Marijuana Equalization/Legalization Campaign

Campaign»Topics

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  brandon lee started this discussion on Nov 12, 2008

  people complain about the nations economy why dont we legalize this amazing plant start up growing jobs for high grade marijuana this will add jobs and it could give our economy a great boost. because i know alot of people that would buy it

  
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  Mark O'Keeffe replied on Nov 12, 2008

  If pot were legal, here’s how much money would be injected into the economy:

  In 2000, there were 734,000 pot arrests. This amounts to about 10% of the “open” marijuana smoking population in the USA, probably less.
  By “open”, I mean those folks who are open about smoking pot, not “closet pot smokers” who keep it a secret from everyone else but their dealer because they fear losing their jobs.

  So, if there are 10 million pot smokers in the USA and the average pot smoker smokes 2 grams (2 joints) per day at a cost of about $7.00 per gram, this is what would happen:

  $14.00 per day X 365 days = $5,110.00 per year per person.

  That’s about $511 MILLION a year.

  Now you need coffeeshops to sell the weed, so you have to build them.

  Amsterdam, for example has 200-300 coffeeshops.

  It takes 4-8 people to build one house, or, in this case one coffeeshop. That’s 800-2,400 jobs created in one city.

  Then you need staff to run those shops. That takes 4 people per shop. That’s another 800-1,200 jobs created in one city.

  If only 2 cities in each of our 50 states had these coffeeshops, there would be 3,200 – 7,200 jobs created in each state. That means 160,000 – 360,000 jobs would be created nationwide.

  AND WE HAVEN’T EVEN GROWN THE WEED YET!!!