To legalize or not to legalize...

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.