Marijuana can be hard to come by. Few people are willing to risk growing it, and even fewer are willing to risk selling it. This is especially true on college campuses such as UW-Madison where people just don’t smoke weed very much. Marijuana suppliers are so rare that if even one is shut down, it deals a crippling blow to the drug’s local availability.
Does that sound wrong? It is. Pot is everywhere. The weed here in Madison could make enough brownies to feed the country of India for a year. My point is that marijuana is here to stay, legal or not.
So what happens when, say, a UW researcher is arrested for growing God’s good herb in the Biochemistry Building? The university loses a researcher, the justice system gets more paperwork, some poor dude gets his day ruined, and students keep on smoking grass. The government is not going to stop the growing, selling or usage of marijuana by criminalizing it. Economists have estimated that almost $8 billion is spent on enforcing marijuana prohibition each year. That much money could buy enough weed to end war forever. What do we get for it? Ten percent of all arrests and a microscopic impact on the availability of pot.
Let’s step into my imaginary time machine and look back at alcohol prohibition. It certainly didn’t stop anyone from drinking. Rather, people were just drinking illegally. Businesses couldn’t legally produce alcohol, so the only booze available was either homemade or not meant to be drank for such a purpose. One example is Jamaican ginger extract, or “jake.” Jake had a high concentration of alcohol, but often contained a neurotoxin that caused paralysis and even death. More popular than jake was moonshine, or homemade whiskey. Since moonshine was being produced by criminals instead of government-regulated businesses, it often was not what we would call “safe.” If made irresponsibly, moonshine could contain fatal levels of methanol. And let’s be honest, moonshiners weren’t winning any awards for safety and responsibility.
Needless to say, jake and moonshine tasted like absolute balls. Even more than whiskey today, if that’s believable. This goes to show that if people want a product, they will not be deterred by its criminalization.
Whenever a product is being bought and sold, people are making money. If the thing being traded is illegal, the people making the money are criminals. During alcohol prohibition, Al Capone built his empire smuggling alcohol. Prohibition made Capone. Aside from dangerous gangsters, the people profiting from alcohol sales were the criminals making it, the criminals working for the dangerous gangsters, and the criminals selling it.
Unlike Prohibition-era booze, there are no fatal health problems associated with marijuana. However, not all weed is grown by biochemistry researchers in labs. Pot is produced, like moonshine, without government health regulations. Also, the money from marijuana sales goes to criminals. If the green stuff was legal, that money would go to the legitimate businesses that would produce, transport, and sell it. Remember those eight billion taxpayer dollars that go to enforcing prohibition? Not only would that expense be eliminated, but the government would make money from taxes on weed.
Marijuana prohibition is futile and expensive. That is the argument I present in this piece for its legalization, though there are many others. Barring my untimely death due to a fatal opinion writing accident, I believe that weed will be legal in my lifetime. Until then, biochemistry researchers will keep getting arrested, our jails will keep filling up, the government will keep spending money, and college students will keep getting high.
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