The alcohol industry will be a big one. An even bigger one will be Big Pharma, medical care companies, etc. Plastics manufacturers will go down as well. Who else?

So I guess they are trying to buy more time before this happens, planning for the inevitable. Unfortunately for us, this means that they will be prepared for it, and will transfer their money into other business. Can they, though? I know nothing about economics, so I'd like to hear from someone who knows more about that. Basically, I want to know who the asshole will be in a post-legalization era. Whoever they are, they will pose as liberal, democratic, progessive, etc. Hillary Clinton, and all the democrats will be working for these people. The younger generations are probably being conditioned for this new era of disguised tyranny.

Of course, it's also very possible that they'll propagandize us into "accepting" the THC pill as a replacement for weed. That way they can make lots of money, get rid of the rising stoner rebel problem, and the industries I mentioned evade much-deserved castration.

Neither of these scenarios are happy ones, but I believe they're realistic. Sorry if I sound stupid, work with me here. Ask me something.

To be perfectly honest. I think it would have some impact on the alcohol industry, but far less of an impact on the pharmaceutical industry than you think. Don't get my wrong I love marijuana, but it's not the holy grail of medicines that some believe it to be. It's one of the least effective painkillers we have....there are far stronger natural sources. It's not really a good antidepressant. Yes it works occasionally in small doses, but long term and heavily it it's more likely to cause depression.

But to your point... yes when marijuana is legalized there will be an industry spring up around it and over time it will likely consolidate like the alcohol industry did. So what? If it's legalized we can just grow our own. just like we are free to brew our own beer. Speaking of beer...the alcohol industry isn't as monopolized in this country as it once was.

I think you're underestimating the medicinal powers of this plant joe. It was traditionally among the main medicines of western society before prohibition because of how incredibly versatile and effective it can be. Its anti-fungal/microbial properties are great for treating infections, as many studies show us. I've actually seen it completely heal up a Staph infection in less than a week's time, as well as some other pretty vicious skin ailments. There's even some very real potential for it as a curative agent for cancer. Just imagine the kind of profit that would cease to be if people were empowered with the knowledge that healthy living in conjunction with the proper use of certain anti-cancerous plants could prevent and even heal a terminal condition that people regularly shell out thousands in an often ultimately vain attempt to save themselves or loved ones from.

we love our alcohol too much in this country, honestly can't really see it being affected that much if weed was legalized

You may be right about the depression thing, I know it was my experience that my life turned for the worse. But I have heard much about it's beneficial effects, especially eating the seeds and foods made from the plant itself.

I found a new one, guys: the prison industry. I know the bastards make lots of money from keeping millions locked away, and half of those people are there for marijuana offences. Much less prisoners = Much less money + Raised public awareness of how fucked up their nation is. The government/corporations' solution? The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This is a very secret treaty that's been in development/discussion for a few years now, between governments of U.S., Canada, New Zealand, the European Union, Japan, Singapore, and Morocco. Basically, it boils down to governments being able to search you computers at their whim, and slam your for copyright violations, which themselves will be broadly expanded in definition and allow the enforcers to use this power to further their agenda. "...the very right to conduct such a search would provide a formal justification for inconveniencing and punishing individuals who may displease the authorities..."

ACTA will do wonders for our already shat on rights.

The article I read is at http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=31635

Potentially it could if allowed change a lot of things. The wood made paper industry could potentially be hurt badly if it was legalized, because hemp paper is a lot better and the plant goes fast. The pharmas would be hurt some, though I'm not really sure by how much because even though weed is illegal now, a lot of the people that wants to smoke weed smoke, not including those that get an urinalysis regularly anyway. It would probably hurt the alcohol industry a little more then the pharma industry, because they would probably have weed bars or something like in Amsterdam if it was legalized, and people would go to those weed bars rather then alcohol bars if it was legal.

It could potentially hurt the petroleum industry since hemp alcohol is a much better and cleaner burning fuel then gasoline and diesel. It grows really fast and in almost any kind of soil, so if they just grew it where they can't grow any other profitable plants it probably wouldn't cause much of a rise in the costs of other crops.

It would hurt the law enforcement and for-profit-prisons also. The police and DEA make a fortune off of confiscating drug dealers money, cars, and homes. The people that own the for-profit-prisons make a lot of money for every prisoner they have, then they also make money off the slave labor wages they pay prisoners, to make whatever it is they are making now.

It would hurt lawyers, bailbondsman, prison guards and bounty hunters as well. Most of the criminal defense lawyers would have to go to another spectrum in law, there would be so much less demand for them. I don't know the statistics but I'm sure most (or at least a huge ammount) of the money bailbondsman make are from drugs offenses, mainly cannabis use charges.

There is probably a lot more industries that could, or could feasibly be effected as well. And there will be quite a few Industries like you said that will spring op all around it.

Even if it were legalized I believe there would still be a huge under ground market for it. Smokers under the legal age would still need dealers to sell to them, and it is not like there wouldn't be money in growing plants even after legalization. In my opinion, legalization should be nothing more than stopping cops from busting people for it, but I know it would be far from being that simple in America where everything is driven by businesses and consumption.

Why would underage smokers still need dealers? Fake IDs, stores that don't card, and getting legal-aged individuals to buy for you seems to work good enough for cigarettes and alcohol. I see no reason why this would be different for weed, especially given that I also think that there will be 0 money in growing plants post-legalization. I'm fairly certain that a group that was asked to do price/cost analysis of post-prohibition top-quality cannabis projected a figure somewhere around $30 an oz.

If you work for a co-op or commercial grow, you will probably be able to earn a salary, but the market is going to be so flooded with herb that personal grows simply won't be able to match the economies of scale of the large growers. Personal grows would be akin to home-brewing beer. I've got some friends who brew some incredible beer, but honestly, without sinking major time/effort and making a legit commercial enterprise, they're not going to be making any $ off their home brews.

Dude they're totally fucked, it's game over, I just think its fuckin' cool we get to see the last battle. Once weed is legal its only a matter of time before the world completely changes, and the beast is contained. The marijuana industry is also going to be the first industry that's not owned by scumbags that will have enough money to lobby politicians I heard, so that's also a great thing.

Things are changing really fast, we are watching the sunrise on the consciousness of the world.... a sunrise is how long compared to a night and a day? We were just in a night, I can't wait to see what daylight looks like.

Hi Boosie, Have I missed something here?
Are you saying you believe weed will soon be legal?
Very nice to read your positive post. Things are tighter than ever in the UK.

where is your optimism emanating from please? I hope its contagious

H

all the industries that would be damaged are generally the ones we could do without or do with less of anyway, all those industries seem to have quit a negative impact on our world and hemp could possibly save our world from further damage to some extent.
i cant see it being legalised any time soon, the powers that be seem to want us to ultimately destroy our world or wait for it to destroy us, savng the planet and making it a better place is the last thing they wanna do and anything thats put out there to make us think otherwise is just an illusion to keep us thinking that they have our best interests at heart. fuck knows wot they really want seems to be mainly focused around money which is even stranger as thats just bits of otherwise worthless paper. its not even made from gold anymore or other precious metals, they use sterling silver and copper ffs.
the only way to legalise it is to force them to do it but then we would only get as far as holland with coffeeshops etc but possibly a better system in place. i very much doubt full scale normalisation of hemp/cannabis will ever be achieved and thats wot would be needed for hemp to replace certain industries. it seems at some point in the past the wrong people got in power and decided hemp was a massive threat and needed to be wiped out never to return again just before hemp was already becoming the norm.

Oh, yea sorry if I was kind of off topic, but yes. I think they will prolong it for a little while but the more they try to stop it the more they show themselves, the more they look foolish. Hopefully the more foolish they look, the more people will start to see the lies and wake up.

Their attempt to make a weed pill etc is just one of the number of moves that they will make that will reveal their true colors to the masses. While many will still be asleep no matter what, the collective unconcious will shift its view rapidly so that the blind will no longer be following the blind....

It will probably get ugly before it gets beautiful but personally, I think even seeing the ugly is in a way, beautiful.

type more later peace

i skipped class in 1993 to go and listen to Jack Herer speak about cannabis. back then, i thought legalization would be just a few years away.. so its been a little longer r.i.p Jack.

i do think you are right, boosie

we are on the verge of real change. it must happen in the usa. it is the only industrialized country to ban hemp farming. the dea almost banned hemp food. many thanks to the HIA and Bronner's magic soap for saving hemp food! and thanks to all the Canadian farmers who grow that yummy hemp that i eat all the time

I went to Basle Switzerland about 8 years ago and visited coffeeshops in the middle of the city. There was a feeling that the prohibition and Reefer Madness bullshit was loosening.

I was visiting Amsterdam once a year. Uk was downgraded to class C. I knew Spain had a great attitude to personal use.

Europe seemed on the edge of something.

Then I turned my attention for a minute and it just went to shit again. Its worse than ever.

Losing David Nutt was a landmark.

Holland are now on the cusp of losing their coffeeshops. Its hanging in the balance there and if that happens we have missed our chance for another few generation.

Sorry, have to mention it, but beside the fact this thread appears to be teetering on the edge of conspiracy, I want to join in on the discussion anyhow.

I have found in my life that most times when I had severely underestimated what people could do when given any sliver of hope to do so, they would always blow me away with such astonishing accomplishments.

There is a university in the United States that is devoted to teaching (to a paying general public) everything that relates to Cannabis. Despite tension between state and federal law caused by the prohibition of drugs, we can still see where it has been made possible to have and in already massive quantities, a growing number of medical marijuana stores. As a card holder for MMJ, when I enter dispensaries, browse from a large display case with glass jars of mari, talk with the employees about possible discounts in the future, and discuss the weather, I have never once talked with them about the condition to which had brought me there. There are some of us who don't need the drug, yet it never has to be discussed between employee and consumer.

Factually, there are people who need marijuana. Holy crap, did anyone explode? This may be an obvious fact for us here, just like how we all may know of there being abusers of the system. But even the scary government knows that too many people, patients and businesses, have quickly seeded their very well being into this, "brand new" concept and thankfully when human life is at stake, people seem to be able to come to agreements. Even in the form of a strongly nationalistic point of view on life, we all care for each other in some way. It would be political suicide to revoke what has been earned thus far from the people, unless, if say a perfect THC pill was invented, and medical marijuana was no longer a necessity for some.

The progress in the fight for this stinky, sticky plants legalization thus far has been immense. With recent talk surrounding the DEA pushing for a change in its' federal scheduling, albeit for pharmaceutical purposes, it still poses a new massive push for pro-marijuana advocates. The problem thus far in shooting directly for legalization is that it has, as a schedule 1 drug, been classified as:

From my perspective this officially makes the DEA already two times the admitted liar.

When/if that classification turns into schedule III:

We will see much more of a two than one sided fight for its legalization.

Will the pharmaceutical industry foresee marijuanas' inevitable legalization and plan for its happening?

Like any industry in the United States, pharmaceutics are business first, and helping the world second. They probably knew about this when a few of us here, including myself, were still crawling around in diapers. And I do not think that people will stand zero chance against an attempt to control marijuanas production, or easily drift off into the idea of a cannabis pill. Quite the opposite I believe. People, we humans, will always out innovate our predecessors, its' a simple rule of thumb for the human race.

I read an article a few weeks ago entitled, "Is the age of innovation over?" My initial response to the question was disgust. When you have a mass populace with similar goals in mind, and no leader spouting methods of attack, everyone is granted their own unique opportunity to redefine the way we all think; as opposed to a company with a predetermined view on what, specifically, they want to accomplish.

As far as, "Big Pharma" being upset that they won't hold a monopoly on marijuana, I can't honestly believe it will cripple many, if any of those types of companies. Marijuanas' legalization is inevitable, and with it even the Medical Marijuana companies might survive. Obviously the global price for cannabis would reduce, and this proves useful because medical insurance companies would be able to much more easily cover it, possibly providing it free of charge for a much wider range of symptoms in patients that doesn't revolve around near death conditions. Or could medical marijuana stores more simply just reopen?

If marijuana gains a legalized status, any businesses affected will adapt and over come. It isn't a miracle plant for everyone, and the main issue at hand seems to surround the abundance of tiny black market dealers who depend on the income from growing for their mortgage, those who were also unjustly turned into criminals in the first place, more than the large companies who have more than one purpose.

Why would they sell it that cheap? They could sell it for more than that... things are worth what people are willing to pay. Currently they are willing to pay 300$ and risk arrest to get an oz. I'd think that taxes would be more than 30$ cause you know the gov. is going to tax the shit out of it. Were taxes included?

Steely wrote:


The acceleration of innovation in our age has come about in large part thanks to the internet.

"the model for what would happen on a much larger scale under ACTA can already be foreseen by observing recent US federal government crackdowns on innocent, legitimate blogs. On July 16, 2010, federal authorities shut down Blogetery.com, a site that hosted 73,000 blogs, under the allegation that some of these blogs reproduced copyrighted material. Any reasonable person will recognize, of course, that most of the blog owners probably committed no violation whatsoever, but millions of hours of human effort were nonetheless wiped out by this new kind of random, arbitrary censorship. Would you invest your time and energy into developing a high-quality blog if you feared that it could be destroyed at any moment, and not because of any action you took?"

Innovation will be greatly slowed by ACTA. The companies that make their money "serving mind-numbing trash of the lowest common denominator to as many people as possible — [find themselves] unable to compete with a new paradigm where individual creators and individual consumers are truly in charge."

I don't want to call it conspiracy, because the term gives it all a "UFO hunter" semblance; I admit, however, that to those who have become to some degree comfortable in and comforted by this dream world created to keep us in slavery, my ideas would seem strange and ludicrous.

Probably because everyone would just grow it themselves.

Because crime pays, when something is prohibited it forces the prices through the roof. You accustomed to these inflated prices. Considering weed is a hardy plant that grows in poor dirt, and derives the majority of its food from photosynthesis... it should not cost anywhere near as much as it currently does.

This inflated cost is one of the reasons why organized crime is so bent on growing and selling pot. Its a huge cash cow.
This would be an incentive for people to legalize, and is something that has been said of all prohibited drugs.
Imagine how much money is dragnet yielded from black market sales of prohibited drugs.

Imagine if that revenue was suddenly legitimate and feeding into the economy. That could generate jobs. My only concern would be that the same sick devilish capitalist fuckwits would totally derail the industry and drive it for profit.
Just like every thing else.

I guess maybe it doesn't out weigh the profits made from locking people in boxes because they got high.

A thought popped up while writing this. You have Govts keeping things illegal against the will of the masses for what? Profit? Control? While criminals make huge amounts of money.
Wiki leaks has posted numerous cables detail how corrupt the DEA is.
Govts are corrupt, and driven by apparently legitimate corporations.....

and people get locked in boxes for smoking pot.

The word criminal has lost all meaning to me.