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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco?
    #7458003 - 09/26/07 10:26 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco?
September 26, 2007 - Tucson Citizen

Once a small part of Arizona's farm economy, marijuana is now the state's second top money crop. Nationally, with an annual market value of $35.8 billion, marijuana ranks ahead of corn and wheat crops - combined.

As Arizona's congressional delegation helps piece together a new federal farm bill in Washington, they should consider how marijuana, long an agricultural outcast, would better serve the folks back home as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco.

A good starting point for this policy review is, Marijuana Production in the United States, a 2006 study by Dr. Jon Gettman, a regional economics expert and adjunct instructor at Shepard University.

"Despite intensive eradication efforts," Gettman says, "domestic marijuana production has increased 10-fold over the last 25 years, from 2.2 million pounds in 1981 to 22 million pounds in 2006 . . . and its proliferation to every part of the country demonstrates that marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the national economy."

Currently marijuana use is discouraged through draconian law enforcement policies.

Using crop eradication tactics, federal and state agents attempt to wipe out the annual marijuana crop, but they reach only about 8 percent of it, leaving the rest to enter a thriving underground marketplace.

What is needed is a new policy capable of controlling not just a fraction of the marijuana crop, but one that effectively deals with the 92 percent now reaching marijuana buyers.

In 2006, Arizona's marijuana crop was valued at more than $274 million - behind the state's leading cash crop, vegetables at $778 million, but ahead of third-ranked hay at $229 million.

Arizona is not unique. In 12 states, marijuana is the top cash crop and, in 17 more, it ranks second or third.

While marijuana is generally consumed in the state in which it is grown, Gettman calculates that production in California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii, Washington, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas and Alaska exceeds local needs and allows these states to become marijuana exporters.

Past studies suggest that new federal and state policies regulating rather than outlawing marijuana could benefit Arizona three ways:

• Cut costs: Taxpayers could save up to $168 million a year by no longer enforcing anti-marijuana laws.

• Add revenues: Tax revenues on marijuana sales could bring in up to $13 million per year.

• Reduce sales to minors: High school students claim that marijuana is easier for them to get than liquor because it isn't regulated. Using tax revenues on marijuana sales, public officials could do a better job keeping marijuana out of the hands of minors and fund anti-drug education programs aimed at kids.

Comparing marijuana to other widely used drugs, Gettman writes, "Effective control over the production of tobacco and alcohol are prerequisites to both controlling access to those drugs by teenagers and the implementation of successful educational and discouragement campaigns."

Lobbyists for the big agri-businesses growing most of the nation's corn, cotton, rice and wheat will, as usual, use the new farm bill to hit up tax payers for more than $11 billion in farm welfare payments each year.

Marijuana growers, on the other hand, are prospering without handouts of any kind from Phoenix or Washington. That could be good news for our debt-riddled federal government and probably a welcome prospect in Phoenix as well.

What to do? The president's draft farm bill sent to Capitol Hill earlier this year includes, in a section titled, "Specialty Crop Support," a request that Congress help the nation's potato farmers compete in the marketplace.

If members of Congress declare the potato a "specialty" crop deserving help, they will surely agree that marijuana farmers also raise a specialty crop with marketplace hardships.

Here is an opportunity for Congress to begin easing marijuana into the agricultural mainstream by replacing a failed federal policy with one that actually controls the use of marijuana.

This, in turn, will give state lawmakers in Phoenix and elsewhere the green light to do likewise.


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InvisibleBrainiac
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Registered: 04/29/06
Posts: 13,259
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Re: Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco? [Re: veggie]
    #7458108 - 09/26/07 10:57 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

I hope so.


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:Awesketch:

:cool: Fair is Fair :devil:


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OfflineDoorsFan
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Registered: 01/11/07
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Re: Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco? [Re: Brainiac]
    #7458185 - 09/26/07 11:20 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

That is a most excellent idea.


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No one fucks with the Jesus.


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Offlinehighdroponics
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Registered: 11/14/06
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Re: Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco? [Re: DoorsFan]
    #7458258 - 09/26/07 11:40 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

YES YES and YES. the end.

if they legalize it, ill walk there if i have to. always thought of moving down to AZ or TX, this just makes me wanna go even more.


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Dr :ronpaul: says to stop trying to treat the side-effects of big government and focus on the core issues. End the Federal Reserve/audit the gold reserves at Fort Knox, abolish the IRS, end all wars and occupancies, stop the building of an empire that will inevitably fail, and cut all unconstitutional federal programs. Put the power back in the peoples' hands by ending this nanny-state.


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Offlineclover606
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Registered: 08/13/07
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Re: Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco? [Re: highdroponics]
    #7458389 - 09/27/07 12:25 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Past studies suggest that new federal and state policies regulating rather than outlawing marijuana could benefit Arizona three ways:

• Cut costs: Taxpayers could save up to $168 million a year by no longer enforcing anti-marijuana laws.

• Add revenues: Tax revenues on marijuana sales could bring in up to $13 million per year.





and thats just arizona, make the policy nation wide and thats tax payers saving around 8 billion a year(provided they grow all as much bud as AZ, but some, like cali, would probably grow ALOT more. what tax payer would say no to that?


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grassman said:

I remember being in DARE when i was much younger and some of the stories they would tell you are not only ridiculous, but completely untrue. One story was that a woman was on LSD and thought her infant was a turkey so she baked it in the oven. Now I look back and think thats hilarious, but at the time I guess it scared me.


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OfflinePhishe
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Registered: 01/21/06
Posts: 2,908
Loc: Planet Earth
Last seen: 11 years, 4 months
Re: Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco? [Re: clover606]
    #7458399 - 09/27/07 12:31 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Yay Arizona!:)


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Offlineledfut
I once jerkedoff w/ bothhands
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Registered: 02/22/07
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 15 years, 20 days
Re: Could marijuana better serve Arizona as a legal, regulated crop - such as tobacco? [Re: veggie]
    #7458511 - 09/27/07 01:09 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

looks like i might have somewhere to move to


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May our only occupation be not having a job.
May the only cocktails that we make be molitov.
-Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains


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