Pot in the media

I am not sure if this is nationwide media push but here in Dallas there has been a sudden surge in media reporting about how we are losing the war against marijuana, and a lot of it seems to be almost slightly pro-legalization in that they say there are better ways to spend money. To me this seems like a test of the political winds, and I can’t wait to see which way they blow. If the government starts talking about the evils of Mary Jane and announces a major new offensive in the War on Drugs, well the message is obvious. However, if they let it slip, or the response is tempered, that might signal a weakening in the government’s resolve to enforce the prohibition on soft drugs. Now this is a long way away from legalizing but if pot was illegal, like speeding is illegal we could spend a lot of money we currently spend on enforcing the laws against pot to enforce the laws against hard drugs and real crimes.
In addition if pot was don’t ask don’t tell legal, it drive down the prices. While most pot growers are also pot users and therefore the only violence they are prone to is severely beating a hackeysack with a bunch of other stoners, there is a group of growers that are violent. Because pot is not a compact drug like Coke or Heroin, it is hard to smuggle, so Mexican Drug Cartels have taken to growing the pot here on clandestine farms hidden on public lands. These people are the violent gun toting psychopaths who kill fishermen and hikers, as well as Federal Agents, which hardens the resolve of the government to stomp out pot. However, if the price fell because more people grew their own, the Cartels which only care about the profit would begin to move to more profitable substances.

Now if pot was made legal and hit with 10% tax assuming the usage didn’t increase at all, and the price for pot was cut in half, and the government saw no savings from reduced enforcement or incarceration the government could add $2.3 billion a year to it’s coffers, plus the states split another ~$2 billion in sales tax. Now if we consider that in many areas the tax on tobacco is >100% (in some places 200%), plus taxes on manufactures, wholesalers and retails, means that cigarettes are taxed upwards of 500%. So, the government could tax the prices of pot back up to current prices and no one would blink. The newspapers say that pot sells for $160 an ounce, so the government could pull in $100 an ounce in taxes easy by the time it reached consumers, (which would more than pay for the cost of enforcing the tax laws). Even with taxes like that, the profit is still $50 an ounce versus 6 cents an ounce for tobacco, if you don’t think Philip Morse or RJR won’t jump at the chance to make that money, or that the tobacco farmers wouldn’t till under their crops and plant pot you are wrong (tobacco is $428 in profit per acre, pot could make them $2,000 easy.) Even if pot prices collapsed falling 500%, the profit is still dollars per oz, instead of cents per pound with tobacco. (In researching this article I found fake pot selling for hundreds of dollars a pound, even completely legal stuff sells for a premium.)

With pot legalized in the UK and Canada, and several states trying to legalize, how much longer can we keep it up? One of the reasons pot is on an upswing is that now you can buy it in Canada, and the US/Canadian border is like a sieve at the tightest locations and completely open in others. If Nevada or Oregon legalizes, keeping it illegal in the rest of the country would be a futile gesture.


I am not saying legalization is the right thing, I just think that marijuana isn’t a class 1 drug like Meth or Coke. If tobacco, alcohol, and milk are regulated substances but legal perhaps the same model might work for pot too. (Yes, milk is a regulated substance, but not for the same reasons the other two are.) Hell after seeing the effects of Meth (and cheap Whiskey) on rural communities, I think pot is an outstanding substitute for those who find it necessary to live life in an altered state and will find something to achieve this task. If pot helps the Meth problem in rural America, we should consider it. Yes potheads might not make great people, but when was the last time pot made someone torture their kid to death for ruining their stash, or beat an old woman to death so they could take her social security check? Meth is so popular in small towns because it is produced locally and is therefore cheap and readily available. If these people could buy pot at the same store they bought their Copenhagen and Natural Light, then go home and “forget”, how much call for Meth would their be?

However, if pot is to remain illegal, I have a few suggestions for helping to hurt the production of marijuana. In the 70’s and 80’s the government got rid of all the wild hemp. Since pot like any other plant only puts energy into flowers, until seeds are made, and the flowers are the drug, the growers get rid of the male plants, to keep seeds from forming. The seedless drug is both higher quality and harder to track to its source. Now if wild hemp which produced no THC (the compound that makes pot a drug) was planted and the male plants left to the pollen would spread far and wide causing seed formation in all the female plants for several miles. Seeds reduce the quality and efficacy of the drug, so it could no longer command a premium. Also, since the wild hemp produced no THC the seeds from the F1 hybrid would be useless for planting a new crop, so the farmer’s seed costs would increase. Last if multiple types of wild or industrial hemp were used the seeds produced would have different fathers. So, the types and amounts of each father type found in the seeds of confiscated pot could be used to track the drug to location it was grown. Yes, they are using DNA testing to track pot now, but if all the seeds are from the Netherlands or Canada how does that help?

Speaking of DNA and pot the Dutch Universities have massive breeding and molecular genetics programs to improve marijuana. It is a science to them, like corn and cotton are to us.