"Longtime Humboldt resident Charley Custer tells National Public Radio that back in the early days of President Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs," locally grown marijuana was selling for as much as $5,000 a pound.
Now, pot farming is going mainstream. Legal distribution through medical marijuana dispensaries and a ballot initiative in November offering to make recreational use legal are creating a legitimate commodity. A flood of supply means prices have dropped considerably."
NBC Bay Area
If you want to end the drug war take away the profit. Legalize it and let the market take care of it for you. Especially with marijuana; come on, it's a freakin' weed. Anybody can grow it so why are the prices and profits so high? Because its illegal.
I know that legalization may cause some people to use drugs that otherwise wouldn't. That number won't be too high. Those of us that are attracted to such nonsense never let the law stand in our way and we've already jumped into the pool.
Some would say the public cost would be too high, that society would have to pay the bill for the drug problem. Why? If you decide to use drugs and destroy your life, how is that my problem? Of course, we'd have to get rid of publicly financed health care.
I'm not advocating drug use; I've seen how bad it can screw up lives. I am, however, advocating free markets, free will decisions and the end of the nanny state. I don't see anything in the Constitution about drugs, legal or illegal. The only thing I see is the authority to tax them.
And while we're at it, why can't I have a still and make whiskey if I want to? The government has the power to tax it, too, but not the power to regulate it's manufacture. Hell, George Washington had a distillery.
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