I’ve been puzzling over the initiative to legalize
marijuana. Well, more accurately, I’ve been puzzling over the implementation of
the legalization of marijuana.
I keep asking how they are going to the get the drug dealers
to sign up for a license to sell marijuana, and to take a huge pay cut. I
suppose the lack of eventual jail time might be a motivator.
But I would think that the drug dealers might not be too
happy about the possibility of legalization because now they will have to sell
a lot of marijuana to make the same amount of money…and probably buy a license,
and charge/pay taxes on their sales, and be liable for income tax on the now-documented sales
of their product.
Not to mention, they will likely have to become farmers if
they are going to profit from it at all. Hard work.
Somehow, I just don’t picture most drug dealers making the
transition. And so far I haven’t seen any interviews on how they feel about the initiative.
{snicker, snicker}
I have to say that I don’t follow the reasoning of the
backers of this initiative…They always begin their promos by saying that years
of enforcement of marijuana laws have not reduced the number of users…Like this
plan is going to do that! The premise of the plan is to increase the number of users.
If you legalize, you widen the market, you bring the price
down – and more users (or more usage) is needed to make a profit.
That just might mean more DUI’s, and the costs associated
with that…some much worse than monetary.
Of course, the proponents’ biggest justification is that the
dealers are making all the money now, and why shouldn’t the state get some of
that money? After all, the state needs money badly…and this business is already
successfully running out there, just waiting to be exploited accessed.
So, again, the end justifies the means, especially when the
end is money.
But I still don’t get how this is good for the drug dealers,
and how they are going to get them to buy into it…Some of them are willing to
risk death to do what they do now. I don’t think they are just waiting to be
freed into a life of legitimacy…I suppose the marijuana dealers will move up
the chain into the profitable drugs, and leave the mary-jane to the dispensary
types.
And then, in a few years, there will be an initative to
legalize crack.
