CNBC Prog: Marijuana Inc. Inside America’s Pot Industry

[Von Rheydt]

Interesting, a huge problem.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232/?vid...5791780&play=1

[khc3]

We got WAY bigger problems than that.

[skyugo]

We got WAY bigger problems than that.

nah dude kids are gonna get high and like eat chips and play guitar or something. it's gonna be bad.

[bkb0000]

i'm in the wrong business...

[Bolt_Overide]

Maybe its just me, but I never understood why pot was illegal in the first place.

Ive never even tried it myself, but it seems to me that its really not any bigger deal than beer or booze, and we spend far too much money trying to combat it.

[thopkins22]

Maybe its just me, but I never understood why pot was illegal in the first place.

Racism, recently unemployed federal prohibition agents, and eventually sheer inertia.

[mr_smiles]

.....

[armakraut]

Maybe its just me, but I never understood why pot was illegal in the first place.

Ive never even tried it myself, but it seems to me that its really not any bigger deal than beer or booze, and we spend far too much money trying to combat it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqDdg...layer_embedded

When the government first tried to prohibit cannabis the AMA lobbied against it under the grounds that Doctors commonly prescribed marijuana.

People with vested interests and deep pockets seem to have both parties squarely in their pocket at the federal level.

[mr_smiles]

I'm not that big on the conspiracy theory that pharmaceutical companies are the reason for the drug war.

I'd argue that the penal system lobby is the biggest obstacle to legalization.

Since the war on drugs started our prison population has quadrupled, each individual is worth about $20k per year, so 2mil + prisoners equal a lot of dough. And when you take into account seizures by LE and the whole economy built up around drugs (not looking at the criminal side) you're talking over $100,000,000,000 per year. That puts any cartel to shame.

[armakraut]

That is a very astute observation. The prison industrial complex in California is a big time industry. The prison guard unions and probation department guys have a nice racket going on at the expense of the taxpayer, their liberty and their safety from real criminals.

We stack up so many bozos in Arizona prisons that need just go OD and die that real murders got thrown into what was originally intended to be a minimum security DUI-only jail, they got out and people died.

Druggies just want to get high. It would be cheaper to give them free drugs and a flop house until they OD and keel over rather than incarcerate them.