Bitey said:
Here is a story for you guys.
In California it is legal to have on you and smoke a certain amount of marijuana, I don’t know the exact amount but it might be enough to fill up a very small bowl. Anyways, my story comes from a businesswoman that had just returned from Afghanistan. She went to California for a little R&R and was on the beach smoking a cigarette. She looks around at people and notices a guy putting some marijuana in a bowl and lighting it up. The guy smokes it for a while and a cop comes walking up, the cop says to the guy, “Hey, you got anymore of that?”, the guys says, “No officer this is all I had sorry man.”, the officer says thats OK and tells him to enjoy the rest of his day. The cop then walks over to the woman and writes her a $150 dollar fine for “smoking a cigarette on the beach”. I don’t get it, can anyone enlighten me? From what I can tell, it is illegal to smoke cigarettes on the beach but you can smoke marijuana if you want to?
On a side note, the only reason I know for not legalizing marijuana is the fact that there is no way that the government can tax it. Because of the fact that there are so many ways that it makes its way into the US. I don’t think the issue is whether it is “right or wrong”, I think it is the fact that the government can’t get “their share” of the money moving through. No one can really say that being a “pot head” is right or wrong, that is a life choice, the only time I would say it is wrong is when being a “pot head” gets in the way of your job, family, health, friends, and responsibilities. When smoking stops you and/or keeps you from what you need to do for any of those things, then it is time to stop smoking, in my opinion.
Agreed. Except for the part on taxing. The majority of marijuana circulating in the united states is made here at home, by domestic growers. There is something like 300,000 to 400,000 commercial marijuana growers according to a statistic floating around. The majority of them aren’t from California, but are in the “Marijuana belt” which basically encompasses much of the Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia area all the way towards th edge of Kansas and Arkansas. Alot of farmers and people who claim to be farmers hide much of their product in corn fields or some where secret on their large patches of land. The economics of marijuana are also pretty fascinated. We already know that it is the number one cash crop in America. Even when it’s not taxed it’s still affecting the economy, and not necessarily in a bad way. If it was legalized, you could tax it in any store that decided to sell it. And it’s not like marijuana users are evil people, that want to skip out on taxes. They encompass a broader range of society than that. I know doctors, businessmen, and teachers who all happen to enjoy a toke every once and a while. And they would gladly pay a tax if it was legal.