A Zogby poll released today found that 52% of Americans think marijuana should be sold as a legal, taxed, regulated substance.
The people of the Commonwealth overwhelmingly favor decriminalized marijuana and voted it into law (65-35 was the vote). Legal sales (proposed by House Bill 2929 and Senate Bill 1801) might contribute $180 million in annual revenue to the state.
Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger leads the country on this even without the kind of cover the 65-35 margin offers Massachusetts leaders:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that the discussion over whether to legalize and tax marijuana for recreational use in California would benefit from a large-scale study, including international case comparisons, to show the possible impact of such a change.
The Great Depression took beer from a constitutionally forbidden substance to a tasty breakfast beverage helpful partner at Red Sox games (we voted to remove a constitutionally protected right to be free from alcohol, but I digress). The Great Recession might take marijuana the far smaller required statutory distance. Seems like a pretty simple equation to me. At a minimum, we should see if we can participate in California’s proposed study.
tblade says
I’m not sure I like the idea of government getting their hands and layering a brand new bureaucracy over the marijuana industry, and I see a lot of potential with corruption and graft and such.
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p>Of course, I have no idea how this would happen and have no productive suggestion. I just think an actual tax and regulation structure, at this time, would just be too cumbersome to make it worth our collective whiles. Then again, I have no evidential basis to support my opinion, so, who knows.
bob-neer says
You prefer freelance drug dealers hanging around in the shadows of local parks to local liquor stores and the DOR?
marcus-graly says
People assume it’s just aging hippies and college students who are growing and selling the stuff, but in fact, like with all narcotics, big cartels are the main players and there is significant violence involved, both in its production and its distribution. There are public lands in California where you can be shot dead if you wander off the the trail and happen onto a pot field. Not to mention the significant surge of murders and kidnappings both in Mexico and the Southwest. Much of that trade and its associated turf wars is marijuana. Legalizing and regulating it would sharply reduce violence in both our country and in Mexico. That is pretty much undeniable. To not do so for fear of graft on the part of the regulators would be morally reprehensible.
mcrd says
hoyapaul says
I doubt it would remain much of a “criminal enterprise.” Sure, some people would still grown their own and distribute small amounts without collecting taxes, but the massive criminal conspiracies would be run out of business. The same occurred with alcohol.
tblade says
Take a laissez-faire-ish approach and allow people to produce their own pot for personal use via their own gardens and green houses. Allow people to distribute relatively small amounts without severe penalty and make the major infractions monetary penalties.
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p>I, being under-informed and under-educated on this subject, am just skeptical that this proposed new Pot Control Board/DOR could earn enough revenue to make it worth the trouble, let alone be a source of positive cash flow for the state.
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p>I mean, even with this new regulated structure people are still going to look to “bootleg” marijuana crops to avoid taxes and keep costs low for their customers. What incentive do people have to participate in the sanctioned system when the guy down the street is half the price or if they have a friend with his own garden that can supply the occasional low quantities for light users? Or why not just grow the stuff myself?
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p>The problem here is with the big-time distributors, right? The guys at the upper end of the chain who probably don’t even live in MA, making millions of dollars in an underground economy and fomenting murder and violence, etc? I wonder if making the marijuana much more accessible to the end users via decriminalization would drive business away from these big guys and alleviate many of the ills the tax and regulate plan seeks to address?
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p>For example, growing your own pot seems easier than brewing your own beer. I like craft beer, but it seems like way too much of an investment of time, money, and resources for too small a yield for me to create a “tblade Ale” to significantly replace my package store visits, so I go down to the store and pay $8.00 – $9.00 for a six pack. If I could brew my own well-crafted, tasty beer easily and for a cost of say $2.00 – $3.00 for the same quantity, I’d spend far less time dealing with the packie and funnel fewer dollars into the regional distributors and the breweries.
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p>Now, it seems like pot cultivating far more accessible to the common user, or to a group of users, then beer brewing. But pot users have the negative incentives of jail time, property seizure, and financial burdens to not do it.
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p>This is just me wondering out loud. I guess I would favor a comparative look at case studies of various permissive marijuana laws around the world and see what works where and what sort-of works and can be improved upon.
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p>——————–
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p>And as an aside, alcohol isn’t the only analogy to a marijuana tax and regulate scheme. I don’t like how cozy our government is with the tobacco industry, how it was (is?) subsidized by taxpayers, and how dependent our economy is on the tobacco crop. I don’t think that the pot industry will ever be the behemoth that big tobacco is, but the tobacco example is something I consider when object to the government getting their hands into another substance.
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p>Bottom line: yeah, I’m for a radical change in the business of pot. It’s just that the tax and regulate idea seems too easy, too good to be true and we should thoroughly examine an array of models before we jump behind one plan.
kirth says
“… even with this new regulated structure people are still going to look to “bootleg” marijuana crops to avoid taxes and keep costs low for their customers.”
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p>There used to be tobacco farms in Massachusetts, and no doubt you could still grow the stuff here if you wanted to. Where’s the underground tobacco-growing industry helping smokers avoid taxes and keeping costs down? If a thoroughly addicted market like tobacco smokers hasn’t prompted the creation of a massive bootleg supply industry, potheads aren’t going to, either.
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p>The overwhelming bulk of the cost of marijuana is the markup laid on the price by every person in the distribution chain. Do you really think that Seagrams or A.P. Lorillard could not manage to deliver a carton of taxed, pre-rolled joints far more cheaply than the neighborhood dealer can?
tblade says
I imagine bootleg tobacco doesn’t happen so often because of volume of use.
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p>If people only smoked a cigarette or a hand-full of cigarettes per week/month, as seems to be the case with marijuana users, then yes, I think someone could have a little farm stand that sold corn on the cob, tomatoes, and loose tobacco that people could home roll and it would be cheap. Alas, people are hauling down 20-40 cigarettes a day so it just wont work.
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p>What is the average for marijuana use? Yeah, the stereotypical college-aged “pothead” might consume a lot, but what about your run-of-the-mill recreational user? 3 Joints per week? Some people it’s 1 per week or maybe just 1 or two a month. I have to imagine a fair amount of those people could be self-sufficient if they weren’t afraid of State Police raids and the losing of their homes.
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p>
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p>I have no idea. People like to consume marijuana through other methods other than the joint, so I don’t know how feasible pre-rolled joints would be. Maybe Seagram’s or Phillip Morris could out-hustle the neighborhood dealer and make do-it-yourselfers, but I don’t know that they can.
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p>I freely admit that I could be dead wrong and the corporatization of marijuana may be the way to go. Some people by their corn on the cob from Bird’s Eye in the freezer section of the grocery store, others get their corn from hometown roadside farm stands just feet away from where the corn is grown; I see no reason, other than “conventional wisdom”, as to why the corporate “Bird’s Eye/Seagram’s” model would work better than alternative models. All I’m saying is that I don’t automatically accept that what seems to me to be an overly simple proposal is the best and only way to improve the marijuana situation.
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p>Let’s see alternative models (I’m not an economist and my model may suck, but at the least it’s an alternative). There’s plenty of time to jump on the bandwagon later after competing models fall by the wayside and the strongest idea stands out.
tblade says
Emendation: One point I neglected to make about frozen Bird’s Eye corn on the cob and farm stand corn is that local farm stand corn on the cob is better quality for less money.
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p>No, I know that farm stand corn being cheaper than the frozen grocery store corn is superficial anecdotal evidence to support my thought that local “bootleg” pot growers will have cheaper product than a “Bird’s Eye/Seagram’s” mass produced marijuana product, but it is relevant because now we have two competing models: (a) the booze companies who can deliver cheaper and better products than the local guy with a bathtub gin still versus (b) the local farm stand guy (alias: neighborhood corn dealer) who can beat Bird’s Eye in quality and price.
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p>In the end, model (a) may be far more applicable than model (b), but I don’t think there’s been a full public vetting and the fact that a model (b) exists makes me hesitant to blindly accept model (a) as the best course of action.
ryepower12 says
government corruption re: marijuana can’t be anything remotely as bad as the current black market corruption. I’d rather turf wars in the courts than in the streets. Legalizing it would almost certainly reduce crime, not contribute to it, as well as making it safer and creating a substantial amount of revenue for the state in the process. It’s really a win, win, win.
thombeales says
Only if it includes the gov’s junk food tax. Dude I so have the munchies.
david says
mcrd says
Oh—ya—–that is just limited to cigarettes/tobacco and other stuff. Marijuana ia actually good for you.
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p>How about kids smoking the stuff?—-Oh—it will be against the law for kids to smoke it in grade school/Jr High and HS—–right
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p>This is simply a calamity in the making. The rule of unintended consequence.
regularjoe says
Isn’t this the precise situation we are dealing with in regards to booze? Are you an advocate for bringing back prohibition?
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p>BTW marijuana can be ingested too, you need not smoke it if you are concerned with the adverse consequences to your lungs.
old-scratch says
the state regulates alcohol. Sales to minors verbotten, you can get pinched for driving high the same way you can get pinched for driving drunk, etc., etc.
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p>I’d love to see a scenario in which cities/towns throughout the Commonwealth allowed Amsterdam-style coffee houses where law-abiding citizens could purchase the chronic.
ryepower12 says
when opposite political spectrums meet full circle.
kbusch says
You’d expect libertarian conservatives to agree with liberals on this stuff.
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p>It’s still nice, though.
old-scratch says
the number of rock-ribbed GOPers who think the War on Drugs (WoD (TM)) is a crock of shite. I know I was.
lodger says
We get to sit next to each other.
regularjoe says
is this the circle of which you speak?
stomv says
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p>2. Just how much can we tax it? This is actually tricky. You can’t tax too high, or people just go back to the old non-taxed methods of distribution.
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p>3. Given that it looks like the FDA is finally going to get some say over cigarettes, what makes you think it’s a good idea to legalize pot, given the harm to lungs?
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p>4. Related to (2), how many tax agents do we need to create to crack down on bootleggers?
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p>5. What are the risks, both physical and mental, of second hand smoke?
pbrane says
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p>2. See my post below. I don’t buy the stuff but I’m guessing there are a few people here who could tell you where the market is.
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p>3. Are you proposing a ban on cigarette’s, alcohol and gambling? Why treat pot differently?
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p>4. The state should sell the stuff. The cops should arrest those selling it illegally, which ought to be a significantly easier task than it is now since the price and potential profit from selling it should go way down if legalized.
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p>5. It should not be allowed to be used in public places.
old-scratch says
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p>2. Slap a reasonable sales tax on any commercially-sold chronic. No sweat. If grass were legalized, it’s price would PLUMMET. Pushers want big margins. There would be a miniscule margin for weed if it’s legalized, and surely any tax on commercially-sold weed would be low enough people would rather pay that than do business with the local pusher.
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p>And let’s not forget you could also grow your own . . . but there’s a parallel for that: home brewing. I can legally home brew up to XXX gallons of beer in my own home, free and clear of any financial obligations to Big Brother.
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p>3. It’s my body. It’s my business what I put into it. FDA: go f*ck yourself.
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p>4. See the “home brewing parallel” section of my #2, above.
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p>5. Who cares? It’s not like you waltz into a coffee shop in Amsterdam if you’re “concerned with the physical and mental risks” of second-hand pot smoke. I can’t imagine a legalization scenario which would make firing up a jimmy at the 99 Restaurant AOK.
kbusch says
If I’m not mistaken, weed appears to be much less dangerous to the lungs than tobacco. It may even have some anti-cancer effects. Unfortunately, all evidence has to be anecdotal.
old-scratch says
That cigarette smokers and grass tokers don’t smoke their products in the same way. Besides the obvious (no roach clips for Cowboy Killers), your garden-variety pothead isn’t going to go through a 20-joint pack of Marlboro Green & Toasties per day, or even per week, or even per month . . . whereas your garden-variety Marlboro Red smoker might puff through a 20-cig pack per day.
mcrd says
But marijuana is OK? Subjecting children or anyone else to marijuana smoke is OK? State sponsored sale and distribution of a narcotic for recreational use in spite of health hazards for everyone even remotely associated
is now condoned? Adding another mind altering drug for general consumption by potential operators of machinery, automobiles and aircraft will have to tolerated as a risk/ benefit calculation?
mr-lynne says
… Its irresponsible of those damn liberals to advocate making marijuana unregulated and legal while simultaneously advocating making smoking tobacco illegal!
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p>Oh wait… that’s not what they are saying at all. Oh well, thought I could support your srawman there for a second.
old-scratch says
Plain and simple.
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p>Answer me this: if a woman’s right to privacy, as it concerns to matters relating to her own body, forms the legal foundation that makes it quite legal to kill an unborn fetus inside her womb, how does my right to privacy, as it concerns to matters relating to my own body, NOT form the legal foundation that makes it quite legal to smoke weed if I want to do that?
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p>Directly subjecting others to the effects of something I do myself is another question entirely, and should not form the basis of making that thing legal or illegal. You cannot make a grand leap from “making marijuana legal” to “if marijuana were legal, people would be blowing smoke in a child’s face or driving front-end loaders or flying planes while baked.”
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p>C’mon.
pbrane says
A thousand times yes. In fact, why not sell it through state run outlets a la liquor stores in NH. That way the tax is the difference between the wholesale and the retail price and you would avoid the likely corruption filled process of awarding licenses to sell the stuff. This would bring in substantially more revenue than a sales/excise tax and allow for tighter regulation on distribution.
john-beresford-tipton says
Alcoholic beverages and cigarettes are produced in complex processes. Anything made at home is in small batches. That makes them relatively easy to find and tax. Marijuana grows anywhere. In underdeveloped countries it and betel nut are the medicines for the problems of the elderly because they work and are cheap or free.
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p>Tax it and people will just grow it in their backyards and sell it to neighbors. I have no problem with legalizing the stuff, but taxing it is too difficult.
kirth says
I wouldn’t say so, and I used to roll my own filter-tip cigarettes. In fact, producing a marijuana cigarette would be a nearly-identical process. I repeat my reminder that tobacco used to be grown here, but even today’s overwhelming tax burden hasn’t prompted people to grow their own tobacco.
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p>Taxing pot is not any more difficult than for liquor or cigarettes.
power-wheels says
MGL ch 64K deals with the controlled substances tax. The current tax rate is $3.50 per gram of marihuana, $200 per gram of other controlled substance, or $2,000 per fifty units of a controlled substance not sold by weight. The returns are confidential.
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p>Of course, possession is illegal (or used to be at least) so people who are disregarding the criminal laws are probably not filing tax returns. But the tax laws are already on the books complete with definitions, procedures for collection, procedures for audit and assessment, and penalties. So it’s really only the criminal laws that have to be changed.
old-scratch says
remnant of the 1930s-era federal legislation that didn’t criminalize weed outright, but set a tax on it, then made paying that tax nearly impossible, thereby de facto making grass illegal?
power-wheels says
The legislative history indicates that Ch. 64K was passed in 1993. Paying the tax under the chapter is fairly simple, and very similar to paying the cigarette tax. You buy stamps from the DOR and attach them to the product you’re selling. And your tax returns are confidential.
lanugo says
I am all for studying it. I do wonder however, whether there is a parallel here to debates about casino gambling. Polls generally show people in favor of allowing casinos as well, as many states have already, taxing them heavily and regulating them closely.
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p>Of course the economic and social equation with a controlled substance like marijuana and an activity such as casino gambling is not necessarily analogous – but the financial imperative to generate more cash in desperate fiscal times from legalizing and taxing such vices is largely similar.
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p>Many Bay Staters gamble legally now, just in other states. Many Bay States also smoke weed now, illegally, in their homes or otherwise. New casinos would create some jobs, not necessarily good ones, but in Massachusetts though. I really don’t know what the job creation potential of pot agriculture would be here, although I know in some places in America, Eastern Kentucky, parts of So Cal, its already a major cash crop. We tax the hell out of cigarettes but we don’t grow the stuff here. Is there a “budding” marijuana industry ready to spring forth from the hills of Worcester County? Maybe so, but I don’t see picking buddha as paying much or hash growers setting up defined-benefit pension plans for their pickers.
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p>Let’s face it: a lot of liberal antipathy to casino gambling is really cultural. Its tacky low brow stuff that for many of us seems out of place in enlightened Massachusetts. I’ve always had a visceral distaste for the idea. We can make all the arguments in the world about its social costs but a cultural conservative could just as easily point to studies pointing to the cons of marijuana legalization (gateway drug, etc…). How one sees the merits of the argument stems from your instinctive tastes and cultural biases. For some reason many of us liberals are more comfortable with a vision of people with beards hitting their local CVS for a dime bag then they are with some granny blowing her social security check at the slots. But we are kidding ourselves if we think regular pot use doesn’t have downsides, just as gambling does (or booze or buts do) – there just different downsides.
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p>For my part, I don’t smoke or bet but know people who do both. My gut feelings toward each activity are largely irrational and likely hypocritical. I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of sense to say marijuana is a vice we should legalize and tax and casino gambling is one we shouldn’t. People do both anyway. I just know for some reason I am more comfortable with one then the other. The wider public though seems to accept both these days. So study away, but whatever the results, expect the debate to be wrapped in cultural innuendo. All the while, the general public suggests that they see such vices as subject to adult decision-making and that, if not considered upstanding behaviour, it certainly should be taxable. Thus, let us judge right and wrong by size of the levies we place on such human transgressions.
bob-neer says
As the Herald reported last month:
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p>
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p>The politically liberal position, insofar as a majority of Massachusetts voters are liberal, which I suppose most would agree, is to be pro-casino.
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p>The philosophically liberal position, which is generally to be tolerant and to let diversity flourish, is also pro-casino as I interpret it.
ryepower12 says
doesn’t say anything about liberal or conservative.
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p>And there have been plenty of polls taken over the past year or so which weren’t nearly as friendly to the industry. The last poll that should ever be trusted should be a Barrow poll. The guy’s an industry stooge.
lanugo says
I’m sure the majority of Massachusetts voters don’t identify as liberals – not by a stretch – even in our so-called liberal state. Independents are the political majority and many may be socially libertarian but that doesn’t make em liberal.
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p>And I’d bet ya anything that support for casinos among self-identified liberals is far below what it is among moderates and likely conservatives in the Bay State.
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p>Think about opinion on BMG, a heavily progressive site. It runs hard against casinos. So no, casinos are most definitely not a liberal issue. Liberals don’t like em, weed on the other hand…
bob-neer says
“Liberal” isn’t a political party in this country (except in NY, where the Liberal Party is a fringe party), it’s a political philosophy. It is perfectly possible to be Democrat, Independent, or Republican in Massachusetts and still be a liberal. I’ll grant you there probably aren’t many Republican liberals in Massachusetts, but there certainly are a lot of Democrats who are not liberal.
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p>As to opinion on BMG about casinos, my personal observation is that it is pretty evenly split. In fact, I think there might be a slight majority in favor of a single resort casino provided there is a community that wants it and it was guaranteed to bring in money. The casino opponents are very passionate, but the comments are varied. What there is overwhelming opposition to is “racinos” and slot parlors because, I think, people don’t see them adding much in terms of economic value and having a lot of social costs.
jeanne says
it’s that there are no guarantees that any organization will “bring in money.” There might be a one-time hit in up-front licensing fees, etc from building a casino. But, once you get past the initial hit, you are stuck with a casino and the hope that it stays profitable. It might be profitable forever, a cash cow for the state. I have my doubts…
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p>In the current economic environment, plenty of casinos are hurting as people have less income to gamble with. I imagine we will suffer another economic downturn and I imagine it will hurt a hypothetical casino in this state. A casino can go bankrupt. Just ask Trump. What are we left with then? All the ills of a casino (crime, low-wage jobs, declining property values…) with none of the benefits.
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p>Casinos could be part of the solution to our short-term woes, but at what long-term cost?
hoyapaul says
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p>No way — I’d take your bet any day of the week. I cannot find a poll breaking down ideological views on gambling in Massachusetts, but I can almost guarantee you that liberals would have the most support for casino gambling, followed closely by moderates, and then conservatives with much less support.
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p>Two recent polls asking about gambling in Ohio (link here, on page 6) and Texas (link) illustrate that breakdown. In Ohio, for example, fully 77% of self-described liberals favored casino gambling (as opposed to only 22% opposed). The numbers for moderates was 70%/28%, but for conservatives it was only 43%/57%!.
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p>Those are just a couple of recent polls I quickly found in a few minutes, but I am nearly certain that a similar breakdown would be the case in Mass. (and every other state) as well.
ryepower12 says
casinos don’t really generate cash — they suck them out of the local economy. Up to 75% of every dime a casino brings in (not even its profits, just the money flowing into them) was already flowing in the local economy. It’s not new revenue, just revenue going from Kelly’s to Harrah’s. Now, maybe some people wouldn’t care about that, but when local businesses start to go under, please remember that they’re a) the lifeblood of any community and b) money spent at local businesses has a big multiplier effect.
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p>Casinos =! smoking pot. You can’t just look at both of them as issues of “vice.” You have to start looking at issues in terms of policy, seeing how they effect society. You have to look at costs associated with each, how they impact economies, etc. It’s clear that when looking at casinos from a policy perspective, they’re bad policy. They don’t create new revenue, they just suck money that was flowing in the local economy into the vacuum. I want policies that make Massachusetts better. Casinos don’t do that. Legalizing and taxing pot would reduce crime, take it out of the hands of illegal drug cartels and put it into the hands of small business entrepreneurs and it would make the drug safer and allow purchasers to know exactly what they’re buying.
lanugo says
And as I said in my comment, I recognize the comparison is not a direct one and that you can make a perfectly good argument for one and not the other – as you have. But I also think where people come down on these issues has as much to do with their worldview as it does with the facts. People’s interpretation of facts often fits with their gut instincts.
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p>For every liberal who sees casinos as a destroyer of local economies and scourge of the disadvataged, there are just as many conservatives who see legalizing marijuana as a gateway to a more drug addled and licentious society. To be frank some of those same conservatives don’t like casinos on moral grounds. Are they more consistent than we?
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p>One thing I don’t get is your presumption that, if legalized, pot would be controlled by small business entrepreneurs – like some Jeffersonian vision of the small freeholder with a hooka. I accept that if legalized you wouldn’t have people capped on the street corners for control of local trade, but what makes you think pot wouldn’t end up in the hands of major corporate interests, just like tobacco and gambling have? If there is money to be made, why would marijuana lend itself to small business domination any more than any other agricultural commodity does? You think Philip Morris wouldn’t see it as an opportunity?
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p>
ryepower12 says
I look at how it’s worked in other countries. But even if it were controlled by big corporations, so what? Way better than the black market no matter how you slice it. (Phillip Morris and other cigarette companies are in large part responsible for making pot illegal — so, no, I don’t see them getting involved.)
gp2b3a says
Boston/Massachusetts is a major tourism center. Conventions are also a major attractor of out of state residents. In my travels, I have never layed down 300$ on a bar in San Fran and “let it ride” losing it all in one fell swoop. I have lost hundreds of dollars in Las Vegas. A casino would bring in new revenues that otherwise would not have been spent by our tourists. Travelers part much faster with money in casinos than they do in bars/restaraunts. So you can provide all the infrastructure for tourists needed such as police,fire,transportation, and have them pay more or less for those services they receive. A casino would encourage tourists/visitors to leave higher ratios of their income in state vs taking it back home hence helping us to pay for the much needed infrastructure needed to support all of the tourism we see here.
ryepower12 says
would be from money already spent in the economy. It may bring in some new revenue, but at the cost to our other local businesses. We could legalize and push other things that would bring in the same in new revenue — without hurting our small businesses or increasing addiction.
jkw says
If we were talking about legalizing crack, your argument would make sense. But pot isn’t nearly as addictive and has a very different effect on people. Smoking pot mostly makes people calmer, which means they aren’t likely to go around hurting other people or committing crimes while under its influence. I don’t know how much pot is typically consumed by active users, but I don’t get the impression that it is large quantities. It also comes from a plant that grows very well with minimal effort, so if it was legal it would be cheap. Which means that people won’t be spending all their money on pot if it is legalized.
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p>As for marijuana being a gateway drug, that is primarily caused by it being illegal. Tobacco is more addictive and alcohol has worse effects on the body. The only reason that they aren’t gateway drugs is that you can buy them legally. Buying and using marijuana is illegal, but not very harmful. It makes people question how bad other illegal drugs are, because there is clearly no rational reason for marijuana to be illegal. Also, you can probably buy other drugs from the same places you can buy marijuana. The fact that marijuana is an argument in favor of making it illegal, not the other way around.
lanugo says
My comment was about perceptions and not realities. That more than fact shapes people’s views on these issues.
johnt001 says
My town recently passed a by-law which effectively re-criminalizes marijuana – they’ve made consumption of marijuana on town property a crime. Talk about a solution in search of a problem! I voted against it in the town meeting when it was adopted, but I was one of only a handful of folks opposed to it.
ryepower12 says
The police chief made a motion at town meeting attempting to make being caught smoking pot on public property into a $300 crime fine.
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p>Town Meeting found that offensively high, and voted for an amendment to reduce it to $50, which is the rate for being caught drinking alcohol on public property.
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p>The guy who made the amendment had a pretty funny quote:
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joets says
Would companies still be allowed to test for and potentially reject potential hired because of a positive test for it?
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p>I can tell you from tons of personal experience that there is a difference in productivity and quality between a worker who smokes a bowl before coming in and the guy who doesn’t.
joets says
bob-neer says
Is that what you are saying 😉
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p>If the substance was legal, I don’t think there would be any reasonable basis for an employer to test for it. But, I’m no expert on employment law. Maybe they could.
david says
I mean, if someone keeps coming to work hammered, he can certainly be fired. Which suggests that not being drunk is a reasonable job requirement. Which suggests that blowing a breathalyzer on your way in might be reasonable, especially if the job involved driving heavy equipment, or messing with nuclear launch codes, or something like that.
stomv says
A breathalyzer does a pretty good job of measuring if you’re intoxicated right now. My understanding is that pot tests measure if you’ve used within the past month (or 6 months, or whatever), not if you’re high right now.
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p>Does a bio/chemical test exist to determine if a person is high on mary jane right now?
david says
So that’s an interesting point. If the substance is legal, seems to me you shouldn’t fire someone for using it on his/her own time. But I don’t know that you can’t fire them on that basis. This has actually come up with respect to cigarettes, … and the company that fired the people who smoked on their own time got a lot of probably unwanted attention for it, though AFAIK what it did was legal.
kirth says
The half-life of marijuana in a user’s system is between 1.3 and 10 days, depending on whether the subject is a frequent or infrequent user.
http://www.healthcentral.com/d…
kirth says
http://www.drugalcoholtest.com…
kirth says
If your employee is not satisfactory, get a different one. Does it matter why the employee is unsatisfactory?
joets says
gary says
In the Union context, ‘last chance’ contracts are fairly common.
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p>The employer often, with union cooperation, is given a ‘last chance’. The last chance contract has certain stipulations, one common one being, the employee agrees to zero use of a particular drug (alcohol, narcotics, whatever…) and further agrees to testing, at any time while on the job with clear language that a positive test means dismissal.
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p>Actual case: A positive test for alcohol at .01 (i.e. very low), even though consumed by the employee the previous night ? Fired for cause. As a result, in that particular case, he even lost right to unemployment benefits.