Just because profit is taken out of the game, that doesn’t mean there are no incentives. There’s no reason to create a whole new bureaucracy or have the government involved in selling drugs. Private business will do a much more efficient job of funneling the money to the government without additional waste or bureacracy, the government can force a percentage of revenue, not profits, to be used to fund drug education, just like it’s now doing with cigarettes. Advertising can be strictly regulated, as it is in many other areas. Cannabis cafes can be severely curtailed, prohibited, or regulated.

This is a very simple problem to solve, and there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel IMO. It would be a terrible idea to create a whole new government bureauacracy to sell drugs.

Living in a tobacco state I can tell you that higher taxes are generally aimed at meeting increased healthcare costs and cutting usage…. I don’t think that’s what people are proposing with marijuana. i have no problem with the decriminalization…but i’m curious as to whether it will effect laws regarding driving while using, etc. we certainly don’t need to fill up our prisons with mid-level pot dealers or small time growers.

Pot, like any other product, can be sold through a free market, a black market, a command economy or a hybrid economy. Each system empowers the distributors and as such big business, criminals, the government and entities operating a hybrid economy would be empowered under the various systems.

For whatever misguided reasons, we have chosen to empower criminals. There is a legitimate fear of creating financial incentives for big business or the government to hook the next generation of potential users. Therefore, I think more serious thought and discussion needs to go into a hybrid system.

Under my vision of a hybrid system, pot (as well as other drugs) would be sold by heavily regulated non-profit agencies. Revenue in excess of costs would go toward drug rehabilitation and drug education. Yes, the government would still benefit because jobs would be created in the farming, manufacturing, distribution, and selling of the drugs. Plus there would be administration jobs (HR, Accounting, IT, Security, etc.) created under this system. All would be tax paying jobs creating extra revenue for the state and all the decreased costs (gradual reduction in police, court and prison costs) would all be very beneficial to state/federal government budgets.

There is not a direct incentive to hook people on drugs. All incentives for doing so would be greatly minimized (far more so than any other distribution method). The harm caused to society would be minimized and more assistance could be offered to drug addicts which would be funded by drug users.

Let’s have the debate and not get bogged down in being limited to debating the pros and cons of having big business or criminals in charge of our drug trade. There are two other options and it is worth exploring the strenghts and weaknesses of each to come up with a sane approach to the presence of drugs on this planet.

I included a fair amount of research on how the economy during the Great Depression helped bring an end to alcohol prohibition.

Although the magazine is out of business, the article is still up:
http://www.culture11.com/article/36438

With marijuana, the state is simply saying that those who wish to profit from this vice must pay a hefty tax to do so.

The disconnect is that we’re comparing “legalize and tax” to the current policy, “throw them all prison”.

If one starts from scratch, a government policy charging much higher taxes for vices than just the typical sales tax is still a policy incenting people to avoid that activity.

This is what we do with tobacco. I don’t hear anyone complaining that the government’s high taxes on tobacco are “profiting from vice.” It is, of course, but, it’s also viewed as a significant incentive to quit smoking.

As long as government is not in the business of producing and selling marijuana and also charges high taxes for it, I think that is “punishment” enough. Plus, we get better roads and schools! Sweet!

I’ll add, however, that I’d be thrilled if we could pull the regulation of agricultural hemp away from marijuana. Sure, they are both Cannibas plants, but hemp has real promise as a multi-use fiber (it’s good for much more them rope), and adding a dynamic agricultural hemp secotr to our economy could be a real boon (and a clean way to generate additional tax revenue).