@-Sun_Tzu- said:
I don't see what you're describing actually transpiring if weed were to be legal. There's a plethora of small businesses across the country that sell booze and/or tobacco, and much of the beer they sell is not from large corporations but from small craft breweries, all for a price cheaper relative to the cost of a comparable amount of weed or any other illegal narcotic. I personally can't even name one large corporate liquor store chain.
You're overlooking something here. A hell of a lot of those places actual MAKE the product themselves. This ensures that they can offer a product that is unique, that customers can't get anywhere else. The lady in the article wasn't growing weed, she was buying bricks of it and then reselling it. The product is not unique to her. Either the grower continues to sell it to SOMEONE (not her), or the grower shuts down and then she's still screwed because she lacks a product to sell.
And yes, there are small businesses, but even starting up a small business takes a lot more money than just selling some shit out of your living room. I mean...I could buy tobacco in bulk legally, but I'm gonna have a really hard time turning a profit on the stuff if my plan is to just mark up the price and then sell it out of my living room. Go ahead, try it. See how easy it is to follow that model and make it profitable (while still doing it legally). In order for it to be profitable you need a sizeable amount of startup money and enough income to operate the business. And that's hard as hell for people to do, even when we're talking about "small" businesses.
Again, the BIG criminals can probably afford to make the transition. As others said, there are costs associated with black market activity, and legalization can negate some of those costs. The thing is...that often only applies to the guys who are making BIG bucks. If you can afford to hire enforcers and couriers and teams of shady lawyers to cover up your illegal activity, then you're probably making enough money to make the transition to a legal operation. But this doesn't seem to be the case for this lady. From what I understand, she just buys the shit, then people show up at her place and buy it. She had bricks of it out in the open in her home. Either she lacked the means to protect herself (which means she probably lacks the means to start up a business) or she just skated on dumb luck until she got caught (which means she's probably too dumb to operate a competitive business). This woman wasn't offering a unique product, she was dumb enough to get caught in a really stupid way, she apparently lacked the means or intelligence to hire others to take the risk for her, and this is EXACTLY the kind of drug dealer who is gonna get royally fucked by legalization.
This is not even an anti-legalization argument. Legalize it, don't legalize it, I don't care. I'm just saying...pro-legalization advocates should be a bit more selective in choosing their battles. Don't make this out to be some poor granny who would have been an entrepreneuer if it wasn't for the big bad drug laws. If she lacked either the means or the foresight to avoid shitting where she eats, then she certainly lacks the means and foresight to start up a legitimate business, run it efficiently, and do it in a competitive manner. This is especially true when it wasn't even HER weed. She was just the middleman, which means that there's nothing she was selling that couldn't be gotten somewhere else. Don't get me wrong, OCCASIONALLY you'll see a story about some "broke" granny working in her house and taking the world by storm. But do you know what tends to be the case in such rare scenarios? That rags-to-riches story tends to be accompanied by the actual CREATION of a new product or idea (and even then, the "rags" part is often a lie since even good ideas often need good connections and hefty investments). If she had been a grower who came up with a unique strain, that would be different. But that aint the case.
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