Thread: Legalizing Mary-Jane Yes or No?

Ok I havent been paying attention to this thread lately, but I was looking at a similar thread on another forum lately, and saw a good question.

If weed is legalized, do you think the cartels in South America will really just stop bringing it into the USA? You think they would just give up on making that much money? IMO, they would continue to do it, and would probably be able to make the same amount of money, because Id be willing to bet the Govt would charge alot for the regulated stuff.

Originally Posted by Anonymous D

Ok I havent been paying attention to this thread lately, but I was looking at a similar thread on another forum lately, and saw a good question.

If weed is legalized, do you think the cartels in South America will really just stop bringing it into the USA? You think they would just give up on making that much money? IMO, they would continue to do it, and would probably be able to make the same amount of money, because Id be willing to bet the Govt would charge alot for the regulated stuff.

Uhhh, with all due respect, this is a fantastically crappy argument. Firstly, the idea that "the Govt would charge a lot for the regulated stuff" seems to presume that legalized marijuana production would be in the hands of the government, which is not realistic. The government won't set the price, the big agri-business corporations (plus smaller producers of course) that grow and sell the stuff will set the price. I don't think we're about to see the US government setting up state-run marijuana farms. Certainly government regulation and taxes would factor into the price (just as they do with tobacco and liquor and, to a lesser degree, many other consumables), but it's pretty absurd to suggest that these factors would drive the prices so high that the current drug cartels would still want to keep selling even with all the massive disadvantages they would have in competition with legal agribiz (do the cartels bother trying to smuggle tobacco into the country? No; why not?). Right now, marijuana costs roughly $500-4000 per pound, depending on quality and location (e.g. prices are lower along the Mexican border). That's utterly absurd for an agricultural product; tobacco, by comparison, costs like $10-50 per pound at the retail end (barring extremes for very high-quality product). There's no way that even extremely intensive regulation could ever push legalized weed prices high enough for weed smuggling to continue to be a money-maker for the cartels (for instance, even if such regulation jacked up weed prices ten times higher than tobacco prices, which is quite unreasonable in it's own right, the cartels would only be able to make a small fraction of what they currently make by smuggling it in). And even if that sort of regulatory price influence was remotely plausible, the government would have a clear incentive to avoid creating it, since one of the main reasons to legalize drugs is to reduce the associated crime.

EDIT: Plus the cartels get most of their revenue from cocaine and heroin anyhow, not weed.

Originally Posted by Syme

EDIT: There also appears to be a fairly good argument that Marinol lacks some of the beneficial therapeutic effects of "natural" marijuana because "natural" marijuana may derive it's effects not just from THC itself, but from other compounds it contains such as cannibichromene and cannabidiol, which are not present in Marinol. Cannabidiol, for instance, is part of what makes marijuana a useful drug in the treatment for MS; so Marinol is not as useful as natural marijuana for MS sufferers.

This is what I was talking about before but david has a thick skull.

"There are really no other medications that have the same mechanisms of action as marijuana. Dronabinol (Marinol) is available by prescription in capsules, but has the distinct disadvantage of containing only synthetic delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) which is only one of many therapeutically beneficial cannabinoids in the natural plant. Interestingly, it is the most psychoactive of the cannabinoids and is the one that the Federal government allows to be prescribed!

Cannabinoids are now known to have the capacity for neuromodulation, via direct, receptor-based mechanisms, at numerous levels within the nervous system. These provide therapeutic properties that may be applicable to the treatment of neurological disorders, including anti-oxidative, neuroprotective effects, analgesia, anti-inflammatory actions, immunomodulation, modulation of glial cells and tumor growth regulation. Beyond that, the cannabinoids have also been shown to be remarkably safe with no potential for overdose."

edit: Syme I agree with you on almost everything you said except for your edit. Cartels do not make most of their money from coke and heroin, most of it comes from marijuana. I have heard people say anywhere between 60-85% of the money comes from marijuana. Also marijuana can get up to 6000+ a pound on the east coast for high quality.