The Problem with Legalized Pot

To the Editor ( March 12, 2010 )

The Problem with Legalized Pot

Can you guess what will happen if pot is made legal? Look at the history of tobacco and the cigarette industry then you will have a clue.

Immediately after the complicated law is passed, a few big companies will branch into the business of making joints and other pot products. If you think the law will simply make cannabis an uncontrolled substance you are dreaming. At the very lest there will be licenses required to grow it and taxes to be paid on selling it.

Did you ever stop to ask; why we don’t have small time tobacco growers and cigarette makers? Big business tends to drive out small operations with legal, if unfair, tactics. We can expect a similar pattern of progress in the pot industry. In a decade or less a few big companies will control most of it. They will naturally lobby for new laws to increase standards of pot products. This is a time honored tactic to make the products impossible for smaller businesses to competitively produce, not really a consumer friendly concern. We can hope that the big boys will make safe joints, omitting the harmful chemicals found in cigarettes. But we know they will make their products as cheep and addictive as the law allows; that is just common business practice.

Now what about organized crime? Once pot is legal we may expect to see it decline. Organized business will come to dominate and we may see millions of investment dollars coming into Canada to support our new pot industry. But what if other countries, in particular the USA, do not legalize it also? Organized crime, especially smuggling, becomes prime. Read your Prohibition history closely; in the 1920-30s alcohol was illegal in the USA but not in Canada. Those were very good times for some Canadian entrepreneurs, would the same happen again in the case of legalized pot? Or would our American neighbors freak and call us a drug dealing, anti-democratic, den of thieves.

Im not for or against pot, what I want is for people to think clearly about what is likely to happen if we do legalize it.

Thanks for your attention