Can Marijuana Save California's Economy?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090313/us_time/08599188495600

by jaxn • 17 years ago

29 52 17 years ago

news.yahoo.com

kyochan• 17 years ago

If cigarette and other "sin" taxes indicate, no.

I am for legalization but I wish people would talk up marijuana like its some miracle drug with great health and economical benefits.

Leon• 17 years ago

Don't underestimate the power of sin taxes in relation to other states. California would be the only state with legalization and would pull interested tourists from across the country. Their market would effectively be the entire US with no legal means of competition for tax revenue.

The same thing happens with alcohol and cigarette taxation: a lot of people will cross state lines for the cheap smokes of NC or better alcohol of nearby states, if they are within proximity to the states border. This effect is particularly noticable in driving across the country and having the chance to see the businesses that exist next to state lines selling these items.

Another similar situation is that of casinos. The states that allow unfettered gambling in certain areas (table games, slots, etc.) have their casinos built in nexus points of travel near states with more conservative laws.

Rod16• 17 years ago

"The last thing we need is yet another mind-altering substance to be legalized. We have enough problems with alcohol and abuse of pharmaceutical products. Do we really need to add yet another mind-altering substance to the array?"

That's a good point. Since I am not an expert on the topic, I will abstain from commenting on how mind-altering marijuana is. However, it does seem natural to conjecture that if one smokes more pot, then one's mind will be "more altered", right? Hence, why not follow the Dutch model? This would mean:

- all shops selling marijuana would require the customers to provide some identification card / document.

- a network would connect all the marijuana shops to a central database where each person's purchase would be logged. Each person would be allowed to consume a certain quantity of marijuana per day. If one exceeded this limit, the shop would NOT be allowed to sell marijuana.

That way, one could legalize the consumption of marijuana, but impose upper bounds on how much can be consumed daily.

Of course, the shops could sell pot and not register the transaction at the database, but if caught they would be closed down. There could be a limited number of licences to sell pot per county, so that no shop would have an incentive to break the rules, as that would lead to loss of the precious licence. The downside is privacy. All marijuana sales would be logged at the database.

Would this make any sense? What do you guys think?

litewulf• 17 years ago

I believe that bartenders are not allowed to serve drinks to people that are too intoxicated.

I think one could simply apply a similar thing, perhaps with subtle social pressures to smoke marijuana in public places?

baddox• 17 years ago

Or, workplaces could still do drug testing. Since marijuana is non-toxic, the potential issues from marijuana use can be handled by employers and/or family and friends.

ruby_roo• 17 years ago

Just try it. At least once. Don't like the smoke? Have a cookie. Within 15-20 minutes, you'll be wondering why you can't get marijuana from a liquor store, taxed and regulated in a similar manner to the rest of the products they sell there (which happen to be far more harmful to you and society anyway).

Side effects from over-doing it are basically mental slowness and a lack of motivation (even this will go away if you just stop for a while). If you start sucking at your job, your suckiness should show up on your performance review and HR should handle you accordingly. Maybe you get fired. This is how an alcoholic would be handled, anyway.

There is way too much fear and over-analysis surrounding this topic. The tools to manage it are already here. Marijuana is already here, and will continue on just fine regardless of whether it is legal or not. Overachievers like Michael Phelps and Barack Obama will smoke marijuana and go on to do great things, just as they always have.

Just legalize it already so we can finally benefit from California's number one cash crop, out in the open, rather than letting the majority of the profits go into the pockets of people who very often do pose a credible threat to society and require insane amounts of tax dollars to manage.

tome2• 17 years ago

> which happen to be far more harmful to you and society anyway

Are you sure that it's not that they're more harmful precisely because they're legal?

garply2• 17 years ago

Why should a marijuana consumer be logged in a central database? Stores are required to do ID checks, but there is no database for alcohol or tobacco consumers.

Rod16• 17 years ago

True. On the other hand, some claim that THC is more mind-altering than alcohol. I don't know if it's true or not. I won't go into that.

Imagine stoned drivers losing control of their SUVs and running over little children walking out of school. This doomsday scenario could be used to argue against legalization. Of course, drunk drivers are as dangerous, and drivers high on valium are not harmless either. However, there's a cultural "problem" which leads most people to consider some drugs acceptable (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, valium) and some other drugs "evil" (e.g., marijuana).

I am not a big fan of the Dutch system of having a central database, but if it would help tame people's fears of over-consumption, then it could be a good idea. Why not devise a smart system which would assign a unique identifier to each person (think authentication instead of identification) so that people's consumption could be limited without compromising their privacy. That way, if there were a privacy breach and the data leaked to the public domain, no one's privacy would be at risk because there would be no way to map one's identifier to one's ID. Do you think this would make sense?

ewiethoff• 17 years ago

Sounds like what New York has been doing with pseudoephedrine sales for the past year or so, though I don't know whether the limit is daily, weekly, or monthly. I find the whole pseudoephedrine thing eerie, but I'm not opposed.

jerf3• 17 years ago

"Do we really need to add yet another mind-altering substance to the array?" - "That's a good point."

Actually, it's a terrible point. Three paragraphs after being informed that marijuana is a $14 billion dollar industry already, not a $14 billion dollar industry in potential but in actual fact, we get two paragraphs of people whining about "adding" pot into the mix. Adding? It's there! Like it or not.

This is why journalists get no respect from me. These guys ought to be asked how anything would be "added" to the $14 billion industry already in place. Perhaps they'd come up with some decent answer, after all, but in the meantime their argument as presented in this article is terrible.

At least the last paragraph showed some sane recognition that the horse bolted from the barn millennia ago.

Rod16• 17 years ago

Marijuana IS a mind-altering substance. Disregarding this scientific fact is potentially irresponsible. We are not even discussing policy / politics here, it's Science. And unless you are a neurologist or a pharmacologist yourself, I really do NOT believe you are qualified to argue against this. Recalling the words of wisdom my parents' old-school doctor friend used to say:

"the dose, not the substance, makes the poison" (it sounded more impressive in latin)

Thus, instead of discussing the BIG questions such as whether marijuana should be legalized or not, why not discuss the details such as how much marijuana would each citizen be allowed to consume on a daily basis without endangering others. The devil is always in the details, right?

It's true that the industry is there. But that fact alone does not mean it's OK to go ahead and legalize everything without any bounds and reason. Following that rationale, why not legalize prostitution, human trafficking and arms dealing? After all, these industries exist already, right?

mahmud• 17 years ago

I have happily lurked for a year and a half and finally created this account to say one thing: enough with the Marijuana news. This is not reddit. Please.

WRT to the article, people have been saying weird things since the economic crisis started. For a truly strange proposition read this[1] Times article where a Western banker wants the application of Islamic Sharia banking to the financial sector:

[1]http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article58...

I didn't post it when I saw it first, why? because the news paper took one fringe opinion to bait for viewership. If California passed prop-8 to deny some humans the right for marriage what makes you think it would grant others the right to consume a recreational drug? this is just one politician "planning an 'off the hook' public-relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to urban-suburban hip-hop settings." With apologies to Michael Steele :-)

ciscoriordan• 17 years ago

I agree that polarized topics like marijuana making the front page here tend to make things trend towards reddit.

However, this particular article focuses on the economic effects legalization would have on California. I think it would be a shame if informative articles like this were flagged/removed, because I think the points it raises are relevant and fascinating. If it hadn't been posted here, I'm not sure if I would have heard about it.

dangoldin• 17 years ago

I don't even read the supposed "controversial" articles any more. I will just browse through the HN comments, figure out everyone's take and biases and move on.

It's a fun little exercise.

axod• 17 years ago

Please don't let drugs become HackerNews' equivalent of Reddits' Ron Paul.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Why did I know that the top comments would be complaints about the topic?

Ok -- why as a hacker (and non-pot-consumer) am I interested?

First, entrepreneurs are always playing the angles seeing where there might be some economic traction where there was none. Obviously if pot becomes legal, there will be social changes both in California and the rest of the U.S. I could easily imagine pot-based vacation planning as a web service. Or better still, some kind of pot fanboy sites, just like we have with wine and beer drinkers. None of these business options have been on the table until now. To me this pot stuff sounds like a lot of cash on the table. Sure the growers, distributors, and governments are going to pick most of that up, but there are lots of really interesting places to tap into that cash flow.

Second, as a government-hacking project, the idea fascinates me. Will the California legislature pass this? Will Arnold (a bit of a famous pot-smoker himself) sign it? If so, does the federal government step in? What's more important, having states try new unusual tactics to keep funded or having the feds control drug policy? Will the feds step in or not? It's a long way from ignoring enforcement to having states flout the federal laws. Ever since Lincoln decided that no, states aren't all that powerful there has been this interesting power struggle between states and the federal government that the feds mostly win. Will this be an exception?

I wouldn't want to see pot stories everyday, at least pot stories that are simply "legalize pot, now!" kind of things. But stories about significant other concepts, like startup opportunities or civics, that just happen to involve pot? I'm okay with that every now and then.

liminalist• 17 years ago

They could always tax religion instead.

ojbyrne5• 17 years ago

They really should modify the tax-exempt status of churches, especially the big mega-churches that make a mint.

Can Marijuana Save California's Economy?

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