Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
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.
|
This is exactly what I meant.
You didn't even read the paper, and probably not even a cursory glance.
Your opinions are rigid, I'll give you that.