Should Marijuana Be Legalized

URL and to post comments: http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2014/7/21/drug-legalization-gone-global-a-massive-wealth-generating-op.html Monday,July 21, 2014 [Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick] Adapting to massive paradigm shifts before most even notice is how generational fortunes are made. How many look back to when alcohol prohibition ceased in 1933 in the US, after having been deemed illegal by the federal government since 1920, and wished they could have invested and profited like Joseph Kennedy, father of John F Kennedy, who amassed a fortune when he travelled to Scotland with Franklin Delanor Roosevelt's son, James Roosevelt, to buy distribution rights for Scotch whisky.  Even though the global alcohol market is expanding at staggering speed - the global alcoholic drinks industry is expected to reach $1 trillion in 2014, while the market volume will top 210 billion litres in 2014 - the global marijuana industry will likely increase faster in coming years and decades. Currently estimated at around $140 billion, the marijuana market is poised to grow faster than smartphones.  We first began talking about this shift a year ago and really began talking about it in January of this year when Colorado, alongside Washington,  became the first state to legalize marijuana.  Countless people called us crazy and said that they were just isolated instances and it would never happen elsewhere. From the Americas to Europe, Africa to South America, the marijuana-legalization movement is gaining momentum. Counties, states - even the District of Criminals (DC) - are moving towards legalizing marijuana.  This graph details the change in American drug policy: Then, on July 8, I wrote "The End Of The War On Drugs" and even then some, like this commentator, stated: It's hardly a victory. This is just marijuana. Nobody is talking about heroin, cocaine, and all the other drugs out there. So this has nothing to do with libertarianism at all. There are no principles involved. My guess it's 95% liberals (of whom many happen to agree with libertarians on this particular marijuana issue) and maybe 5% libertarians but even that is too optimistic. I personally responded to him with this:  Once marijuana becomes decriminalized across the world and people see the fallacy in prohibiting that substance and all the wealth and prosperity it brings the rest will fall. Then, just a few weeks later, in the words of The Economist, this happened: The WHO calls for decriminalisation ... Uruguay, Colorado, Washington—more and more places are rebelling against the UN conventions that established the criminalisation of narcotics half a century ago. But the latest organisation to weigh in against the UN's line is rather surprising. It is a branch of the UN itself. A report just published by the World Health Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, makes a discreet but clear call to decriminalise drugs. And not just cannabis—the report goes as far as recommending the decriminalisation of injecting drugs, which implies the harder sort. The call comes in a new report on how to prevent, diagnose and treat HIV among "key populations", including drug users.  The UN, according to a 1998 report, knows the sheer size of the global drug market: "With estimates of $100 billion to $110 billion for heroin, $110 billion to $130 billion for cocaine, $75 billion for cannabis and $60 billion for synthetic drugs, the probable global figure for the total illicit drug industry would be approximately $360 billion. Given the conservative bias in some of the estimates for individual substances, a turnover of around $400 billion per annum is considered realistic." Why the move towards legalized drugs? To put it shortly, people are waking up.  Like some weird mental aberration, too many people believed that plants (drugs) are bad and that real drugs (pharmaceuticals) were good.  After decades of propaganda reinstituting those fears the internet has finally enabled an awakening. Marijuana, used medically, in fact can likely get the great majority of people off of the dangerous drugs (pharmaceuticals).  And the growing of hemp for industrial use could cause a massive and healthy revolution against less efficient uses of land such as the logging of trees and even more dangerous and inefficient uses such as using petro and other chemicals in items such as clothing (polyester as one example). And, if safety is truly a concern, not only is marijuana much safer than alcohol, poor diet and tobacco but it is even safer than peanuts. The government ('govern' meaning control and 'ment' meaning mind) is very quickly losing its control of people's minds and this beckons an incredible future where people themselves take control, or govern, their own lives. And, not least importantly, there is money to be made. Excitingly, even the usual government cronies and banksters are behind the curve on this and so regular individuals for once have the upper hand. This is a big-time pendulum swing and I expect marijuana to be treated in the USSA much like it is in a nation with much more lax regulation, such as North Korea. There, "yoksam" - as marijuana is called - is smoked regularly and as a medicine to relieve sore joints and muscles after a long day of work... This will also mean a time of immense healing is coming. In the US every 42 seconds somebody (mostly males, particularly hispanic and black ones, and women too) was arrested for a marijuana crime between 2012-2013.  The US spends $3.6 billion each year prosecuting marijuana related crimes.  Now, with the US government the most bankrupt and indebted nation in the history of the world may be forced to stop their fascism just to survive.   TDV (subscribe here) and TDV Golden Trader (TDVGT) has already brought to its subscribers one opportunity to invest in a massive opportunity in the medical marijuana sector and today we are poised to do so again with another opportunity that only TDV and TDVGT subscribers have access to.  This opportunity is one of only 13 licensed medical marijuana producers in Canada about to go public and they are only allowing our subscribers in because we are one of the only financially related newsletters out there who sees the opportunity and is awakening people to it. As one subscriber told me yesterday, "Thank you so much for alerting me to the last opportunity.  I told my friends they should get in too and they told me I was crazy... that the medical marijuana business will never be allowed to be a big business.  They are now kicking themselves." Well, they don't have to be too sad there will be other opportunities.  But the more that people awaken to what is going on the higher the prices will go. Many say that investing in something like "marijuana" is equivalent to investing in a "sin" product.  Marijuana itself is not only not a sin but it and its legalization (and hopefully eventual decriminalization) will enable millions to get the healthy medicine they need and stop the millions of people being killed and kidnapped worldwide due to its prohibition. The sin is and has been the government's violent prohibition of it. Questions or comments? Join us and other Dollar Vigilantes at The Dollar Vigilante.

Anarcho-Capitalist.  Libertarian.  Freedom fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks.  Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante, CEO of TDV Media & Services and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast.  Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world’s freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business.