Valley farmers should grow (legal) bud
There is a simple solution to these economic problems.
Last year, California produced about $36 billion in agricultural products. In 2008, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting seized about 3 million plants with an estimated value of about $12 billion. If all we did was to sell that marijuana through licensed and regulated sellers, as we do with alcohol, we would boost total farm revenues by about one-third in one year.
It should be clear that we are not going to stop the marijuana trade. This is the same lesson we learned in 1933, with the end of alcohol prohibition.
The market is huge, and it's not going away. Therefore, we have only two choices for who will control the business. Do you trust people like Ernest and Julio Gallo? Or do you trust people like Al Capone?
We have the same choice today.
The State Board of Equalization estimates that marijuana legalization would produce about $1.3 billion in new tax revenues. But that is chump change compared to what the farmers would earn. When marijuana is legalized, with a license and a background check required, the Central Valley farmers will own the market overnight. Where is the best place in the world to grow anything?
How big is the marijuana market? No one can be sure as long as it is illegal, but the national retail market for marijuana is probably about the same size as beer -- more than $100 billion per year. The marijuana revenues to the criminal drug lords in Mexico are estimated at $30 billion per year, all cash. The drug lords make so much money that they don't even count it.
They weigh it.
What message would this send to our kids? The same message we sent when we legalized Ernest and Julio Gallo.
Anyone who supports marijuana prohibition should answer a simple question: Why should criminals control this business? Why should criminals determine how marijuana is produced and sold? Why should $30 billion per year go to criminals in Mexico rather than honest, tax-paying, patriotic farmers in California?
Every major study of the marijuana laws in the last 100 years has said that marijuana prohibition was based on ignorance and nonsense. Congress didn't even know what they were voting on when they passed the Marihuana Tax Act.
The American Medical Association said there was no evidence that marijuana was dangerous, and saw no reason for the law. The original reasons were nothing short of lunacy. One doctor testified that marijuana would turn you into a bat. He served as U.S. Official Expert on marijuana for 25 years.
Every major study of the laws said that marijuana prohibition is wrong no matter what you assume about the dangers of marijuana. In terms of science, it is the modern equivalent of burning witches.
It is time to end the nonsense. Marijuana legalization will happen fairly soon. When it happens it will be the biggest bonanza the Central Valley has ever seen.
Clifford Schaffer, a Fresno native, is founder of the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, a major online library of drug policy. He lives in Agua Dulce and Oakhurst.
