<p>To equate MJ and cigarettes is to ignore all scientific and medical evidence. Lots and lots of people die from smoking cigarettes. No one dies from MJ smoking and the reasons for that seem obvious - you don’t smoke anywhere near the amount that a tobacco smoker does, and at least for now, pot doesn’t contain a lot of chemical additives like commercially sold tobacco does. </p>
<p>In any event, MJ can easily be consumed without involving fire/smoke.</p>
<p>I believe the illegality of MJ causes exponentially more problems than legalization would. I suppose we’ll find out.</p>
<p>Many studies of the cost benefit of marijuana overlook the full cost and externalties or make false assumptions. I have seen arguments saying legalizing marijuana will generate tax revenue. If you need more tax revenue, then increase taxes on existing businesses. Letting businesses sell marijuana won’t generate as much revenue as claimed. Why would a consumer buy pot from a store, if he can grow it in his back yard for nothing? </p>
<p>Many of the economic cost of marijuana often get overlooked because they are difficult to quantify. When you diminish the capacity of a workforce, it is difficult to measure what the productivity would have been without the agent causing the reducing in productivity.</p>
<p>For the same reasons that very few people brew their own beer, make their own wine and grow their own tobacco…or grow their own food, for that matter. It’s an investment of time and energy that many do not care to make.</p>
<p>The solution isn’t to legalize bad behavior but encourage people to obey the law. There are a lot of people serving long sentences for murder. Under the logic of your argument, murder should be legalized to avoid the cost of incarcerating them.</p>
<p>Very few people are in prison for smoking pot. I am not aware of any state that makes smoking pot a felony. Selling pot, however, is often a felony.</p>
<p>That is not my argument. My argument is that the cost of punishing people for smoking pot is greater than the cost to the victim…oh wait. There isn’t a victim. We are talking about people choosing to eat/drink/smoke a substance.</p>
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<p>Actually, that’s not correct. It is, under federal law, possible to go to jail for a year for a first offense of any amount. In many states it is not hard to possess an amount considered to be enough to sell. And we are not getting into repeat offenses. Sadly, many people ARE in jail because they smoke pot, and many, many more because they grew it (even for themselves) or sold it.</p>
<p>Law exists solely to promote order. People smoking weed, IMO, causes less disorder than criminalization of possession. Murder is more disorderly than arresting murderers. Encouraging people to obey the law is only worthwhile in that it is supposed to encourage people to be orderly. If enforcing the law causes more disorder than not having the law, the law is a bad law.</p>
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<p>People generally do quit on their own. They grow up. And if they don’t, it’s not weed that stopped them from growing up.</p>
<p>So people who smoke pot arent adults?
As oppsed to those who drink alcohol?
Must be why i look so youthful!
;)</p>
<p>*Why would a consumer buy pot from a store, if he can grow it in his back yard for nothing? *
My field is horticulture & I am not interested in growing my own mmj because it sounds like a huge pita, with the lights & checking the soil comp., etc.</p>
<p>I many states, first offense of possession of a small amount of marijuana is met with a fine. That is not much more disruptive than enforcing traffic offenses. About 40 states have drug courts to help repeat drug user to help them grow up.</p>
<p>The vigorous enforcement of marijuana laws has resulted in four million arrests since the early 1980s. Owing to mandatory-minimum sentences, many of those convicted are receiving stiff prison terms, even as violent criminals are released for lack of space. The second part of a two-part article</p>