One way marijuana legalization was pushed, politically, in Colorado and Washington, was with the “let’s tax this weed!” agenda. Indeed, the “tax and regulate” approach proved a convenient way for marijuana users to get non-marijuana users “on board” the legalization bandwagon, basically buying off those who were most sympathetic to the prohibitionist status quo.
And it’s the dominant way of thinking, today.
This frustrates many who wanted to return marijuana growth, distribution and usage to its pre-1937 legality, for they saw the prohibitionist program as inherently illiberal, nasty, inhumane. To these legalizers, “taxing and regulating” appears as just a ramped-down version of today’s policy.
Think Genghis Khan, who wanted to kill all Manchurians and turn northern China into a vast grazing land for horses. He was convinced not to do so for reasons of the “Laffer Curve”: he’d get more revenue by taxing Manchurians than killing them.
While taxing and regulating Manchurians was certainly better than genocide, it was still a tyrant’s prerogative.
Apply the same logic to cannabis.
Marijuana has been grown and used for eons. Trying to control or eradicate it as a noxious weed rather than tolerate it as a plant with many uses, seems unjust, not merely inadvisable. The whole “tax and regulate” notion rubs up against the home growing of the plant. Marijuana is easy to grow, but many folks want to prohibit people from growing it out-of-doors — the better to keep it out of the hands of thieving youngsters.
Call me old-fashioned, but it seems to me that thieving youngsters should be nabbed and dealt with in Andy Griffith-style justice.
But then, I missed the marijuana episode of the Andy Griffith Show.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “Backwoods Growers Still Outlawed?”
Never make a law you cannot enforce, or for other’s moral food which certainly meets that definition.
Such laws ruin the system as the create a disrespect for part of the law or, eventually have the opposite of their intended effect.
Today marijuana, and many other illicit substances are more easily available to minors than beer. Congratulation on winning the war on drugs!
Like the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs has been an abysmal failure, with half of high schoolers using pot at least occasionally. Couple more years of war and it will be the number one industry in the country. It is already the number one cash crop in several states. Seems like the only war the administration has been successful at has been the war on success.
i do not use the stuff; nebver have – got sick when on a truck where some other passengers were smoking it.
HOWEVER, i have an acquaintance who is a doctor, who treats (almost exclusively) infants and little children. he has told me that parents who smoke/smoked it during conception (and for mothers, during pregnancy0– there is often an effect ( and not a good onre) on the babies.
I don’t know anything further. I just think the war on drugs is wrong, but peopel who use it should BE HELD RESPONSIBLE, FOR THERI ACTIONS. MOST PEOPEL DON’T WANT TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO SAY THAT POT MADE THEM DO IT.
As the father of 6 — this article is absolutely, 100% wrong! They should hang from the nearest tree anyone found guilty of selling this garbage. Deterence is the best form of preventing the use of this killer!
Marijuana increases the risk of psychosis in all users, but in teens who use regularly, it increases the risk of schizaphrenia from 1% to 6%. Something about the developing brain not doing well. Unfortunately, this is not clearly spelled out on the package warning.