because it would still beat making nothing! Unless the goverment set the price so low as to totally eliminate a profit margin (unlikely, since a major political reason to legalize pot is to tax and generate funds), people will still want to get into the market.
You see, I'm just not buying that. The reason why people sell weed (illegally) now is because it's worth SO much money due to the fact that it's illegal.
There's also the fact that the vast majority of dealers don't grow their own (middlemen), and more or less sell weed strictly to support their own massive weed habits, essentially to smoke for free.
If weed is legal, where are these middlemen going to find someone illegally growing pounds upon pounds of the stuff? Who would be willing to invest such time and effort for such little returns? Why would stoner dealers who only sell to support their habit go through such trouble, instead of growing a few plants to smoke in their closet? There's no way after legalization that weed will be worth anywhere close to $500-600 an ounce, since supply will increase.
It is hard to secretly brew beer on a large enough scale for it to be economically viable to illegally sell beer. Beer is cheap, plentiful, and people haven't had to smuggle it for 90 years. it isn't worth the effort to try to make illegal beer to get around alcohol taxes.
Everything you said here would apply to legalized pot. Except, in some parts of this country (the west coast primarily) weed is already cheap and plentiful, if not illegal. It will be even more so when it's legalized.
It isn't hard to grow pot. Your individual profit margin is going to be higher.
It isn't hard to grow mediocre or crappy pot, yes. However, growing the most potent, best tasting and seedless marijuana (the kind that people like to smoke and will pay big money for) does indeed take a lot of time, effort and knowledge. Those guys you hear about on the news with an illegal grow house full of hundreds of plants, or a field with thousands of plants? That was the end result of lots of initial investment (grow lights, fans, irrigation, seeds, pots, climate control, pest control, etc.) and a lot of work both setting it up and maintaining it. Then there's the fact that you need to worry about not getting busted, which involves masking the enormously pungent smell that hundreds of weed plants can produce. No small task, to be sure.
That's an incredible amount of work, and the only reason people do such things nowadays is because they know they could potentially be millionaires when it's through. If weed were legal, that wouldn't be the case.
I mean, you can legally buy porn in any gas station, but tons of people still torrent it (even if thats a little harder or riskier to your computer). Same with movies or music.
That analogy doesn't work, since you can't exactly torrent a bag of pot. If such a thing could be done, I'd gladly do it.
Besides, we've already discussed how much of a hassle it is to deal with street dealers. If you're trying to get some weed, which would you rather do? Sit around texting someone, waiting for their response, possibly waiting another hour or so in order to meet up with them and then buying a product which is unknown in terms of quality and strain. Or, go right now to a store like the ones in California and Amsterdam where you know exactly which strain it is, how potent it is and how it was grown. In addition, that store probably carries hashish and marijuana edibles that very few street dealers can get their hands on.
I'm not saying don't legalize pot. I'm just saying, don't expect it to wipe out the illegal pot trade, or make the state a ton of money.
It will make the state a considerable amount of money, and more or less totally wipe out the illegal pot trade.
