The Plea for Weed
by Michael Rouleau on 30/04/09 at 3:56 pm
Would legalizing marijuana help the economy? Well apparently President Obama is certain it wouldn’t. On March 26th, the Obama Administration hosted the nation’s first ever, virtual town hall meeting. Via internet, millions of citizens across the country submitted questions regarding what they felt were issues of greatest importance. Through this process, Obama would appoint the most prevalent ones, revealing his stance and plan of action towards them. More so than the expected topics of unemployment, jobs, education, the war, et cetera; the nation’s most prominent question was, “would legalizing marijuana stimulate the economy?”
Where he devoted lengthy, detailed explanations to the majority of the issues presented to him, when posed this one, the most popular of all, he rudely and simply disregarded it by laughingly saying, “I don’t know what this says about our online audience?”, adding with a smile that he does not favor legalizing illicit drugs. Where some of our more conservative readers may exclaim, “good! I don’t want the leader of my country to give in to the harmful grip of drugs”, I am here to say that, “legalizing marijuana would only help the economy.”
Why am I so confident in this? It’s simple really; legalizing marijuana would bring with it a length of economic and social benefits. The informal economy is an extremely profitable and consistent billion dollar industry with marijuana being its most widely used illicit drug. If we were to “mainstream” this market, we would consequently be creating more jobs (something we could desperately use). Also, considering its abundant popularity, if legalized, our economy would greatly profit; especially if we taxed it like with cigarettes and alcohol.
Past efforts and history has shown us that no matter what we do, drugs will always exist. The only thing the War on Drugs effectively did was suck up billions of the nation’s money and fill up our prison system. What’s the sense in fighting an extremely profitable market if it will always inevitably be around? It’s about time we took advantage of the money it would produce for our currently weak economy.
Back to the prison system, this institution demands millions annually with most of its inhabitants being nonviolent drug offenders. It only makes things worse; prisons have proven to be ineffective rehabilitators and deterrents, gaining the reputations of being “crime schools” for a reason. Also, isn’t it ironic that the “best”, most powerful country in the world has the highest prison population and rates of any other developed country? Sadly, the cause of these numbers is due to our extreme, unnecessary efforts put toward controlling drugs (to an extent understandable for certain “hard” drugs, but naïve in regards to marijuana). Even if we just decriminalized marijuana, that would substantially take away from the excessive funds required by the police and correctional institutions put towards fighting a hopeless cause.
Let me just quickly embark on the social and criminal changes. If legalized or decriminalized, small unregulated distributors would lose power and incentive to deal; effectively weeding out the more dangerous and influential suppliers. If a consumer could simply go to the store to legally purchase their drugs, surely there would be a reduction in crime because the informal, unregulated, “shady” transaction between street dealer and user wouldn’t occur. After all the best way to get rid of a class of crime and criminals is to get rid of the law that defines them as such.
Honestly I am appalled at Obama’s response to his country’s most sought after question. To say marijuana wouldn’t help the economy is so ignorant, especially for a man of his stature and assumed knowledge, supposedly fit to lead a nation. Surely to lead a country, one must be educated in economic and cultural tendencies; I don’t know how he can honestly say a billion dollar market, whether its formal or “underground”, would not stimulate economic growth. You can watch the video of his response at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBl0KNKha4
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