a single one of my points.
I’ll try to be more clear. The advantages of indoor growing are:
-Much shorter growth cycles.
-No worries about access to an outdoor area of your own.
-Growth cycles can start whenever you want and are not limited to a few week window.
Care to try again?