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Originally Posted by blankall
The actual price might drop, but the taxes wouldn't. In Canada, we get taxed like crazy for cigarettes and booze, I don't see why the same thing wouldn't happen with weed. Then you have to figure in the cost of corporations getting involved. You'd be paying for their marketing etc....
As for the option to buy illegal, a lot of growers would just leave the market. Marijuana would become like any other consumer good. People preferring to know what they get through brands and the convenience of buying in stores outweighing any price benefit from buying from a local grower.
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You also have to consider the reduced overhead with streamlined systems though. If you are mass-producing and legally transporting massive quantities of product it would be way less expensive than have a few hundred plants here and there and having to transport smaller qtys at a time.
As far as taxes are concerned... I dont know. Right now you can get about an 8th for $30-$35. That 8th is probably good for, say, 8 smaller joints. That means it costs around $4.38 per joint.
The streamlined process would bring costs waaaay down... probably to the price of cigarettes, which I beleive cig companies make around $3-$4 per 20 package. That's $0.20 per cigarette.
20 joints is a ton... most people would probably buy them in singles. Even at the price now that's $4.38 which I would easily pay. If the government sold them at $5 each, they would make upwards of $4.80 per joint! And that's
if they tax it the same as cigarettes!
Marijuana has way less health implications than tobacco. If smoked traditionally, it has some of the same chemicals and is still hot smoke being taken in by your lungs... but there are no studies that unequivically tie pot to cancer. They have all been up for debate. Saying that, if the Gov't wanted, they
could tax it this way and still make tons of money.
I think the best thing to do would be to tax joints like cigarettes, but also encourage vapours and other consumption methods which do not have any health implications. You could go to pot bars where they have the vaporizers there. That way they can be
sure you are smoking it from one. In stores, beside joints and what not they could have oils and THC pills and other methods of oral consumtion that would be way cheaper. That would encourage people to consume it in the safer ways becuase 1) it's safer and 2) its cheaper.
So lets see, they start making X millions of dollars OFF marijuana, educate people on the best ways to use it, free it up for people in pain or who want to use it for medicinal purposes, and they save all the millions of dollars they currently spend on cracking down on it.
How is our government, and how are other governments for that matter, so stupid that they can't see this? It might be the ego factor that they have been calling this a gateway and a demon drug for the better part of a century and now have to back peddle. Or they may be so deep in red tape that they cant wiggle without a massive backlash.
Either way, the status quoe is inefficient and illogical. Sure, marijuana isnt something you want to encourage people to use... but you dont want to discourage it either. Like Alcohol. Except no liver damage and little to no connection to dependency issues.