I have long advocated legalizing it. As someone said, it's not a magic bullet, but the benefits are many.
medicinal, having the proper scientists research its various areas of effectiveness and come up with actual medicines. I suspect that whatever ailment it is being sold for as by smoking it could probably be administered by a type of derivative that would be more efficient and wouldn’t be as much fun as smoking it. Don’t know if this would actually produce patentable products for Big Pharma to make money on or not, but it least it would be a boon to some degree for the people.
Recreational - When people say that the price would go down because production costs would go down are right, but the way I would address that is to keep the price per oz. pretty much the same as now (assume $200 per oz.). In return you would give the consumer an overall better end product in that it would come in all the flavors as now and more. Everything you bought would be perfectly manicured with no pieces of unnecessary stemage/little leaves, year around supply, never a drought. It would be sold from grams on up with the smaller units being charged more per unit that larger purchases.
Now, to counteract someone selling it illegally for less money I would deal with it this way: make the laws similar to the ‘moonshine laws’. By law, you would be able to grow enough for your own consumption (3-5lbs. per yr.), but would face stiff penalties for selling your own homemade ‘shine. Just like they have it for hard liquor today controlled by the ATF.
commercial - http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/popmech1.htm
NEW BILLION-DOLLAR CROP
Popular Mechanics
February, 1938
"AMERICAN farmers are promised a new cash crop with an annual value of several hundred million dollars, all because a machine has been invented which solves a problem more than 6,000 years old (decorticator/hemp thrasher)…
…it will displace imports of raw material and manufactured products produced by underpaid coolie and peasant labor and it will provide thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the land.
…It is used to produce more than 5,000 textile products, ranging from rope to fine laces, and the woody "hurds" remaining after the fiber has been removed contain more than seventy-seven per cent cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to Cellophane.
…producing fiber at a manufacturing cost of half a cent a pound, and are finding a profitable market for the rest of the stalk. Machine operators are making a good profit in competition with coolie-produced foreign fiber while paying farmers fifteen dollars a ton for hemp as it comes from the field.
…Thousands of tons of hemp hurds are used every year by one large powder company for the manufacture of dynamite and TNT. A large paper company, which has been paying more than a million dollars a year in duties on foreign-made cigarette papers, now is manufacturing these papers from American hemp grown in Minnesota. A new factory in Illinois is producing fine bond papers from hemp. The natural materials in hemp make it an economical source of pulp for any grade of paper manufactured, and the high percentage of alpha cellulose promises an unlimited supply of raw material for the thousands of cellulose products our chemists have developed.
…Our imports of foreign fabrics and fibers average about $200,000,000 per year; in raw fibers alone we imported over $50,000,000 in the first six months of 1937. All of this income can be made available for Americans.
…The paper industry offers even greater possibilities. As an industry it amounts to over $1,000,000,000 a year, and of that eighty per cent is imported. But hemp will produce every grade of paper, and government figures estimate that 10,000 acres devoted to hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average pulp land."
As you can see from the data from above, we are talking about some big, big money and significant positive impact on the economy and society.
The point is that the legal sale of cannabis, if structured properly, would create huge profit margins that would help the economy. You would save big bucks by eliminating that part of the budget of the ‘War on Drugs’. You would also free up the prison systems by releasing the small quantity user type prisoners. (which may cause more unemployment, I don’t know. Thoughts?)
The point is that alcohol is legal, and destroys more lives and livelihoods than pot ever has. I take a utilitarian view on prohibition. The thing that demonstrably does more harm is legal and freely available, while the thing that demonstrably does less harm can put you in jail.
