Why Pot Was Made Illegal and Why it Should be Legalized

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to learn more about me and subscribe to the RSS feed for free updates from Weakonomics.com.

This is a repost of a post from last year. For some reason, I thought today would be a good reason to repost it. I’ve included a couple of new links and comments. The original is here with some great comments.

Marijuana has become a cultural icon in the last 50 years. When you talk about pot some stereotypes jump into your head. For most of us, it’s the crowd for Grateful Dead hippies that rock tie-dye shirts and work in places where flip-flops are the norm. But weed is so much more than that in this society. Athletes use it to wind down, sick people use it for certain treatments, and of course most people who do smoke do so for recreational purposes. Wikipedia cites a reference that estimates 100 million Americans have at least tried weed.

***Before we proceed it should be noted The Weakonomist does not smoke anything because of concern to his health, and while I have no problem with anyone who chooses to do so I am not condoning the practice of any illegal activities.***

Now, before I can explain why pot should be legalized, we must jump in a time machine to learn why pot was made illegal in the first place. There are no shortage of websites out there devoted to the history of marijuana legislation. Salon.com has one of the best though, and it includes a short YouTube video highlighting the 10 most common reasons for why marijuana is illegal and why it was made illegal. The short version of this is the following:

Well-funded industries that competed with hemp (like cotton and rope) lobbied against hemp farming. Mexican and African-Americans smoked weed and some white people back in the day didn’t like those people. Claims from they would get your children to smoke it to it makes you a murdering lunatic if you smoke it were unsubstantiated by evidence, but embraced by the culture.

Basically, marijuana was made illegal because of the results of a well-run disinformation campaign. Peter from Family Guy explains the thinking behind it.

Now I don’t need to explain to you that marijuana is not addictive, a “gateway drug”, or any more harmful in moderation than alcohol. I don’t need to explain this because as a well-informed citizen you already knew this. Right? Right….

So my fundamental argument for the legalization of marijuana based simply on the fact that alcohol and tobacco are legal. Tobacco is addictive and very harmful to you. Alcohol does have a risk of dependency and if consumed in any amount above “moderate” harmful to your body and those around you. Pot is no more dangerous or harmless than alcohol or tobacco. We seem to get by just fine with those legalized.

There are some considerable advantages to legalizing marijuana. An important advantage is the immediate drop in crime that would occur. Drug dealers would be out of business, and the smuggling organizations would have to stick with coke, X, and people trafficking for their profits.
Legalizing weed will also allow the FDA to regulate the drug. They could determine a safe amount of intake that is OK for driving (and that might be 0 which is fine), they could also study the plant more closely and perhaps make it even safer. There’s tons of science in tobacco so I’m just sayin…
The most important advantage of legalizing pot is the tax revenue. You can’t stop the business so you might as well get a cut. Governments, local and national, bring in billions every year from the taxes on cigarettes and tobacco. Most smokers of weed would gladly pay a 10% tax if it meant they could legally smoke it; the price would probably still be cheaper than it is now in a formal, legal market. I’d just be giddy if we legalized pot and used all tax proceeds to pay down national debt, but I’ll keep dreaming.

Yes there will be still be a black market, but right now that’s the only market. Legalized pot will have black markets similar to alcohol or tobacco, which are very small. They are small because of a flock to quality and convenience in the regulated alcohol and tobacco markets. It’s much easier to go down to the store and pick of a six-pack and a hard-pack than it is to make your own beer or grow your own tobacco. Most people will just buy it off the shelves.

I could list plenty of more advantages but I’ll let Balanced Politics do it instead and also quell some myths.

The big question now is “will it happen?” It’s not happening soon, but it’s happening. Alcohol was decriminalized because they tried to yank it out of our hands after we were already used to it. So we went elsewhere to get it. Pot didn’t have that advantage because most people back then didn’t even know what it was. But regardless, pot is now very much a commodity that is as easy to obtain as extra-strength Tylenol. The government would do themselves a favor to just stop fighting it because you can’t stop it. They’ve been trying for two generations and its use has done nothing but increase. I would guess we still have another generation to go before we see it legalized, if nothing else to clean out all the old farts in Congress that were around for the disinformation. But I am sure that I will see it legalized, one state at a time, during my lifetime.

I’ll leave you with another Family Guy video from the 420 episode that is funny, but filled with so many bad jokes it serves as a serious detriment to the legalization movement. Good move Seth.

Share:

By The Weakonomist

The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics. Also keep in mind that nothing I say can be construed as financial advice.

categories: business, economics, government

Related Posts

Related Websites

4 Comments

Philip Brewer

Said,

April 20th, 2010 @11:41 am

Biggest win from legalization: The immediate drop in violence.

Mere decriminalization doesn’t do this. But if pot is actually legal—legal enough that a theft can be reported to the police or a business dispute can be handled in court—then growers and dealers can quit resorting to violence to handle their disputes.

Another win: Reduced corruption. There’s so much money in drugs, there’s a constant danger of that money corrupting the police. Throw in the attraction of seizing “drug money” and you get both small-scale individual corruption and large-scale government corruption. Legalization ends a whole swath of it.

Related, and perhaps even more important: Better policing. When like growing, selling, buying, or owning pot is made a crime, there’s nobody involved who wants to report it to the police. So, often the only way for the police to even learn about the “criminal” activity is through confidential informants—who are pretty much universally criminals. This leads to all kinds of problems, such as smashing into the homes of innocent people because some informant lied or made a mistake. (And then, all too often, trying to cover up the lies and mistakes.)
Philip Brewer´s last blog ..Live Abroad for Less (Also at Home)

Evan

April 20th, 2010 @1:49 pm

I am for legalization for the reasons you happen to highlight TODAY, the only argument I can come up with against it (and it isn’t a very good one) has to do with Driving after smoking – You can’t test for it (since it’ll be in the blood stream for a couple weeks).

Other than that…legalize and tax te hell out of it
Evan´s last blog ..Great Posts from Around The Personal Finance Blogging World

Carlyle

April 20th, 2010 @11:08 pm

I’m all for legalization of pot as well for many of the same reasons you mention. The greastest danger of smoking pot is remains getting arrested for using it and having a drug conviction on your record.

While the tide is slowly turning towards legalization, I think it will be a slow process. The government still spends millions upon millions on anti-drug propoganda. The DEA like all bureaucracies exists to get bigger, not smaller as would be the case if they weren’t able to expend vast amounts of tax revenue on anti-pot programs. Despite their efforts, every year production grows thus enabling them to lobbby Congress for every larger sums of money.

Politicians will still be slow to lend support for the repeal of pot laws. They don’t want to wind up in sound-bite ads painting them as soft on drugs and hence soft on crime. It continues to puzzle me why most conservatives who are supposed to be big on individual rights are ok with the heavy hand of government keeping people from enjoying a psychoactive herb in the privacy of their own homes. But a lot of things puzzle me about conservatives.

The law enforcement establishment will continue to kick and scream about any attempt to legalize pot. Young cops LOVE pot, gives them the opportunity to experience the adrenaline-fueled rush of kicking down doors, foot chases, car chases and the general fun of manhandling drug suspects in the name of the war-on-drugs! Old cops LOVE pot, thanks to forfeiture laws they get to confiscate the cash and property of drug suspects without the inconvenience of a trial so they can pad their budgets and buy fun toys for their departments.

But despite these obstacles, I think eventually marijuana use will be legalized because too many young (and old) people have come to know that it’s simply not as harmful as the anti-pot propagandists are painting it to be. And not nearly as bad as the unintended consequences of the vast war-on-drugs. It’s way past time to legalize pot, regulate and tax its use and cut the legs out from under the criminal cartels that currently profit from its status as an illegal substance.