I just spent an hour and fifteen minutes engaged in a class discussion about whether or not the government should be allowed to make drugs illegal on the basis of regulating our health. Questions were posed such as "should the government then make food that makes us fat illegal?" But what if that's not the issue? The evidence indicates to me that perhaps health and public safety have absolutely nothing to do with drug laws in the United States. Our economy is capitalist and our government cares more about the economy than anything else (often because they are compelled to). Drugs are illegal because their very illegality helps to generate classism, a capitalist society and politics as usual.
Name a single commodity that the government does not ensure a result in personal profit on. That is the very purpose of taxes, it is the purpose of many of the laws that have been constructed in this nation including drug laws. The base price for cigarettes is ridiculously low in contrast to the amount the consumer pays for them after taxes. Additionally, the government receives literally millions of dollars a year from tobacco interest groups and corporations and the GDP increases rather significantly from the sale of tobacco products. Hence, cigarettes are legal.
So why is it that marijuana is illegal? Marijuana is distributed via independent dealers, not corporations in the pockets of the government that have to pay corporate income taxes. The black market does not contribute to the annual GDP and the government cannot tax the consumer for its purchase because it is being sold through the means of underground sellers.
Making drugs illegal ensures that the government is capable of generating profit off of them as well. Arrest a upper middle class who uses marijuana, make him pay court fines and so on and the capital has been collected. Arrest a poor person with inadequate representation in the judicial system and you can send them to jail or prison (depending on the mandatory minimum).
How are prisons beneficial to the government? At the very least, in two ways. First, they are fundamental economic stimulants. The expansion of prisons yields the growth of several sectors in the economy—law enforcement, legal, construction, private security and prison operation companies, etc. Secondly, unemployment statistics are manipulated to the benefit of a nation with prisons. Economic disparity is evident in drug laws and conviction rates, let alone the prison population. The urban poor are often heavily unemployed. Warehousing them in prisons removes them from the economic definition of the unemployed, the basis of which requires an individual is actively seeking employment. For example, under Bill Clinton's employment boom, blacks were unaffected. If one were to take the number of blacks in prison into account, the black unemployment rate in the United States would have been near a horrific 40%
If the government cared about our health then why does the crack versus powder cocaine disparity exist? I challenge the notion that they do. Instead, I think this disparity exists because the elite in the government do not wish to prosecute their fellow aristocratic members of society, they want to target the individuals who cannot afford adequate defense, who will almost certainly contribute to the economy directly through their arrests.
The American Cancer Society: "Cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined."
That's quite a bit of killing. Sort of a detrimental health effect, wouldn't you say? Still, no Surgeon General's warning on marijuana. And by the way, Amsterdam isn't rampant with gang crimes. The correlation between drugs and violence that conservatives try so desperately to make does not exist. The war on drugs, like all wars, is a war on the already oppressed, the disadvantaged and those without arms that could possibly combat their opponents.
Wow you really opened my mind on this so called war against drugs. I for one am a firm beliver that marijuana's bennifits outway the health "risks". besides who is to decide whats good for us and whats not? have we as humans in america lost the ability to make any type of decision for ourselves without being influenced by commercials or people who call themselves "proffesionals"? i know i only live by what i see and hear for myself, and i never take prescribed "medication" that would see my body to become dependent on these fake medicines. let alone illegal manufactured drug concoctions.~}chatiks si chatiks{~
You know, the solution to the government not getting profit from the sale of marijuana is to make it legal so places that sell cigarettes can also sell pot. Charge a ridiculous amount for it and you've got it made.
~C
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It keeps it relatively clean.
Look at what's in a cigarette now vs what was in it in the 1700s when people grew tobacco themselves. Formaldahyde, arsenic, and ammonia are just a few of the four thousand additives in cigarettes added by the big tobacco companies, most of which are known to cause cancer.
Pot, on the other hand, doesn't have to be cut with anything. Hell, it's a weed, anyone can grow it in pretty much any condition. Don't trust local suppliers? Grow your own.
If you think about it, the Black Market is the free market economy at its best.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
"It keeps it relatively clean."
Not in Europe it doesn't. In fact, illegality has resulted in the flooding of the market with adulterated weed. This adulteration involved the sand blasting of weed with microscopic silicone beads, sand, glass and other as yet unidentified substances. The sand blasting technique makes sure that the material being infused into the buds penetrates right to the core.
This is done by unscrupulous suppliers, mainly in Holland as far as I know, to increase weight. It also makes the weed look really crystal heavy to the eye. But a simple lick-test reveals hard sand-like grit, not crystals.
In France, the government has conducted studies on seized cannabis shipments and has concluded that the dominant adulterant is made up of microscopic silicone beads. Some studies say that the average size of these beads is too large to enter the lungs, others have contested this, saying that a percentage of the beads are small enough to sink into the lungs and remain there, posing the threat of potentially serious health complications later on.
"Don't trust local suppliers? Grow your own."
I second that, but there are a lot of risks involved in doing that; far more than are associated with picking up a bag of weed from a dealer. Thanks to nonsensical drug laws, you are safer putting your cash into the coffers of organized crime cartels than you are growing a couple of plants in your wardrobe. You'd seriously think that even a baseline idiot would realise that botany is a far healthier activity for the average stoner than bankrolling violent criminal organisations.
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
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TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™
This adulteration involved the sand blasting of weed with microscopic silicone beads, sand, glass and other as yet unidentified substances.
I don't know how hot pot burns, but if I remember right, silicone's not a savory thing to burn.
Thanks to nonsensical drug laws...
That's half the problem, unfortunately. And I should have posted this when I had more time to elaborate more on my mindset, since you are right about not only the laws, but the zeal with which the government enforces drug laws on all but the biggest crime bosses. Nothing like having SWAT show up on your doorstep ready to use you for target practice because you're growing a couple of weed plants in your basement.
My husband actually brought up a good idea. Make it legal to have, but not to sell on a large scale (or at all). Like I said before, the issue with big corporations getting their hands on things of this nature is that they tend to cut it with things that make your list of European pot additives look like candy (note the list I linked earlier). While unscrupulous sellers would still tend to cut things into it, that would be the point of banning selling, but not growing.
It's unlikely to get implemented, but it's a nice idea.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
If you think about it, the Black Market is the free market economy at its best.
The black market is the result of free market economics trying to function despite prohibitions on the free market.
The prohibition results in a dramatic artificial constriction of supply and the result is that the equilibrium price where the small quanity suplied is in balance with the amount demanded is MUCH higher then would happen in a real free market.
As you said yourself, weed is easy to grow. Without the prohibition their would be vastly more marijuana supplied to the market and the equilibrium price where the amount demanded was in balance with the amount supplied would be much lower. THAT would be the free market economy at its best.
Marijuana is easier to grow than alfalfa. I can buy alfalfa in the free market for about $100 a ton (2000 lbs) vs marijuana at about $1000 a pound (1/2000th of a ton) in the black market. I think the former is considerably better than the latter.
You're thinking of the Black Market as a by-product of prohibitions in the "white" market, as opposed to a market in and of itself.
A pure Free Market is one that is unconstrained by regulations. The only "regulation" is the market itself. Demand and buyer preference determine both prices and supply.
The Black Market isn't controlled by regulations. It's the purest example of Free Market one can get, economically speaking (yes, legally speaking, the Black Market isn't legal, however, I'm talking straight economics here, not law).
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
Black Market is better controlled than any legal official instance.
They have simple rules which work pretty well, starting at the root too far out.
Someone always pays...
If drugs ever become legal, someone will pay!
It’s interesting, because drugs are very likely to become legal in the future.
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
The marijuana market is subject to a prohibition which severely constrains supply and slightly dampens demand. The market for marijuana is so heavily "regulated" that a person can go to jail for participating in it as either a seller or a buyer. It is not even close to an example of a free market in either the legal or the economic sense.
Further, at least in my experience which was 30 years ago, the price is set more as a matter of tradition then something that fluctuates in response to supply and demand. For example when I was in school an ounce of Columbian was typically worth $40 whether there was actually any available to buy or not. And a bag of excellent California sinsemilla was worth about $160 and this price varied little whether the market was flush with the current harvest or you were in a long dry spell with none available. Most dealers in my day used the 10:6 rule. If you bought a pound of Columbian for $400 you sold 10 ounce bags for $40 to get your money back and the other 6 ounces were either profit or pleasure. The market actually did not behave at all like a pure supply/demand driven model.
If it was the truly the ultimate Free Market which you are claiming that it is marijuana would be dramatically cheaper. Using the math I posted above and assuming that my assumption about pot being easier to grow than alfafa, it would be 20,000 times cheaper than today's price. Imagine buying marijuana for $100 per ton. Actually it might not be that much cheaper because decent marijuana requires a fair amount of hand processing to manicure it where as alfalfa hay just needs to be baled. Of course there is a lot more demand for alfafa then there is for marijuana because cows eat about 30 lbs per day where as a pothead is really hardpressed to consume an ounce of good pot. It is hard to know which would end up cheaper.
If I was just talking about just the marijuana market, I wouldn't have said Black Market.
That said, when you start talking about drugs (in this case, your examples with pot) that appear to be part of something more organized (importing of pot from other countries, or even states), then you are going to have price fixing (to see more about price fixing in the "white market," check out the class action lawsuit against ATI and nVidia).
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
True, then they could generate profit AND regulate health. That's actually the two main ideas behind the cigarette tax.
Right on Man! This is what i have been thinking the entire time. Everything the government does is about money, and laws that are supposed to "keep us more healthy" are no different. The tax on legal marijuana would be great, but the amount of money you get from the legalization of it is astonishing when you factor in the jobs created, creating income for people who buy things, and the whole economic cycle gets stronger.
However, the only problem is that with the people who you put in jail, how many are non criminals (IE drug offenders) that could work as well as the people who have to guard them. These people are taken away from the jobs, so they don't even break even when it comes to the percentage of employment.
However, this has to be taken with a grain of sand, for although the job to job ratio may not be even, the caliber jobs that are held do vary between the two choices. The way the government has it now, the cops, and prison prison guards, and the parts of the government/police force that deals with drugs alone (IE the DEA), they would get a far higher salary (generally speaking of course) than your average pot smoking teenager (i don't have proof to back up that they are the majority, but this is my best guess)
You have some extraordinary arguments here and I completely agree with you. The ultimate interest of the state in all it's schemes is an economical interest and nothing more. If there are people to sacrifice for this then so be it, in the end we will all enjoy prosper economy sectors. Too bad we can't talk about prosperity in these current times so that make me question: what's the use of all these schemes for drugs?
Graham, drug abuse treatment center
I agree with the State profit motive premise. Much of what the state does is motivated by money.
About 2 months ago a friend of mine had a truck stolen by one of his employees. It was an older ranch truck maybe worth a $2000. In the back of the truck was a couple of thousand dollars worth of tools and a 4-wheeler ATV worth maybe $4000. They caught the guy a couple of weeks later in an adjoining state when he tried to sell the truck. My friend got his truck back but everything else had been sold and spent. The County Attorney refused to press charges for this grand larceny because of the cost of extradition, court and prison so the perpetrator basically got away with the crime scott-free. But if anybody commits a DUI in this town the full force of the law comes raining down on them. The fines start at about $1000 and then there are court costs and the defense attorney makes a cool $600 for practically no work. And then the alcohol abuse counseling center makes about $500 because treatment is part of the sentence. It is a regular industry. The cops stake out the bars and I would not be surprised if they had arrest quotas.
The only laws that get enforced in my town are the ones that generate revenue for the City and the County.
But I agree with some of the other posters that the government could take in more revenue and spend less on enforcement by regulating and taxing drugs. This would be a little hard with marijuana because it is so easy to grow but it would work well with cocaine which must be imported from another country and therefore could be easily regulated with licensed importers and other controls.
There are more reasons related to why (marijuana) is illegal.
Consciousness
Many amongst ignore the fact it can (depending of the individual) open up or trigger consciousness awareness of those who are in a questioning mode.
Because it can bring one all the answers he/she was looking for.
Any political or religious environment which we know today (in the West), doesn’t like this idea, they hate it!
They prefer everyone to stay in that unique position, one in which they think and assume they are free, while in fact they are not.
This unique position is one in the herd between many, a dictating one which is supported by all who carry no such thing as awareness, they are numb!
Proper education is needed in order to keep the abusive morons amongst from acting stupid, like if they were free!
Because of morons, no longer this day mushrooms are being sold in Amsterdam!
Guess what will be next in line,…
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm