U.S. Customs busted a big ol’ truckload of weed — 14 tons — a couple of weeks ago in California, a state whose voters long ago approved legal medical marijuana. Speculation was floating around that it may have been destined for Oregon or Washington, whose voters have also approved legal medical marijuana.
On just this one bust, the federal government has spent thousands of tax dollars that could have been invested in jobs or infrastructure. And they’ll spend tens of thousands more before the case is over.
Between warehousing, transportation, insurance, security, loading and unloading, legal costs, administrative costs, prison costs, and the cost of holding press conferences and shows for the media, they must have blown $50,000 on this in the last two weeks. And that bill goes up every day.
As for the weed: Its wholesale value, according to some big authority at U.S. Customs who used to know someone whose ex-girlfriend’s cousin’s college roommate’s brother had a friend that smoked once in the 1970s, is $807 per pound, $22.6 million. Not hardly.
The retail value, after a casual survey of real-world dispensaries on the west coast, and not from firsthand knowledge or anything, I swear, is really about $10 per gram. $127,000,000. One hundred and twenty-seven million dollars in taxable revenue removed from our sputtering economy *snap!* just like that. That’s a lot of economic recovery to just piss away, ain’t it? Sorta makes me mad.
I’m sure you get the idea. With all the unemployment and all the poverty in this country, does it make a shred of sense anymore to let this kind of money slip out of circulation? The one simple act of legalizing marijuana can help put this country into a boom economy. Immediately. What the bloody hell are we waiting for?
Congress has a bill up in front of them — HR-2306 — http://prohibitionsend.com/2011/06/23/text-of-bill-hr-2306-ending-federal-marijuana-prohibition-act-of-2011/ that would effectively put an end to this protracted uncivil war on much of middle-class America. Everyone in North America knows someone who uses marijuana, whether they know who it is or not! Your neighbor, your uncle Normie, the girl at the espresso stand, the pizza guy (yes, even Herman Cain) — people all around you have smoked or currently do smoke pot! I personally know at least four current or former elected officials who’ve smoked pot.
What possible harm could come out of legalizing the hundred-billion-dollar annual trade in a domestic crop that grows in all fifty states, and is sustainable? We’re talking about reviving the American economy. We should literally be starting in our own backyards! (So plant your victory garden today!)
Passing this bill would also immediately put law enforcement agents all over the country on more serious cases! I haven’t seen one legitimate argument why marijuana should NOT be legalized!
The passage of this bill might even spring some of the marijuana Customs and the DEA have seized and not disposed of yet as well. They’re sitting on a cash cow right now. I’m sure any licensed, tax-paying, law-abiding medical marijuana co-op in the United States would gladly buy it at a Customs auction in a New York minute.
Call your stick-up-the-ass U.S. Representative and tell them to help CREATE JOBS in your neighborhood TODAY by co-sponsoring HR-2306, else they’re gonna lose their jobs.
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