marijuana, revisited

I tried pot once. It had no effect on me that I could tell. But neither does caffeine have an effect on me. Alcohol and cigs on the other hand bother the hell out of me.

So sayth the druggie ....

All drugs are beneficial in some cases .

I would suggest that they should be regulated by each state in much the way alcohol is regulated. We certainly don't need federal regulation.

I'm sure that for a time there would still be an illegal drug trade, particularly if legalization is left to each state, but it won't be anything close, in scale, to what it is now.

States will get as much tax revenue as they can from drug sales, but not so much that they will drive consumers to the black-market. The price differential would have to be really quite high for people to task a risk on breaking the law, product quality, and consorting with criminals in seedy locales.

In addition, imagine the money that will be spent on marketing the products. People are suckers for ad campaigns and the black market won't be able to compete on that front.

I suspect that some drugs will take much longer to legalize than others and some may resist legalization for decades to come.

Clearly, Pot is the first in line, but legalizing pot alone will not eliminate the negative impact of legal prohibition. There will still be a lot of money to be made on cocaine, heroin, meth, prescription pain-killers etc.

I think though that by legalizing some version of each drug, the market for the most extreme will reduce considerably. I don't think there will be many new users of Crack if less addictive drugs, including cocaine, were available for roughly the same price as illegal Crack.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe the alcohol industry depends upon the addictive quality of it's product the way the tobacco industry does.

If a pill were created tomorrow that eliminated the possibility of alcoholism, I don't think the alcohol industry would suffer all that much.

Its hard to imagine that entrepreneurs within the new industry of legal drugs wouldn't be ultra-sensitive to the addiction issue, and would avoid any opportunity to encourage their critics on that score. As a result, the Legal Drug industry might even spend a fair share of it enormous profits on developing some way to counter/avoid addiction.

Imagine how much more heroin could be legally sold if people weren't concerned about becoming addicted? Addiction naturally powers the illegal drug trade, but I just dont think it will be seen by the Legal Drug Trade as
economic fuel, and at all worth trying to exploit.

Remove physical addiction from drug use and the market explodes while much of the criticism is muted.

It's not as simple as that Finn. There's only X dollars being spent every week and those whose products are what they are being spent on now are, near enough, the entrenched interests. And any money spent on a new thing is taken away from all the other things. Legalising weed is another slicing of the cake. And it's so cheap to produce. And regular use tends to cause people to be a bit intractable to discipline. Which means that the disciplinarians need to be non-users and we all know what assholes they are. Never having been pie-eyed they don't understand those who are. So they set up a NOZMO KING heresy like the tee-totallers have. Which represents the entrenched interests which became entrenched by imposing discipline on the workforce. And they have some well tested arguments at their disposal.

One state might legalise it for some short term advantage but that would go if all states did the same. Unless it was because it grew the best. But there is Afghanistan and other places to contend with and shipping costs at next to nothing per buzz. Like Virginia with tobacco and Kent with hops. And many other drugs are the same. Ceylon for tea, Brazil for coffee and the Champagne region of France for the bubbly. People whisper that they have some Lebanese.

I'm against legalisation because I think it will cost more.

Actually, the slice of the cake argument might not matter if everybody gets it free by growing their own and it's just as good as any other.

And a very important aspect of this is that Media wouldn't be able to advertise it because it's smoking so they will not want money being spent on dope.

Wrong

Cycloptichorn

Oh yeah!!

At least your assertions are efficient Cyclo. Which is the main thing.

Why do you think it was banned and all that effort and treasure expended in trying to enforce the ban?

I spent the amount of time rebutting your argument as was warranted by the initial quality it was presented.



To keep cotton prices high, and to expand federal control over the individual states. And because many people profit tremendously off of both the ban and the enforcement process.

Cycloptichorn

That was less efficient Cyclo. 19 words to say the same thing you did earlier with one is degeneration.



Well--why has ice-cream not been banned? Or laughing.

Slobbering Barney and Ron Paul

Try it 3 or 4 more times.