Suetaz

Criminals want illegal pot

KamloopsThisWeek | Editorial

The recent release of a report on marijuana growth and trade by the Fraser Institute has sparked, yet again, the debate about the legalization of pot.
Yet, unlike the often-touted benefits of marijuana used medicinally, as well as the rights of personal consumption, this report makes a clear distinction that is elemental to the issue - it makes good dollars and sense for government.

By the report's estimates, British Columbia's $7-billion pot industry is booming, with some 17,500 grow-ops in this province alone. Add to that the fact that more than 23 per cent of Canadians admit to having used pot, and 7.5 per cent admit to using it regularly, and you've got a law that harkens back to the alcohol prohibition of the early 1900s.

While the report, entitled Marijuana Growth in British Columbia, uses these stats to urge the decriminalization of pot, they are merely the peripheral, traditional arguments. What's compelling about this report is that it addresses the financial reality of legalization.

"The broader social question becomes less about whether we approve or disapprove of local production, but rather who shall employ the spoils," states the report. "Growers and distributors . . . reap all the benefits of the multibillion dollar marijuana industry, while the non-marijuana-smoking taxpayer sees only the costs."

When I was in university, the startling return on pot production was apparent to a number of my acquaintances, who, even though they didn't toke the reefer, operated some of the most sophisticated operations you could imagine. These people weren't the "criminals" selling weed to school children or trading it for crack and guns, which police would have you believe, but were growing it to pay for school rather than mount $50,000 in debt.

The reality here is that the return on grow-ops is simply too tempting and ridiculously easy to get away with. For every bust paraded in front of media cameras, another operation gets underway. And, it's a growing industry.
However, most of the growers out there aren't college students; they are run by skilled professionals with real organized crime middlemen and the associated criminal activity. They are there only because the money is there, not because they believe in the right for people to smoke and certainly not for the medical benefits it provides to people with cancer and glaucoma.
The single worst thing that could happen for professional growers is the legalization of the herb. It would eliminate the middleman, often the organized criminal element, and would severely impact profits, not to mention regulations regarding safety of production (and an end to the destruction of private rental properties).

It would also take away the demand; people who smoke pot recreationally usually do not do so in large quantities (if they do they grow their own), and would just as easily go pay the potential taxes to get a legal "marijuana cigarette."

The Fraser report estimates, based on current cigarette tax markup, that the sale of legal pot could generate as much as $2 billion for governments. This, along with the cost-savings of RCMP enforcement and re-deployment to other hard-drug activity, would equate to money in Ottawa's coffers, and a better bang for the taxpayers' buck.

This is a matter of simple economics. We haven't seen a proliferation in illegal alcohol production since prohibition was lifted, nor would we see such activity if the profit margin and demand were removed through legalization.
Toke or no toke - pot laws are simply a joke. Ethical arguments and personal convictions aside, we simply can't afford to keep loosing this futile war on marijuana's production and trade.

Ryan Kuhn is the city editor for Kamloops This Week. To comment, e-mail editor@kamloops thisweek.com.

[Suetaznote: I wish more editors took this stance and wrote about it. I like the second last sentence so much, I think I'll use it for my signature. ]

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DontTreadOnMe

This, to me, is only useful in the fight to have legal marijuana. Politicians know two things: votes and money. The reason this sort of commentary leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that the politicians really have no right to tax our marijuana. There is no justification for taxing somone's right to smoke marijuana or tobacco, any more than there is a justification to tax someone's food, or sex life, etc. They are all our rights, and to tax them is an infringement on our rights.

Government and taxes suck ass.

AlucardOrange3

Amen Brotha, but the taxes on weed would be extremely easy to circumvent by growing your own or having a little co-op with close friends and family. Hence there really isn't a government tax incentive for weed like there is with alcohol and tobacco (concentrated alcohol is a somewhat technical, space consuming and time consuming process, and tobacco is a tough crop to grow, plus you have to do all sorts of processing to convert tobacco leaves into smokeable form, whereas marijuana is easy to grow, not technical at all, and self-perpetuating, with very little expertise necessary to get from the plant to the end smokeable product). Think of it like this: for those of you who grow tomato plants or strawberries or something at home, when was the last time you paid taxes on those crops? If there was a tax, how would the government be able to enforce it? They'd have to raid people who were suspected of growing strawberries and tomatoes without a permit, which is even more ridiculous than the War on Drugs.

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"When a true genius appears in the world, you shall know him by this sign; that all the dunces are in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift

smoking_joe_lee

Legal, taxed mj cutting crime and helping the Canadian government better provide for it's people. Sounds great, but...at the risk of sounding like what former US vice-president Spiro Agnew would call "a nattering nabob of negativity" what would be the tax rate on legal comercial bud. The reason I ask is that as an occasional visitor to British Columbia I have noted the high prices for alcohol and cigarettes. If a commodity is taxed too high another form of crime is encouraged; smuggling. It seems there was a recent story of smuggeling untaxed cigarettes at the Blaine border crossing but I admit I do not know the particulars of this case. The news story did say that the profits from black market smokes funs terrorists, but not in THIS particular case...
But back to marijuana. If it is taxed too highly, John Walters might be tempted to smuggle crack-pot north of the border. "Crack-pot" might even be his middle name!
If 19th century Russia had a "drug Czar" would they call him that? Since they already had a czar maybe it would have been "drug president" or "drug prime minister" or something...
"When traveling Fraser Valley in BC, always be aware of where you are at all times lest you find yourself beyond Hope."
SJL

matrixrips

Of course criminals want Marijuana illegal, it would run them out of business, or at least throw them back.