WHY WE
SHOULDN’T LEGALIZE GANJA:
Let’s get
something out of the way. There is no good reason for anyone to go to jail for
growing, selling, buying, possessing or smoking ganja. It’s a ridiculous waste
of human capital.
It is one of
the single worst ideas of the 20th century.
Having said
that, there are plenty of good reasons for not legalizing it.
SENSI-PHOBIA:
FEAR OF A GANJA PLANET
Most people
who fear the day ganja is legalized like to think that nations will descend
into orgies of cannabis consumption, paralyzing populaces and production. Needless to say, everyone who wants to smoke
weed does so regardless of the law and everyone who doesn’t want to smoke weed
is not going to do it just because it’s legal.
See alcohol prohibition.
Anyone who
fears the proliferation of pot propagation in the islands of the Eastern
Caribbean only need to consider that there is only one serious marijuana
producing nation among us and that’s not because its leaders tacitly support
it. It’s because St Vincent is just better suited, topographically, to ganja
planting and the rest of the islands can’t compete without heavy science on
their side. If St Vincent legalizes the growing and trade of ganja and does it
well, the rest of us will be planting weed in our backyard for home use.
The legalization
of marijuana could not, by any reasonable stretch, amount to the drugging up of
nations.
However,
there are dangerous side effects to legalization that everyone, especially
growers, vendors and cannabis consumers need to consider.
IF GANJA
BECOMES BIG BUSINESS, ALL IS LOST
Think about
this: If ganja is legalized and everyone, including big business can get in on
the game, the small timers will get screwed big time. Right now, marijuana is a
small timers industry. Small farmers, small distributors, small consumers.
There are no million dollar deals in the small island marijuana trade. A ten
thousand dollar deal, considered chump change in the cocaine world, is a very
big deal in Ganjaville.
Legalization
would probably wipe out the small timers and result in big tobacco companies
selling ganja in golden packets of pre-rolled, filtered ‘cigarettes’. Which, of
course, would defeat the real economic advantage of the ganja trade – which is
that it’s a bunch of small timers circulating quite a bit of cash in relatively
small transactions on a very regular basis. Like the peasant farmer banana
industry. Remember that?
Marijuana
revenues are also free from licensing and other taxes. The growing and
distribution of marijuana is beyond regulation and so benefits from not having
any regulatory administrative fees attached to the price of a five bag.
Legalization
would add unforeseen costs to five bags. And as everyone knows, five bags don’t
get more expensive. They get smaller.
Anyone who knows what a Gros Islet five bag looks like will agree that
five bags should NOT, under any circumstances, get smaller.
Now, it
might seem that with a little bit of creative price gouging, like what
merchants did to consumers, post-VAT, there would be more profits to be made
from marijuana, domestically.
But by the
laws of supply and demand, as well as the thing about purchasing parity and
advantages of scale, legalization would
result in reduced profit margins for planters, growers and vendors, while at
the same time, smokers would be getting smaller five bags. Not cool. Not cool
at all.
Because
there would be excellent revenues to be made on the medical marijuana end,
regulation and licensing of the marijuana trade would inevitably result in the
introduction of political corruption into ganja business. This, of course,
would further reduce profit margins and lead to people with political power
hoarding licenses for their friends, associates and pothead sons.
BETTER THAN
WE DID FOR BOOZE
And then,
there are the youth to consider. Most good ganja dealers will not sell weed to
secondary school students. However, there are enough of them who make ganja
available to young people that marijuana is almost as widely abused as alcohol
among the under 18 set.
The Colorado
experience with legalization has also taught the world some valuable lessons.
While legalization will save you millions on crime prevention, enforcement,
trials and imprisonment, it will also draw make ganja more popular and
available among impressionable young people who are, by no means, in a position
to decide such a thing for themselves.
Marijuana
WILL save the small island economies if it is legalized with great speed and
competitive aggression. It will help if it is legalized half-hearted and with
unnecessary delay. Hell, it helps now, when it is totally illegal. Without marijuana,
and cocaine, this economy would be officially sunk. Legalization is the only
logical conclusion.
But before
we do that, we must prepare to defend underage kids from it with far greater efficiency
than we protect them from alcohol.
In
conclusion, Eastern Caribbean ganja-philes don’t really care about legalization,
deep down inside. What they care about is the end of political, cultural,
religious and economic persecution. The only thing worse than legalization is
persecution.
The end of
persecution is all ganja-philes really want.
If small
island leaders actually get wise and start understanding what ganja means to
their economies, the very same ganja-philes who are calling for legalization
today will live to regret it.
Just imagine
Ralph Gonzalves’ and Kenny Anthony’s chief headhunters adding up the value of
the ganja trade and waking up to what they have been missing out on. Once they
see those multi-million dollar signs, they will be coming for us like lawyers circling
the sky around old peasant landowners. They will eat us alive.
What is
really needed is decriminalization that exploits ALL the benefits of marijuana
while vigorously defending against ALL its dangers – something we never did for
alcohol. We need special dispensations for growing hemp and medical marijuana,
strong penalties for selling to underage teens and people who intend to trade
our wonderfully legal ganja in places where it is still illegal.
We need new
social norms about when, where and around whom it is NOT COOL to smoke weed and
finally…
We need cops
to be working hard on higher priorities (you know, cocaine, murder, white
collar crime amongst politicians and professionals) and for the US Department
of State and the DEA to smoke a fucking joint and stop scaring Caribbean
leaders just so America can screw us over on ganja, the same way the bastards
did with bananas.
The end of
persecution. The protection of the youth. The aggressive integration of ganja
into the agricultural economy. The maintenance of good relations with friends
who don’t want to legalize.
You see? The
current generation of Caribbean leaders can’t pull it off. St Vincent is the
only country where the economic reality forces leaders to cut ganja some real
slack. The rest of them will sabotage and misguide the legalization effort,
because unlike Ralph, they just don’t get it.
And unless
St Vincent strikes out on its own, it will not legalize its number one cash
crop, because the current talks will fail. And if St Vincent fails, St Lucia
fails, because a very large percentage of the contribution of ganja to this
island’s economy stems from the fact that we are the only thing that stands
between them and the Euros to be made in Martinique.
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