The Glade 4.0

Marijuana does have positive agricultural qualities.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

None of my responses were knee-jerk and in the end you stated my position as something I posted the exact opposite of. Suck a dick.

You did no such thing.



You're just looking for a reason to argue.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Just because we hold differing opinions doesn't mean I'm looking for a reason to argue. I didn't get upset until you blatantly misstated my position.

I already stated that same position myself - prohibition did not end the mafia. So why exactly do you continue arguing with me? The only point we're disagreeing on is the short-term legality of imported weed, and that only because you, with no support other than your own say-so, continue to insist that it couldn't possibly continue to be a source of income for them just because Americans would start growing it despite their well established production capabilities and the fact that they, too, would benefit from not having to conceal what they were doing from law enforcement.

Furthermore, "make their existence harder" is not the exact opposite of "destroy them", rather it's a similar but less extreme position, so no, I didn't state the opposite of what you said, I said something similar but more extreme than what you meant, and ONCE AGAIN, I stated that was how it appeared to me. You could have clarified, but instead you wanted to go off in a snit about how "we're done here."

In other words, you've spent this entire thread disagreeing with me on a minor point, when we agree on the major issue -legalization, and you've done it by stating things that I've also stated myself as if I were somehow disagreeing with them.

So yeah - you're just knee-jerk arguing because by damn, there goes DE again having the gall to not jump on the "**** the gummint and their stupid bans, just legalize everything now RARRRR!!!" bandwagon, and suggesting that gee, maybe not allowing imports for 5 or 10 years to make sure the cartels are fully out of the marijuana business might be a good thing, even though we both fully agree that you should be able to buy and smoke some weed without worrying about getting arrested, or the mean ole feds kicking your door in.

I'll tell you, by the way, what they'll be selling next and why they won't go away. They'll be "selling" illegal immigration, or rather, more than they are now.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The drug cartels are already struggling to compete with domestic weed. Mexican weed is ****. The only reason you would smoke it is because you a. Don't have any other sources or b. Want a huge quantity of **** weed so you can roll blunts.

The fact is, with weed currently being illegal to grow everywhere and the DEA doing everything in its power to stop it, we still manage to grow around half of it ourselves. I don't see how it would take more than a month or two after being made legal before we'd be swimming in high quality domestically grown product.

What the hell are the drug cartels going to do then? And if they're going to legally import it and sell it, then doesn't that just mean they've gone legit and are now legal? So what's the problem?

DiamondEye:

Your positions on this don't make much sense, and carry the weight of your career bias.

First of all, if the cartels decided to go to a legitimate business model, and transitioned away from murder, intimidation, and drug trafficking in favor of boardrooms, import taxes, and business suits; who the **** cares. Certainly not me, nor any other reasonable and thinking person, other than to be thrilled that they are no longer committing heinous crimes in the process of filling an market need created by our own poorly thought out drug policies. It is not the job of our government to commit resources to stopping legitimate business practices because of the indignation of border patrol agents who are, quite frankly, to close to the issue to form reasonable opinions. We should not be in the business of deciding who gets to participate in legal market-places, especially internationally.

Secondly, the notion that they would be able to smoothly transition to legitimate business models is dubious at best. It's not something they do well. If it was, there are thousands of legitimate enterprises they could have entered into. The truth is, that the types who are attracted to black-markets find those markets attractive because they are more inclined to use force than to offer better products at a lower cost. Those cartels will simply move on to other enterprises. Additionally, going to a legitimate business model is not some magical absolution of past criminal actions. It will not absolve those already implicated in crimes of those crimes. It does not turn Pablo Escobar into Eberhard Anheuser absent a policy decision by our government.

Lastly, The fact that you are unfamiliar with the product being discussed precludes you from speaking to any business models surrounding that industry intelligently. You remarked earlier in this thread that you don't know that marijuana grown domestically "tastes any different" than what is currently imported from Mexico speaks volumes. Not only do all (read: hundreds of thousands) strains of marijuana taste different, they all have different smells, effects, potencies, grades, etc. Many already carry brand names. The market for each product is very different, exactly in the same way that the market for Natural Light is very different from the market for a hops heavy craft beer. There is also a market for everything in between.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Of course they do. When in doubt, return to the Appeal to Motive! After all, there's no reason to actually engage in discussion when you can just appeal to the Glade's visceral distrust of all things law enforcement.



In other words, I'm biased because of your appeal to motive. Good thinking. We can add your blatant poisoning the well to it; you're just spouting your opinions and claiming no "reasonable, thinking person" could possibly disagree with them. Guess what? Reasonable and thinking people do not simply proclaim themselves correct and dismiss any and all disagreement in that fashion. I am not the biased one here. You are. You are so in love with your own political philosophies that you cannot see how anyone might think differently.

As to who cares, anyone with a shred of decency cares about not rewarding brutal murdering kidnapping criminal organizations. If I need to explain that to you, it certainly does not bode well for the "reasonable and thinking" aspects of your position.



Sorry, but you are not in a position to know what cartels do and do not do well. It is not at all dubious to suggest that they could transition to legitimate business especially in view of A) decreased losses to enforcement action and B) the even more hilarious suggestion that American growers would somehow instantaneously replace them. I'm sure someone will now whine that they never said it would be instantaneous, but the fact is no one ever gave even the slightest hint of an actual estimate of at what point American growers would supposedly become dominant. Interestingly, however, I suggested a ban on imports would only need to last 5 to 10 years.

As for not absolving them of past actions, I ahte to break it to you but it doesn't matter because they're in Mexico. I see no real likelyhood we're going to send SF down there to grab them.



I hate to break it to you, but those minor variations in taste are nowhere comparable to the variations in types and differences in alcohol, which was the comparison being made when I made that remark. Way to take it completely out of context, however, and in any case, the mere existence of variation does not somehow imply Mexican varieties are inferior. I'm quite familiar with the product on question, and your attempt to claim I'm unfamiliar when you have no way of knowing my level of familiarity is simply more of your tactics of simply trying to score points by trying to claim anything you read and don't like must be because of ignorance.

Here's a clue: Smoking marijuana does not mean you actually know anything about the marijuana trade, and so far I'm seeing nothing but a couple people who want to get high and therefore are knee-jerk arguing against a 5 to 10 year ban on imports with domestic legalization because of the typical marijuana-lover assumption that smoking it means you actually know something about it, and are just in a huff at the idea that the governemnt might regulate your beloved plant in any way, shape, or form. That's augmented of course with a fairly typical level of "free market curez ALL RAARRR!!" nonsense, and arbitrary dismissal of anything you don't like.

You haven't actually addressed why a ban for the short term would be a problem at all. Everyone here agrees with domestic legalization. No one is talking perma-ban on imports. The disagreement is solely over a temp ban; you guys seem to think the cartels would be seriously weakened in the marijuana trade even without it; I'm saying that it's necessary to ensure that same serious weakening, so at worst a ban would be moot, at best it would weaken them even faster. No one's given any logical reason to oppose a short-term ban, and it's pretty clear it's just personal offense at the idea of regulation of any kind.

If you're going to assert that the ban would somehow allow the cartels to remain strong because it's their "business model", in the face of growing competition from legitimized American production, then I can only say that you are a total stranger to reason.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Have you anything to actually support these notions? The drug cartels are hardly "struggling" to compete. As for Mexican weed being ****, I'd say that no longer having to wrap it for illegal transport in homemade packaging with dubious chemical addititives plus no longer getting it wet in the river would do wonders for its quality.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You realize that this is what you just did, right?

Look, I don't really care if we banned imports on it for several years or not. I don't think it would affect anything, as I don't think we would be importing any from former drug cartels within a few months of it being legalized. I just think your logic behind it is... weird.

I think you're underestimating how easy it is to grow. Why would it take years to ramp up production domestically? It takes a few months to produce a mature plant, and you can grow it pretty much anywhere. There's lots of stoners our there who would love to start growing if it became legal. There's also a huge base of illegal growers in the US who could expand their operations. It only takes a few months for the plants to fully mature from seeds.

And I say the drug cartels are struggling because they only supply around half the weed in the US when it's much harder to grow domestically.

Oh, and I don't think the illegal shipping has much to do with the quality of the weed from mexico. It may not help for it to be all compressed and look like ****, but the fact that it's not very potent and contains seeds and leaves is 100% how it was grown and harvested. That isn't going to change.

Here's some of Mexico's current competition...

What do the vans mean?

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That they offer delivery.

So you're telling me if I could have 8g of Sour Diesel and a pizza without even leaving my house?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Yeah. I call those Tuesdays.

Racist.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

nono, you're thinking "Friday"

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Holy shitsnacks!

Russell Peters?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Rebecca Black?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Lenas, that map wouldn't be the competitors of the cartels, those would be the distributors if your map is showing "dispensaries" as it would seem to indicate.

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I highly doubt medical dispensaries are supplied by the cartels.

My point is that if/when legalized they would not be in competition, the cartels would supply the dispensories. Those would become the super-markets for Special J.

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I did make the distinction that they're current competition. If they already have supply, why would they turn to the cartel to get more when legalized, if they could just grow more themselves? That's bananas.

Edit - I feel like I should add the fact that these are all legally non-profit collectives or co-ops. What do you think it would do for their motivation to grow when they're finally allowed to profit from it?

They don't grow it themselves do they?

If legalized then the cartels already have economy of scale and will be able to supply it cheaper than anyone else assuming marijuana farming efficiency scales the same as every other crop on Earth

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