The Great Colorado Weed Experiment | Hacker News Reader

The Great Colorado Weed Experiment

nytimes.com

90 pointsisaacdl98 comments

Since cannabis is on the path to full legalization, should we also legalize LSD, Ecstasy and Mushrooms for the same reasons? Particularly since they cause less harm than cannabis: http://m.imgur.com/Pz1NIEQ

Source: http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf

Yes. There is no rational argument against it, only FUD.

>> no rational argument against it

People getting injured? Reoccurring flashbacks?

Study citation needed, or this is the very definition of FUD.

People getting injured is a good argument against horseback riding, and climbing mount everest - but neither of those activities is illegal.

Shouldn't individuals be allowed to make informed choices regarding their activity, particularly if it does not harm those around them?

Driving a car is dangerous, and it kills many innocent people who aren't driving - but we haven't mandated mass transit because we believe in the freedom to move.

Consider guns or even certain fireworks. There are things that are dangerous that can be done by the foolish, the laws for regulating these are well motivated.

I'm certainly not opposed to the regulation of psychedelics (particularly keeping them away from younger children) though I expect the number of deaths which would occur to unregulated use of MDMA, LSD, Psilocybin, Marijuana, Peyote, DMT, Ketamine are pretty minimal.

There are very few policy arguments in the modern world where there is literally no rational argument on one side. It is, however, very easy for people for people to get so wrapped up in one side of issue that they can no longer even see the arguments on the other side. Maybe that's typical, even.

In the case of marijuana I'm strongly in favor of legalization on the same basis as alcohol with maybe driving while intoxicated being treated a bit more leniently. But if you want rational reasons why legalization might not be idea see here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-tha...

The problem is that the underlying logic for all arguments that apply to criminalization of marijuana/psychedelics would also apply to the criminalization of alcohol, cigarettes, riding motorcycles, and so on.

So either you believe alcohol should be made illegal again etc., or you believe marijuana should be legal - but there is no logical consistency to a "middle of the road" approach.

Also the blog post you linked to has links to interesting studies, but it's a bit hard to take seriously when it holds gems of stupidity such as:

"Those 400,000 teens would lose 8 IQ points each. IQ increases your yearly earnings by about $500 per point, so these people would lose about $4,000 a year. Making very strong assumptions about salary being a measure of value to society, society would lose about $1.6 billion a year directly, plus various intangibles from potential artists and scientists losing the ability to create masterpieces and inventions, plus various really intangibles like a slightly dumber electorate."

I also heavily disagree with your premise: "There are very few policy arguments in the modern world where there is literally no rational argument on one side"

I do believe that the media and various partisans groups are very skilled at spinning stories in such a way that it seems that all sides on an issue have their good points, but in retrospect it is often obvious how barbaric and misguided certain sides of the debate were. Examples: death penalty, women's right to vote, black people's right to vote, gay right to marry, etc.

There is no doubt when I say that none of the arguments against women's right to vote, or for the death penalty, are consistent, rational, or logical in anyway. They ultimately all stem from FUD. So what current debates will be seen the same way 50 years from now? 100 years from now?

Maybe. More research studies would be helpful in making that decision.

Some of the drugs on that graph are questionably "more harmful" that cannabis, does that chart have a source?

Yes - I linked to the source.

> does that chart have a source?

Yes.

Source: http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf

I'd argue that most of those stats are very subjective.

There would also be impacts on some by making others legal, people only do a majority of those drugs because the others are illegal and inaccessable. Who would do Butane if they could smoke marijuana or take LSD or mushrooms?

Environmental damage? Economic cost? Crime? Family relationships? How could those be established? They did a survey at a 1-day workshop, this chart has zero scientific significance, it's purely averaged opinions from a survey.

'They' seem to be experts in the field of drug use: http://drugscience.org.uk/about/committee-members/

You seem confident that these people have no ability to judge the economic cost, crime, family breakdown, etc. associated with each drug.

If a similar group of experts used the same methodology and produced a similar ranking of harm for each substance, would that change your mind?

Not really, it's still just a survey, and there is no way that any of them could be an expert of every effect (social, economical, crime, their relationships) of every drug. Without actual tests it was purely subjective.

Change drug laws in a city for a period of time, heavily track the before and after effects, then repeat it in another city, and another city. That would be a study that would be more scientifically accurate.

Mushrooms, sure, but synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on a bottle of beer.

LSD in particular is no joke, you're relying on word of mouth re: quality and quantity (if they even know, 75, 150, or in some cases 300 micrograms per tab for blotter), and even then you can't be sure it's LSD or some other cheaper-to-produce substance until you yourself try it.

I think the less harm factor referenced in the imgur link has a lot to do with frequency of use. Nobody in their right mind trips everyday for years on end, while many heads break out the bong, pipe, papers, etc. daily.

I would expect taxation of all of these -- synthetics included -- to buy the appropriate certification and regulation.

It's also worth noting that the toxicity for some of these, including LSD, is so ridiculously low that as far as the science goes we should be much more concerned about moonshine than blotters.

The LD50 for THC, last I ever heard, was over 40,000. Technically water is more dangerous.

> Technically water is more dangerous.

It's not technical - people die from drinking too much water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

I'd expect it to be many orders of magnitude easier to create "objective" LSD than mushrooms since we already have a pharmaceutical industry in place that does that for thousands of different kinds of medicine.

Mushrooms are a complex cocktail of stuff that affects the user in different ways, so there's no one scale on which mushroom A is a 3 and mushroom B is a 6 in such a way that two of A is roughly B. Rather, it's a multitude of scales with complex interplay.

Agreed, shrooms are indeed complex, but at least there are limits to the amount you can ingest.

This is what makes LSD dangerous, you could take a very large quantity without even realizing it; it's why I lean toward no, don't legalize it (but also don't prosecute), it should remain hard to find.

> you could take a very large quantity without even realizing it

And that would somehow be better if the stuff you take doesn't have high purity, known concentration and comes with a clearly defined recommended usage?

Plenty of OTC medicines will hurt you badly if you take too much of it or mix it in the wrong way, and while some people do hurt themselves, the vast majority of consumers are perfectly capable of reading the dosage recommendation on the box and adjusting their consumption accordingly.

Designing dosages and appropriate guidance and packaging to avoid accidental misuse isn't exactly rocket surgery.

There are two problems:

1) Current situation: street acid could be anything, and even if it is LSD, quantity and quality are unknowns.

2) Proposed: legalized and regulated, quality and quantity are known.

Currently LSD is hard to find (I believe due to one of the primary producers in North America having been busted in the mid-2000s, not sure about Europe and rest of world), thus it is effectively hidden from the population at large.

Playing devil's advocate, were it legalized then one could presumably build up a stash over time and potentially use it against others, kind of a modern non-merry pranksters scenario. It's one thing to trip willingly, and quite another to just lose your mind out of the blue, no? ;-)

Saying that, if legalized LSD was delivered as some kind of bulky edible like shrooms, then above scenario could be avoided. Would be pro-legalization in that case. I guess my opposition is to the concentration, can pack many micrograms onto a tiny little piece of paper.

You seem to applaud mushrooms for their fairly static appearance that a piece of paper laced with an unknown quantity of LSD doesn't share.

First, a "prankster" (ie in your description, someone out to commit criminal poisoning) could easily lace a mushroom with anything from potato starch to rat poison if so inclined.

Second, the main defence mechanism is that your legal, regulated drug would come in sealed, tamper evident packaging, and never on a little piece of paper from a potential "prankster".

I think the idea was that it could be removed from the tamper evident packaging and used to dose food/drink/etc. It's true that greater availability does make this more possible, but 1) it's not exactly impossible at present, 2) there are plenty of other things that someone could be dosed with (I'd rather LSD than rat poison), and 3) someone trying to do so now is liable to cause greater harm (I'd rather be dosed with pure LSD than adulterated). Of course, I'd rather not be dosed with anything against my will in the first place, but that doesn't seem to be made substantially more likely by legalization of LSD.

I was thinking that a legal form of LSD would be distributed like blotter; i.e. you'd receive your dose as a tiny little piece of paper, which could then be combined (ground up) into a much larger dose.

More likely it would be packaged as an edible (cookie, brownie, whatever); then it couldn't be combined (trying to cook/boil down the bulk matter wouldn't work as light, heat, and moisture are the kryptonites of LSD potency), in which case, sure, why not, could be a viable non-addictive alternative to valium and friends that people across the world are hooked on.

Heh, I'm not applauding anything, just stating reality: the amount required to trip on LSD is orders of magnitude less than every other recreational drug.

Were a legalized form of LSD distributed in a such a way that it could not be combined to create a single powerful dose, sure, that sounds reasonable. However, if one were able to purchase liquid LSD to treat their chronic back pain, no, there should be limits in place to protect oneself and others, as again, LSD is no joke ;-)

> Designing dosages and appropriate guidance and packaging to avoid accidental misuse isn't exactly rocket surgery.

Sorry, I could not let this pass. "rocket surgery"? That's a new one!

Rocket science + brain surgery. This Urban Dictionary entry dates it to no later than 2004, so no, not that new :)

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rocket+surger...

Google Ngram puts it even earlier: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rocket+surgery...

And I started using it at least before then. It's too obvious to not show up quickly.

You'd say no, but why should it be up to you?

When the OP says, "should we also legalize LSD...", it follows that people will voice their opinion on the subject, or no?

Since you presumably say yes, let's hear your take. I may reply with, "why should it be up to you?" ;-)

" synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on a bottle of beer."

Trivial for your modern pharmaceutical organization. Also, LSD in particular has a huge ratio between it's normal dose and it's LD-50 - I did a bit of searching, and I couldn't actually find a case of someone having overdosed to the point of dying of LSD, so it's unclear to me what the LD50 is - but it's big - having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you.

This is unlike caffeine of course, where I've personally had friends hospitalized for caffeine overdose, and there are certainly records of people having died from too much caffeine. People have died from drinking too much water as well.

Anyways, the entire idea behind legalization of things like LSD, THC, MDMA, Heroin, etc... is that you normalize the dosage, and reduce the number of fatalities resulting from poor quality control.

> having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you

Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind; you may not physically die in the above scenario, but rest assured you will be absolutely out of your fucking tree for quite some time, if not hospitalized.

Compare that to eating too many ganja brownies, drinking too much alcohol, etc. Yes, you could die, but if you don't you'll be out of sorts for a couple of days and then more or less back to normal.

Too much alcohol certain can, and frequently does, kill people.

Doing 10x overdose of MDMA has a not insignificant chance of killing you.

Doing 10x overdose of Heroin will likely kill you.

Never having tried LSD, I can't comment on what the psychological effects of 10 hits of LSD will be, but given that Erowid suggests starting with a dosage of 25 ug, and that the optimal dosage is between 50 and 200 ug, it's not clear to me that 250 ug (a 10x over the base dose) will really be that big a deal (beyond how big a deal LSD normally is). Perhaps you are referring to 10x of your optimal dose (i.e. if normally you take 200 ug, suddenly taking 2000 ug)

Regardless, I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that, "Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind" - I had some pot brownies once, and went to a very twisted universe. At the time it was pretty scary for the better part of an hour, I just curled up into a tiny ball, but I look back fondly on the experience.

I don't know anybody who has ever done drugs, and thought that "toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind." Some people do drug just to lose their mind.

Hmmm, I may have misunderstood what the OP meant by 10X overdose. If he meant "just" 10 hits of typical street acid (75ug) for most that would be way, way too much, but far from what I was understanding (overdose to me equating to something like 1,000ug, an amount very few would ever take).

re: losing your mind, sure, THC can trigger all manner of darkness, have been on my knees a couple of times praying to get me through it -- hallucinogens can bring the good and the bad ;-)

re: people doing drugs to lose their mind, right, keep in mind the context (10X overdose = 10,000ug). There's losing your mind, and then there's lost your mind.

Yes, almost all recreational drugs should be legalized. For much the same reasons. As shown in that study, alcohol is far and away one of the very fewest of the most damaging recreational drugs, ranking up with meth, heroin, and crack, and in some ways even worse than them. But, of course, our attempts at prohibition of alcohol proved disastrous, as our attempts at prohibition of other drugs has been turning out to be as well.

And while the prospect of allowing meth, crack, and heroin to be legally used by adults is likely enormously disconcerting to most people it shouldn't be. Largely that is due to the bias of familiarity. The problems of alcoholism are familiar to us as a society, they've been with us a long time and we know them well. Are comfortable with them even if we don't like them. And we accept that alcoholism and other problems of alcohol use can destroy families, destroy lives, and have fatal consequences, aside from its propensity to cause disgusting side effects (vomiting, loss of bowel control, pissing oneself, a generally slovenly or disheveled appearance and a rank smell due to lack of personal hygiene combined with the smell of booze, and so on). Yet the dangers and grotesqueries of, say, meth use have yet to worm their way into such a position of familiarity and comfort in the heart of the collective conscious. Which enables the public to decry its use, shun it from polite society, and force users outside the boundaries of the law.

Aside from all of the very good practical reasons to roll back drug prohibition there is an even more fundamental reason: the cause of liberty. People should and must be allowed to make mistakes. Being "allowed" to engage only in activities chosen from a list of behaviors that have been determined to be safe and unobjectionable activities is not freedom. But that is much of the nature of drug prohibition, the idea that the collective (the government) is in charge of what you can and can't do with your life and your body, not you. Without the ability to make choices that others, perhaps even lots of others, disagree with or object to there can be no freedom. The law should come into play only in so far as people cross the line into actively harming others, otherwise it should not intrude on how people decide to live their lives.

Very, very well said.

The liberty point is a great one. I'm not 100% convinced that there are not some downsides to it - e.g. I'm for seatbelt laws that save a lot of people's lives. But it's the basis for a really rational debate that is more fundamental than the moral judgements that most people apply to this discussion. Not that moral judgements have no place in these sorts of debates, but they tend to derail pretty quickly... :)

Honestly, I'd legalize anything less harmful than Tobacco as long as it was bought inside an establishment and consumed on private property. If you don't leave your home while consuming that sort of thing, I don't see an issue regardless of the substance.

I think the core issue is a small quantity of people who use these sorts of things then go outside and do stupid things. Or try to beat people they live with. [e.g. Driving under the influence]

We might think that smoking can be bad for individuals, and decriminalization is good for society at the same time. However, a seven month time period is not enough to read the experiment on many the variables claimed in the article (blight, drop outs, etc.)

An interesting opinion you have there.

However, based on years of legal alcohol use by the public, I'd disagree.

Besides the health and freedom issues, your opinion sounds like it's biased.

What "opinion"? All he said was that the data isn't in yet.

Data on legalization vs. data on the effects of cannabis consumption? Or the data on the effect of criminalizing cannabis consumption?

Because you don't need to be a scientist to know that the current laws are flawed through and through and that the only good thing about them is that if you own a private prison you're going to make a lot of money.

I don't understand this comment at all. The grandparent comment didn't take a position on any of the issues you mention, and the only hypothetical position it mentioned that's germane to your comment agrees with your comment.

"the data isn't in yet"

What data?

The data on broad societal effects of legalization. Did you read the thread??

When someone shoves "False Facts" like "Seven months is not enought time for X", that is an opinion. Who gives anyone the right to say "X Number of Months" is required for something non-specific? What a bunch of malarkey!

Nice job trying to elevate his opinion to a fact... you must agree with his biased opinion. As do everyone who has down-voted me.

Troubadr, I have not downvoted you, but this being HN, I can tell you from experience that the tone of writing here is as important as your logic/idea. Your comments in this thread, although not fundamentally wrong or incongruous, appear to the readers as off-hand, drive-by commenting that one could get away with on Reddit or some random blog's comment thread. I would be very surprised if you put forth your ideas and arguments in a more lucid, fleshed-out manner and still face the same unpleasant downvoting.

> Who gives anyone the right to say "X Number of Months" is required for something non-specific? What a bunch of malarkey!

It's not a right, it's a matter of statistical significance. People who measure certainty actually care.

Did you read the part about California? "Medical" marijuana has been legal here since 1996. As the article says,

Many call it de facto legalization, because medical marijuana ID cards are laughably easy to get. While California’s experience shows the downsides of ineffectual laws and lax enforcement, it has not turned the state into a story of rampant addiction, crime or community upheaval. Support for full legalization there has grown as dire predictions of disaster, made over two decades, have not been borne out.

A person can strongly want drugs to be legalised, and still be concerned about potential problems from drugs.

It's possible that cannabis has a causative connection to some psychotic illnesses. It seems reasonable that cannabis can trigger underlying illness, or exacerbate existing illness. So while I am strongly in favour of legalising drugs I am still concerned about possible harms from cannabis.

Researching this is difficult. Partly because cannabis is illegal and thus recruiting subjects is fraught with ethical difficulties, but also because we need very many years to research. EDIT: 1996 isn't even 20 years ago.

> A person can strongly want drugs to be legalised, and still be concerned about potential problems from drugs.

Agreed. I'm sure there will be some problems from legal marijuana, though I don't see any sign they'll be nearly as bad as the problems caused by prohibition. In the case of other drugs which we might consider legalizing eventually, this might be more debatable.

> 1996 isn't even 20 years ago.

It's within 10% of 20 years ago, and anyway, it's a lot more than seven months ago. Not sure what your point is here.

I think it's a question of defaults. The null hypothesis is that it won't lead to blight, violence, and widespread addiction for the same reason that most other stuff doesn't. Those fears, as the article puts it, are imaginary (though they were shrilly predicted by legalization's opponents). In other words, the bar here isn't "good evidence that legalization isn't harmful to society" but rather, "a lack of good evidence that it isn't".

Just to play devils advocate here:

It sounds great, except for the fact there's a kind of product gentrification going on.

http://www.thecannabist.co/2014/07/30/colorado-marijuana-bla...

"In this light, taxation is seen as a blunt instrument of exclusion, driving precisely the groups most prosecuted in the war on drug further into the arms of the black market where they remain at risk for arrest or robbery. In one Denver dispensary, a $30 purchase of one-eighth of the Trinity strain of cannabis includes $7.38 in state and local taxes — a near 33 percent rate. As Larisa Bolivar, one of the city’s most well-known proponents of decriminalizing marijuana nationally and opening a true free market, puts it: That seven bucks buys someone lunch.

“It’s simple,” she says. “A high tax rate drives black market growth. It’s an incentive for risky behavior.”"

Cigarettes are highly taxed and there doesn't seem too be much of a black market for them.

Edit: Looks like I was wrong, but the black market is buying legal cigarettes and driving them across state lines which is a bit different from growing your own tobacco.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/20/ho...

Probably because there's no nearby place to get untaxed cigarettes, and there's not enough profit in growing tobacco and making cigarettes from scratch.

When I was in high school, back in the early '90s, the difference in taxes on cigarettes between Ontario and New York was a few dollars a pack - enough to cause a huge black market in smuggled cross-border cigarettes. I didn't buy a legal pack in four years.

Now, amusingly, taxes in New York have been raised so much that they're the target of smugglers. (And in Ontario, the Indian reservations that used to do all the smuggling got into the direct manufacturing business, since they can sell on the reservation tax-free.)

There certainly is a black market for cigarettes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/25/w...

There is a black market for cigarettes (to skirt local and state taxes) but I doubt it leads to any significant risk for end-users.

http://nypost.com/2014/08/02/cop-who-used-deadly-chokehold-s...

Loosie seller killed by NYPD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poospatuck_Reservation

There's definitely counterfeiting of cigarettes too, and obviously the safety of unregulated, falsely-labelled black-market counterfeits is not assured.

That's funny, because the safety of regulated, arguably truthfully-labeled mainstream brands cannot be assured, either.

This is naturally true; however, there is at least no rat poison in them.

Bootleggers in the old American cities didn't suddenly stop serving their clients after prohibition ended either. Legalisation is very new and there aren't enough dispensaries to bring the price down. The article itself mentions :

  As more legal recreational dispensaries and growers enter the market, the market 
  will do what it does with greater competition: adjust. Prices will fall. 
  The illegal market will shrink accordingly.

OK, I was just in WA, and let me assure you WA is where the black market will continue to thrive. The CO market is taxed, but is actually cheaper than the black market in CA from what I hear.

WA, however, has a state tax, county tax, city tax, and thus, prices are double that of the black market. Plus, the state really clamped down on growing permits, so there are now shortages driving prices up higher. WA and CO will show very clearly how to do this right (CO) and how to do it wrong (WA)

My news is a bit delayed, but from what I know of WA, the political atmosphere is a bit frayed. Local government is hampered by a complex web of bureaucracy and the state government may not be willing to play along.

I'm sure there are plenty of people there that want to follow the same example, but they may not have enough momentum to organize and push through as CO did.

On the other hand, it's now a source of tax revenue, and governments can generally be counted on to find the balance to maximize tax revenue.

It's too early to tell. They only just started issuing retail licenses this past month. It's slow going because each store has to meet stringent standards. But they're opening one by one.

The taxes are applied at a rate of 25% at each level of the system: growers, processors, and retailers. The remainder are standard business taxes (B&O tax) and sales tax.

From what I've seen, everyone involved has been very conscientious in implementing this law and have made adjustments to ensure that it works. If the black market continues to thrive due to taxation that is too burdensome, I expect they will adjust accordingly.

The black market here in Washington will absolutely thrive because the Washington Liquor Control Board screwed up: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/07/08/how-was...

The tl;dr:

* Not enough pot: You'll never believe the name of the consulting firm hired by the state to estimate how much pot we’ll need. It’s a company called BOTEC, short for—no shit—“Back of the Envelope Calculation”

* Too few pot shops: Seattle is slated to get just 21 cannabis stores. This seemingly-arbitrary allotment is far fewer than the hundreds of dispensaries already serving medical marijuana patients only, and City Attorney Pete Holmes has repeatedly asked the liquor board to increase this number.

* Not even the state is clear on where stores are allowed: Can I open a pot business here?...But the state apparently sometimes can’t—or won’t—answer that question.

Also, I should mention that the first and last time I bought pot was when I was 15 and living in Minnesota. I might buy pot at some point, but I only smoke very rarely, and it sounds like a huge hassle at the moment. That said, were I to buy, it would be from a state-regulated store.

Not just not enough shops, but not enough product to meet demand. Supposedly the legal growers weren't nearly ready for the explosion in demand on this year's crop.

> “It’s simple,” she says. “A high tax rate drives black market growth. It’s an incentive for risky behavior.”"

I disagree, as a smoker , I'd prefer buying the legit stuff somewhere safe rather than going into a dangerous neighbourhood to get a 33 percent rebate on a product with questionable quality. the premium is worth paying for my safety. And at least i'm not financing some gangs that will later be raiding my house or mugging my friends. I just want to get my shit legally. How many adults buy their booze illegaly today? none.

>How many adults buy their booze illegaly today? none

What about adults between the ages of 18 and 21?

18 to 21 year olds are likely to pay far more than market prices. They are not likely to purchase homemade liquor when getting an adult to buy for you is trivial.

>How many adults buy their booze illegaly today? none

Its a lot more than none. You can't buy good traditional local corn whiskey legally, and quite a premium is paid.

The black market isn't all stabbings ... certainly in CA, it isn't. I make good money and I wouldn't think twice about going to the black market for my medicine if they had crazy tax like that here. I mean, I (and many other people) already won't shop at places that don't roll sales tax into their prices.

Do you buy your alcohol on the black market?

Once the legal market for marijuana matures, why should it be any different?

Alcohol isn't my fucking medicine, alcohol is a lot cheaper, I seldom buy alcohol, there is no black market for alcohol because alcohol is a lot cheaper, the means of producing cannabis and alcohol differ starkly, alcohol abuse can have serious health effects, ..

What a lazy hypothetical. And very disrespectful.

I'm guessing that $7 isn't a big deal to you, and that you don't ever chose between legal drugs, or food and illegal drugs. The person you're quoting is specifically talking about poor people. Allowing those people to grow and sell cannabis, rather than forcing them to buy it from expensive state shops, would probably be a good thing all round. It might help reduce the amazing levels of violence in Mexico.

> How many adults buy their booze illegaly today? none.

What do you mean? "How many people make, sell or buy 'moonshine'?" - probably very very few people. (a quick search shows this: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91768)

But if you mean "How many people are arrested for buying alcohol in one country (or state) and transporting it across a border?" - well, I don't know but searches turn up results to show that it does happen. http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/InTheNews/Etc/1077647092.htm... http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/InTheNews/Etc/20070112112826... etc etc

I'm guessing that more people are arrested for illegal spirits in Alabama ($18.23 tax per gallon) than in Colorado ($2.28 tax per gallon) http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-sales-gasoline-cigare...

Presumably, the legal product will drive down the price of black market product. If the only reason to buy it illegally is price, then there better be a significant discount.

Putting pressure on the dealers could lead to nasty shit happening (diversification into other products and services, or hostile competition) in the mid term.

> If the only reason to buy it illegally is price, then there better be a significant discount.

Yes, in the GP quote the discount is 30%.

> Putting pressure on the dealers could lead to nasty shit happening (diversification into other products and services, or hostile competition) in the mid term.

Yes. This was a problem with limited decriminalisation experiments with parts of London (UK) - criminal gangs flooded regions where cannabis was decriminalised; and the rest of the chain of production and distribution was still illegal so minor decriminalisation did not stop people being trafficked into the UK and forced to grow cannabis.

Honest question: in tobacco growing regions, people would be able to grow tobacco plants in their backyards and thus be able to produce "moonshine tobacco", bypassing the high taxation of tobacco. Is this a thing? I've only ever seen commercially produced tobacco smuggled from a lower tax jurisdiction, but I live far from tobacco growing regions.

That is an interesting question. A quick search shows a few websites saying that it's legal (in the US) and trying to sell seeds for tobacco.

I guess it's only when you start distributing the product that people get involved.

Isn't it similar to fry-oil? If the owner pays for it to be disposed of that's one thing, but if the owner sells it off for someone to use in their car then someone wants tax?

There is an ongoing conversation here about the tax rate. I think that as we get more comfortable with legalization, the tax rate will actually go down as I think the state is leaving revenue on the table right now.

I think the more interesting question is the future of medical marijuana in Colorado. Right now it's a giant loophole that effectively gets you around those higher taxes. I know many folks who have kept their MMJ cards, there remains nothing actually medically wrong with them.

Finally, a positive example of states rights that rational people can argue for.

I think the problem is the people who shout about state's rights are easily linked to racist loons. The rational ones think things like alcohol, marijuana, etc should be state-level issues. :P

The Federal Government shouldn't regulate any good or service that doesn't cross state borders.

>The Federal Government shouldn't regulate any good or service that doesn't cross state borders.

Black people truly prosper when excluded from the local economy. Makes them feel like Real Mercans.

Wait, no! That other thing.

Do you understand the difference between deciding if people can smoke weed and discrimination? :/

I'm talking about whether or not the sale of a good or service is legal. An example of a service that is legal in some places and not others would be prostitution if you want an example.

There is a huge fucking difference between "Colorado can sell weed" and "Colorado can discriminate against people of color". You seem very, very confused on the difference between "people" and "a category of goods".

Shall I call you are a racist for equating black people with goods and services then?

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