Here’s my personal experience as far as the ease of weed vs alcohol. I’ve brewed beer. It’s time consuming and more than a trivial amount of work.
In my college house, several weed plants sprouted in the same place in my yard every spring. I did nothing to make this happen, it just did. Had I not chopped them down every couple of months, they would have kept growing.
To me, some work is infinitely more work than zero work.
Veggies are fairly easy to grow, they are also very cheap at the grocery store - much cheaper than tobacco. That’s why I buy instead of grow.
Also, when I decide I need a green pepper for supper, I pick it up when I go grocery shopping that week.
Whatever, I could give a shit less if it gets legalized. It’s not my thing.
TBH, I think the reason that we allow alcohol is that its so damn easy to make, and tobacco because so many people depend on it. Not becaus they are safer.
Well, before you go throwing your argument around elsewhere, consider that first, many people don’t have yards at all, second, many climates are not friendly for year-round growing, and third, that the quality of a well tended-to and selectively bred plant (such as one grown by a company that specializes) will necessarily be much higher. This all adds up to people buying weed at the store on an on-demand basis, which means tax revenue for the government.
No, the real reason alcohol and tobacco are allowed is that they’ve been around so long. Alcohol has been around practically as long as civilization, and tobacco was the first American crop. Prohibition was a failure because so many people, including influential people, were willing and able to flout the law. Marijuana was barely on anyone’s radar screen after Prohibition, when the Feds faced unemployment if they couldn’t come up with a new demon. Since it was never widespread as a legal drug, it could only become part of the counterculture.
It would be good to legalize it for private use, but I hope it’s never allowed in public. Second-hand cigarette smoke is bad enough.
I’m pretty sure cannabis was right there with tobacco as a major crop during the founding of this country. Didn’t they used to make most paper out of hemp? I always heard that the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, and that George Washington grew it.
Before we developed nylon, ropes were made of hemp fibers, but that hemp won’t get you high no matter how much you smoke. That waqs the stuff George Washington & Thomas Jefferson grew.
I used to be a major pothead, but I have enough trouble motivating myself to anywhere maximum productivity without using a drug that makes me stupid and apathetic. I think getting clean was the smartest thing I’ve done in my life.
That said, I don’t see any sane reason to put people in jail for producing, selling, posessing or using marijuana. I can see firing someone if they come into work high, or taking someone’s license for driving a car high because it fucks up your coordination and your reaction time. It made me less likely to do violence and I think that’s how it affects most people, so I don’t see it as a mitigating or contributing factor in crimes of passion or violence, unlike alcohol, cocaine or amphetamines, which can really wreck your health too.
As for the health aspects of pot smoking, inhaling smoke deep in your lungs and holding it there is really really stupid, and I don’t think anyone will ask me for a cite. I’m sure you could give yourself lung cancer by smoking the herb, but I don’t think that is enough reason to outlaw it either.
As a former drug user I’m probably more against drug use (including alcohol) than your average non-user, but I still think pot should be legal and taxed heavily.
Just curious, do all of you people who say that marijuana should be legal but “taxed heavily” believe there should be any tax or other sort of penalty on people who grow it themselves?
I’d say it’s not likely to happen in the next thirty years, but then I thought it’d be at least fifty years before America elected an African American. I’m still not optimistic. No politician has the political mandate to blow on this issue.
I know I’m one person who has no desire to grow my own no matter how easy it is. Should it be legalized, I’d be happy to buy it at the local store (preferably in a brownie). I doubt I’m alone. No matter how little work it takes, there will be a market for commercially grown stuff.
Yes. Of course. But there will also be people who want to grow their own. And all I’m saying is that these people should not be taxed or penalized in any other way, just like my grandfather doesn’t have to pay a tax on the pear tree in his backyard.
Well what would be so difficult about making selling weed in stores legal, but growing it yourself being illegal?
Very similar to how I believe it is with liquor in the US, or if I’m wrong there, that’s what it’s like in Sweden anyway, and it doesn’t work that bad. Sure you have some people making their own liquor, but the vast majority just can’t be bothered, or don’t want to break the law, so they just buy the stuff.
No, just as there’s no “sin tax” on brewing your own beer or making your own wine. However, if you sell it, you should have to pay income taxes on it, just as you would if you owned an apple orchard and sold apples.
This is why I said, in my original response, if it were legal, I wouldn’t smoke it. I’d buy it loose and bake it into brownies. A much more pleasant way of catching a buzz (just like drinking a cocktail that tastes good is a more pleasant experience than tossing back shots of Everclear, though both will get you good and drunk), and with the added benefit that I wouldn’t be drawing smoke into my lungs. There are people who say that smoking pot is not as dangerous as smoking cigarettes, because pot doesn’t contain tar or nicotine, and because people are unlikely to smoke 10-40 joints a day. While I agree with this, it’s still not a good idea to intentionally draw smoke into your lungs. In addition to all that, I could eat a brownie without making anyone around me breathe in smoke they may find offensive from a physical or olfactory standpoint.
What would be the point of making it legal to buy in stores but illegal to grow yourself?
You can buy cookies at the store but it’s not illegal to bake cookies.
You can buy vegetables at the store but it’s not illegal to grow vegetables.
I’m against laws that have no point, or that exist solely to rake in more money for the federal government, for giant corporations, or for both. And I sure as hell don’t want giant companies to have the monopoly on weed, just as I don’t want them to have the monopoly on anything.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t very clear. I meant to address legalization, not taxation. I think that there is a perception that the only people who advocate for the legalization of marajuana are users, and their public face is that of major stoners. In my opinion, this is a liability, as it gives people who are on the fence the impression that they’re being asked to support a bunch of wild frat boys and their ‘right to party’ platform.
On the train home last night, there was a pack of 20-somethings stoned out of their heads wandering up and down the platform wishing everyone a ‘Happy 4/20’. They were harmless enough, I suppose, but I don’t think they realized that they were actually damaging their own cause.
Rather like cyclists who ride the wrong way down one way streets, ride on the wrong side of the road against the flow of traffic and ride on the sidewalks whenever they feel like it advocating for a change in the traffic laws. The response “Why should I change the laws for you, when you aren’t obeying the laws in any case?” comes to mind.
Likewise with marajuana advocates - the more it looks like a bunch of potheads, the less the government and public cares, which was why I was there yesterday looking like a lawyer. I was trying to make the point that legalization is supported by more than just users.
I think taxation is going to be the carrot that moves governments forward on the issue. I’ve got no issue with paying taxes on booze or smokes, and I think that’s pretty much going to be the pattern governments look to.
Yes, it should be decriminalized, legalized, whatever. It’s appalling that anyone should be jailed or even receive the most minor criminal record over an herb, unless they’re selling to minors in schoolyards or something.
I think it’s really interesting wondering just what would happen, in terms of price and who produces it. At first I imagine the current producers would try to keep the price high, but I don’t see it staying high for long. There’d be just too much competition, whether it stays a cottage industry of sorts, or whether it goes corporate farm.
I wonder if just growing good dope would even be where it’s at ten years after legalization. It might not be enough to just grow good dope, the people making real bucks might be those innovators who come up with the coolest products made with dope. Brownies won’t cut it anymore. The discerning customer’s going to want a whole line food products they can’t make at home. Let’s face it, lots of people can buy or grow their own tomatoes, but Newman’s Own brand tomato sauces (and his whole line really) seem to sell well.
Personally, I hate absolutely everything about the buzz. Therefore, I don’t use it. I’m also not too fond of most people when they’re on it. Therefore, I don’t normally hang around with pot smokers when they’re high.
That said, I’m completely in favor of across the board recreational drug legalization. Let anyone over 21 buy whatever drugs they want, tax the snot out of it just like booze and tobacco, eliminate billions in wasteful government enforcement programs and generate billions in new revenue.
I am of two minds on the whole issue. First of all, I do smoke it every now and then, so it would be nice to not have to worry about it being illegal. On the other hand, it being illegal is part of what makes it fun.
I think what might happen is that (provided **Argent Tower’s **model is in effect) the guys who grow their own now would still grow their own, and more and more of them would set themselves up as dealers … seeing as it would be legal to do so. Which, I suppose I could get into. I’d rather go down to Rasta Dave’s house, listen to a little Floyd, hear that story about how he passed out in Amsterdam and woke up in Madrid one more time, and leave with my bag as opposed to bopping into 7-11 for a pack of Mary Jane Lites.
Related question: I’ve used it very occasionally (ie., fewer than a dozen times in my life), and I don’t know anyone who grows their own. How much land do you need to grow it?
For example, let’s say User X smokes 1 joint per day. Can he grow enough to support his habit in 1 square yard?
I only ask because I’m interested in how the economics of legalization would work- whether factory farmers would force out the little guy (as in the cigarette industry), or whether the little guys would do just fine (as in the cigar industry).