its best to just legalize all drugs and supply it at a reduced price. that way you are taking money away from drug dealers and organized crime and able to regulate the market.
You forgot the terrorists. Worldwide, heroin is an $18 billion annual market. It all goes into the treasury of the Taliban
because the shit-for-brains Western governments declared it illegal.
My parents lived through Prohibition in Chicago and saw the same thing. The Mafia was a laughable bunch of small-time hoodlums until the government so kindly shifted one of the human race's most popular commodities to the black market. They've done the same thing again with recreational drugs, only this time instead of turning the streets of Chicago into a war zone, they've turned the entire nation of Mexico into one. Gangsters in Mexico kill
nine thousand people every year.
If a failed government policy resulted in the deaths of nine thousand Americans every year, we would burn down the fucking Capitol Building. But it's only Mexicans, so nobody gives a shit.
. . . . besides how many people do you know right now that drinks moonshine?
Hey, give credit where credit is due. If it hadn't been for the moonshine runners hopping up their cars to get away from the cops, there would be no NASCAR! No other country races those bizarre quasi-stock cars.
And don't forget that wonderful old folk song, "Good Old Mountain Dew," and the hit that made George Jones a star, "White Lightning." Those are both about moonshine.
I would much rather see adicts getting there drugs from a pharmicist where the purity is regulated (rather than going up and down like a yoyo and killing people) and its "cut" with sugar and other pharmacutical grade inhert substances rather than batery acid.
The same thing happened during Prohibition. Amateur distillers (often working outdoors in the dark) didn't have the same quality assurance as commercial operations, and they would sometimes end up with methanol in their product, which caused blindness and even death.
At least a couple of decades ago they introduced property forfeiture as a possible consequence of growing marijuana on your own land here in California.
Asset forfeiture has been a windfall for state and local cops. The beauty of it is that the accused
person may be acquitted and set free, but that does not result in him getting his
assets back. It's a separate process that can drag on for years and in many cases never be resolved. The goddamn motherfucking cops (yes I despise all cops, I'm The Last Hippie) target people for arrest based on the quantity and value of the property they can confiscate, rather than whether they really have a good case against them.
Now we have gardens on state and federal land, tended and guarded by Mexican nationals. This has made hiking in certain forests more dangerous than it should be, and there are the problems of the waste, and environmental degradation.
You don't have to tell me: I live in Humboldt County, one of the three in the "Emerald Triangle." (When I'm not working in D.C. anyway.) In the 1970s the growers would come to the county board meetings and participate like good citizens, and every year they'd submit tax returns with one line listing "Other Income: $250,000" and write a nice big check to the government.
There are still locals in the growing business, but a lot of it has indeed been taken over by Mexican nationals. The locals had their network and they weren't about to give it up, so they just read up on hydroponics and set up indoor operations: taking us full circle back to the O.P.
With marijuana achieving quasi legal status in so many places, (including here) full decriminalization seems more and more to be the solution. And as bad as the budget is, California does not have the money to waste law enforcement's resources on this.
Speaking of the state budget, how about the fabulous new source of tax revenue! You don't think for a minute that they're not going to slap a 25% or 50% tax on it, do you?
Another little-known fact about Prohibition is the circumstances of its repeal. FDR championed the relegalization of alcohol, but not for any moral reasons. The income tax in those days was nowhere near its current confiscatory level. The taxes on alcohol increased federal revenue by something like 40 percent!
There are going to be some places, such as Humboldt and Mendocino county, where the already dismal economic situation will be made even worse by this. But I still think it will be a net positive.
Don't worry about us. Humboldt County is the new retirement mecca with its 75 degree summer days and 35 degree winter nights. The new generation of retirees has no intention of sweltering in Florida like their parents. Every time I go home to Eureka it seems like they have built two new retirement homes. Elder care is the booming new industry, jobs for the children of the lumberjacks who chain-sawed themselves into unemployment.
