But they missed, or sidestepped, a few important things IMO. One of the most widely read posts The Mud Report has done is titled 'The #1 Reason Why Harper Won't Legalize Pot in Canada', thousands of folks have read it from all around the world. Of course the reason is that Canada's small time mom and pop marijuana industry is powering the rural economies all across Canada, not just in BC. The authorities themselves estimate the value at $7 billion in BC alone, that's a lotta money. And the vast majority of BC pot is grown by small scale growers not organized crime.
The growers earning $200,000 a year that Chris interviewed last night don't really qualify as small scale IMO. Most folks earn far less, more in the $20,000 range. More like a mortgage interest helper or a way one of the parents can stay home to raise the kids. And their bemoaning the competition from a new wave of outlaws made them even less likable, at least to me.
None-the-less, when mom and pop growers spend their loonies it's at local stores, on bills and at the grocery market not the stock market. But whoever grows them every plant takes huge amounts of labour to grow and process. Even the criminal types with the warehouses employ tens if not hundreds of people each somewhere during production. All those people have families and when all those thousands of outlaws spend their money in the local community it creates lottsa other jobs, a lot more than pipelines do. In the end the tax boys get their cut as the dough circulates around the economy so it's no loss to the government in the long run. Instead folks just get to use it for awhile before taxes soak it all up.
One question that comes up all the time is:
Q.- Wouldn't legalizing pot simply turn it into just another commodity produced and profited from by large corporations, financed by large banks, and taxed to death by governments all of which would result in higher prices, lower quality and exported shareholder profits.
A. - Yes
Someday, like the other outdated 'boogie men' we've been manipulated to fear in the past - gambling, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, etc. - the 'sin' of pot will go up in smoke and the government will use it as another source of revenue. Until then 'we the people' can enjoy our tokes and our green economy secure in the knowledge that whenever it's legalized it'll become just another crappy plastic corporate commodity.
