Speaking Bluntly.

[captainsblog]

As noted here last week, following the original note about it after the 2004 elections, it's clear that last week's vote totals give President Obama a mandate for change. At the same time, we've got a massive problem on our hands known as the "fiscal cliff," which requires either massive unacceptable budget cuts or almost as massive, just as unacceptable, increases in tax rates to get things balanced.

Unless, of course, we can come up with a totally new way of both raising revenue and cutting expenses that is largely voluntary and admittedly bold.  In at least two Election Night results, I submit, we got our answer:

Don't just decriminalize the ganja. Legalize it, regulate it, and tax the living stems and seeds out of it.

Officially, President Obama is against this. Go read the figures and the reasons on the White House site:

Marijuana use is harmful and should be discouraged.  They cite, among other things, "respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and impaired cognitive and immune system functioning." Well, duh.  You don't get high before an imminent need for high motor performance, and the whole idea is to impair cognitive functioning. 

The remaining medical negatives can be controlled by controlling access and quantity, certainly more so than the completely unregulated use of alcohol and tobacco have ever been.

Legalization would lower price, thereby increasing use.  Not if you tax the shit out of the shit, it won't. And it's disingenuous at best to suggest that the hippie culture, historically among the poorest and cheapest among us, will suddenly find the evil weed more attractive because the price of a hit just went down by a fiver or two.

Tax revenue would be offset by higher social costs.  Which ones, other than the limited ones we have now? The site cites a discrepancy between the $15 billion-ish revenue from alchol excise taxes and the $185 billion of allegedly annual "alcohol-related costs" for health care (hippie lettuce doesn't rot the liver), criminal justice (criminals are easier to catch and less violent when caught when high than they are when they're drunk) and "lost productivity" (shit, let's just criminalize Facebook while we're at it).

Legalization would further burden the criminal justice system.  Yeah, just as legalizing consenting-adult sex has brought a steady stream of criminals into the system buying dangerous kinky sex toys and increased hospitalization of BDSM participants. Bullcookies.  Again, comparisons to the completely unregulated vice of alcohol is misleading, since the government can (and, no argument here, should) completely regulate access to the drug through existing medical-pharmaceutical channels with zero tolerance for offenders in any way taking illegal advantage of the new-found legality.

Legalization would do little, if anything, to curb drug violence.  This one's especially silly. The argument is that drug cartels will "simply undercut legal prices to keep their market share." Which is why the Mafia continues to focus on numbers running as one of its major sources of income now that almost every state offers it legally- says, well, no expert ever.  The Cali's and Kosha Brotherhoods will move their attention to the truly illegal and addictive product and leave the quick and legal high for the government to promote, protect and defend.

By setting taxes high enough (see what I did there?) to make a difference, I suspect the Treasury could easily double the $15 billion coming from alcohol. Since there's no current legal competition in the private sector for product (although it's been rumored for decades that Big Tobacco holds the trademarks to such shit as "Acapulco Gold"), if parts of our public lands got turned over to growing and harvesting, the government could get in on the rest of the profit chain, as well.  If an environmentalist doesn't want "drill baby drill" going on in a wildlife refuge, why not "grow baby grow" with something as organic as a little hemp? And just eliminating all the ticky-tack ticketing (in the lenient states) and imprisonment costs would reduce the deficit as well.

It would also make the 2016 campaign (which, for all intents and purposes, has already begun) a lot easier to bear.

Comments

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

A) Yes.

B) One word - Prohibition.

C) Legalize and regulate everything. With the money you save on the long-lost "War On Drugs" -- with one tenth of the money they're now spending -- you can set up addiction treatment programs everywhere.

D) I figure, regulate, price, and tax it as beer.

E) Nabisco would love you to pieces.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

F) On the other hand, Toshiba loves YOU for the new monitor you likely just made me buy from spit-taking on that last one.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Agreed, agreed.

[targaff.livejournal.com]

There is absolutely no measure in existence by which legalization could result in the criminal justice system being burdened any more than it is currently by the war on drugs. The ST here highlighted that there have been 241,000 arrests in the last 25 years costing just shy of $306 million in administrative costs alone (i.e. not including the cost of incarceration). It's not a priority in King County, but the rest of the state is certainly making up for it - the very places that are the first to complain about too much gummint.

I hate marijuana; it's just not pleasant in the same way as tobacco's not pleasant. But it's flat out cretinous to argue that there's any justification in not legalising it.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

Genius!!