Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
Frankly, and I don't mean this in any way as a personal attack, I don't think you're nearly as informed on this issue as you think you are.
I believe you have made some incorrect assumptions on the subject, and highly recommend you read the Rand research paper that I link in a post above.
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I think a lot of research on the issue thus far is done under extremely biased circumstances.
People want marijuana to be legal so they skew research to fit their results. It's a pretty easy thing to do when you are dealing with hypothetical markets. Meanwhile comparable evidence from existing markets is being totally ignored. The Rand article you link to basically takes the cost of a grow op, extrapolates that to a larger scale, then concludes economies of scale would make it cheaper, and picks an arbitrary figure of 80% cheaper. It doesn't even mention many of the costs of running a real business.
The same kind of arguments go on in the context of the smoking debate. People calculating the "cost" of smoking to our health care system.
I do agree with the Rand report in that the government would benefit largely from legalization. They would move from a situation where they are paying large amounts of money to stop marijuana growing to one where they can heavily tax it.