Quote:
Originally Posted by sperry
I dunno. I'm not interested in smoking weed in the least bit... yet I'd love to see it legalized and taxed. The income from weed taxes, plus the reduced cost of arresting, prosecuting, and jailing weed offenders would be a huge boon for the gov't. Hell, if CA did it, they could probably fix their budget issues. But if NV did it first, we'd make a *ton* of money from all the Californians coming to buy. Granted there would be a ton of smoked out hippies everywhere while it was novel, but the tax revenue would make up for that IMO. I'd much rather have a regulated, state sponsored, state taxed, pot industry than a state income tax, which is the road we're on with the gambling industry taking such a big hit lately.
Plus, in the long run, legalized weed should result in reduced crime, and reduced use of harder drugs, since the only reason weed was a "gateway" drug was because you had to buy it from a drug dealer who'd offer you harder shit on the side.
IMO, legal weed makes economic and social sense. It's kind of a no-brainer. We just need all the people that were brainwashed by the refer madness campaigns in the 50's to die off or get out of the gov't.
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This. I'm the same as you - never gonna try it, but I really have no idea why it is outlawed when you can buy all the hard liquor you want. Taxation of it would be fantastic.
The problem is mostly a de-regulation issue rather than popular opinion - I bet popular opinion says to legalize it. Getting the gov't to go back on something that large, that justifies a metric a$$-load of law enforcement spending and takes up wayyyy to much of the legal industry, will be very hard to do. Gov't as an organism doesn't want to stop spending at all, even if there is nothing left to do but raise taxes.