( re: singsing0911 How do think we feel in NYC? ROF isn't on the AAR "Flagship" station anymore, really messes up my Caturday like you wouldn't believe.)

The below is x-posted from elsewhere, looking for some feedback on it.... thanks!

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The Economics Of Marijuana v. Tobacco, A Primer

The Propagnda War on Marijuana is not just driven by keeping the arrest rate at a 750,000+ a year level, there's a lot of money involved in it too, what with it being the largest cash crop in the United States of America.

Why that is is because the 'vig', if you will, the mark-up is insanely high, and I'd like to demonstrate this by comparing the cost of tobacco to that of marijuana.

I live in New York City, where thanks to the machinations of Mayor Mike, the price for a pack of cigarettes is an astronomical $7.50 a pack, which means my annual habit is around is just under $3K a year.

Or, more accurately, it was, since I found a way to legally cut that cost by over 75%.

I pay just about $1.00 a pack now.

The way I do it is that I found a little $10 dollar machine that makes filtered cigarettes that are indistinguishable from the Marllboros and Camel Filters that I used to buy daily.

Part of this is that I buy my tobacco in bulk now and I pay, (with all NYC taxes paid), just over $16 dollars a pound or about $1 dollar an ounce.

Of course, I need the filter tubes to make this work and they go for about $4.00 a carton, (again, with all NYC taxes paid), and it takes about 3 cartons per pound of tobacco.

Generally, I pay just about $30.00 for all these supplies, so my average cost per carton of cigarettes works out to about $10.00 a carton, or a buck a pack.

Now compare this with the retail street price of marijuana.

A quick search on Google, and questioning some people directly sets that price at $400.00 per ounce, pretty much nationwide in the USA.

So...

$400 * 16 = $6,400 for a pound of marijuana.

Which means that a pound of marijuana in the United States costs roughly 400 times what a pound of tobacco retails for.

Now, please bear in mind that tobacco is a notoriously difficult plant to grow successfully, but yet it's still commercially viable plant that can sell for $16.00 a pound.

Marijauna, on the other hand is incredibly easy to grow, but good luck trying to find anybody that wil sell you a pound of it for just under $20 dollars.

$6,400 a pound.

That's some mark-up for a plant that grows freely in the ground.

Now I'm in no way suggesting that the growers and dealers are in cahoots with the government in keeping it illegal, but if you had a business that generated that much profit, would you want to see it destroyed?

Didn't think so.

The above is what I consider to be the most compelling argument against it ever becoming legal, this is America, and there's just too much damn money on the table for that to ever happen.

And I don't buy the "legalize and tax it" argument either, because there is a) no way that you could tax it at the levels the Black, illicit market currently commands, and b) if it was legal, and you could simply grow it yourself or get it from friends and acquaintances that grew it, then why on earth would you pay an exorbitant retail tax on it?

All that being said, when they write the history of this time and place I have no doubt that they are going to shake their heads sadly at the ways our Government used this innocuous and harmless plant, which we humans have had a natural affinity for, for centuries, as first a means to erode and  destroy our Civil Liberties, and then to make out-right War on its own people.
 
Nyc Alberts, Digital Components