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Originally Posted by toretorden
However, something else which is not so frequently brought up is you also have to figure out how to handle cannabis in a political way. jgd suggested letting companies sell it and then government taxation. A "problem" with cannabis is that you can homegrow it and if that's tolerated, people are gonna grow it and sell it themselves, pushing down the prices and avoiding taxation. Because of this, if you're gonna say that legalizing it will be cheaper for society, you need a way of regulating it. The appearant way is to say something like "homegrowing will be illegal" or "you can only have one plant". However, people are still gonna grow it and then you need the police to handle those .. in other words, in that scenario there will still be cannabis related crimes which will cost society to deal with and the government and it's taxes are going to come head to head with homegrowers and illegal sellers. You can deal with this by saying "anything goes", but then you essentially only have the costs of legalizing cannabis in society and very few benefits.
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It's not illegal to grow your own tobacco or brew your own beer/distill your own alcohol. Where the industry begins to suffer is when people flood the market with supply and expect prices to remain constant. Cannabis, being a relatively hardy plant and easy to grow, could conceivably dominate agrarian business (much like tobacco does in parts of the United States). Indeed, the biggest problem the legalization of cannabis introduces has nothing to do with its existence as a recreational drug, but the pressure it puts on farmers. Already many farmers (and consumers who purchase corn-based products) are feeling the effects that the ethanol buzz has on crop prices -- imagine this on a much larger scale.
You definitely bring up some interesting points. What I want to see are conclusive studies which are regulated by impartial groups to determine what implications long-term cannabis use has on people. If people are ever going to throw prejudice and stereotypes aside there needs to be a push for comprehensive information about cannabis use in general. There's just too much propaganda floating around, even today, for people to recognize the difference between valuable information and government-endorsed bullsh
it.
As of right now I don't see why marijuana shouldn't be legalized, but I would rather it stem from investigative research about its effects than general popularity. As with all things that change in the universe this will certainly take time, it might be decades before it's even decriminalized, but I can't imagine any possible reason why America (and the rest of the world) can't approach cannabis legalization objectively.