In the capitalist paradise many Americans enjoy living in; one of the many horrors for any ambitious businessmen and women are the legally binding and horrendous regulations every domestic business must follow. One such regulation that applies not only to, many businesses, but the general populace as well is the restrictive use of marijuana throughout the states. While it may be legalized recreationally and or medically in some parts of the country, other parts have yet to dive into the spoils that come with legalized recreational marijuana, and in a capitalist society they remain plentiful. Therefore recreational marijuana should be legalized nationally due to the bountiful opportunities that come with it being legal in a capitalist society.
One of the primary and most obvious benefits of enabling recreational marijuana to be legalized is the immense market it would open to U.S. business interests. Interest in the marijuana market is skyrocketing because many market predictions project an exponential increase in both domestic and global markets for marijuana. For example; according to data compiled by Grand View Research, the global legal marijuana market is expected to reach USD 146.4 Billion by 2025 ('CBD Continues to Thrive in Both Recreational and Medical Cannabis Markets.') which would means not only are companies in the marijuana market currently expected to explode, but their growth is expected to explode exponentially. One of the key things to consider based on this claim as well is the fact that it’s taking into account the current legal marijuana market, which as of today only encompasses 33 states, with only 10 states having open markets for recreational use. Legalized recreational marijuana across the entire nation could have immeasurable economic benefits, assuming the drive to open a marijuana business lies within at least one person within each state. Not only would the opening of free-use marijuana businesses by themselves produce a generous amount of revenue to the national economy, but the investments in other sectors from marijuana companies seeking to be competitive in the capitalist market we live in would also dramatically increase the nominal value the domestic cannabis market could potentially reach. While these simple claims may seem like general beliefs and generous predictions, there lies evidence to substantiate the claims and the simple use of context clues to make a probable hypothesis. The first piece of evidence for these claims lies within CBD. The simple fact of the matter is that the demand for CBD globally and domestically has grown rather high since the product became available to consumers, with it projecting a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 11.8% by 2026 ('CBD Continues to Thrive in Both Recreational and Medical Cannabis Markets.'). It’d be quite inconceivable to believe that with rates like this applying to purely medical marijuana; the legalization of recreational cannabis-based products would not make a large impact on the American economy, a factor lawmakers should take into consideration when deciding whether or not to legalize it.
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Another reason lawmakers should legalize recreational marijuana would be because of its proposed tax implications. Similar to tobacco and alcohol in the United States, any consumable product used for recreational purposes should rightly be subject to taxation to generate revenue for the economy, and marijuana is no exception. This is primarily due to the reason that any lawmaker, business, and consumer should realize that any profit-generating product is subject to taxation, as a way to ensure the government is guaranteed a profit. Quite interestingly a conceivable tax on legalized marijuana would have quite positive effects on the market, consumers, and government as a whole. The alcohol and tobacco markets function to generate the nation billions of dollars in revenue a year from only taxes, which would mean that the perceived profit from a marijuana tax could prove to be even higher, and some statistics support this. For example; according to a 2019 MarketWatch article; Colorado legal pot sales in 2018 topped $1.2 billion, with the state pulling in about $270 million in taxes, compared to the approximately $45 million that the state collected in tax on alcohol that same year. Similarly, other states have reportedly drawn in million-dollar triple digits in profits as well, including California and Washington (Vittert). These numbers imply that recreational marijuana tax revenue in other states will replicate the same or similar levels of success, equating to several billion dollars the national government could yield in marijuana taxes alone each year. For lawmakers, this notion should not only convince them to begin thinking about legalizing recreational marijuana but also strongly advocate for its legality. The proposed numbers generated by this simple act of taxing recreational marijuana can help fund many agendas, organizations, and visions for many politicians, which should be something politicians should weigh highly when debating about this issue; especially seeing for the most part, most politicians simply care about funds they are being allotted to do certain things. So the biggest question on the table should be what holds back most politicians from enabling the legality of marijuana, and ironically the answer seems to lie within illegal actions.
Rather, unfortunately, one of the main concerns plaguing the minds of politicians that keeps them from whole-heartedly aligning themselves with recreational marijuana advocates is crime itself. While it may seem to be rather foolish to associate a drug that many people use to serenely see the world in the purest levels of tranquility, critics believe the polar opposite. A 2019 article in the Herald Journal cites statistics that display increasing levels of crime in many cities that legalized recreational marijuana including an increased rate of homicides in some of these cities which include: Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Kansas City. However just because the statistics in these cities depict rising crime rates occurring after a period of recreational marijuana legalization does not explicitly show any correlation between the two. The tactic used by marijuana legalization critics is simply using the fallacious trick, of correlation causation as a means to not only induce fear into the public but also as a means to demonize marijuana in a way where its success rate for future legalization efforts would only decrease as time goes on. In reality, the crime that logically does occur about marijuana is charges and arrests made on others for their use and possession of the drug. The same article cites a 2017 FBI crime statistic, where 659,000 marijuana-related arrests were in the United States. Bruce Schriener’s 2019 article in the Associate Press supports the notion that the whole crime issue in itself is perpetuated by the harsh laws in place for marijuana possession. The article itself circles Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Adam Edelen’s plan to decriminalize marijuana in the state, and a speech against the doggish nature of the justice department towards marijuana-related criminals. Seeing as more than 11,000 Kentuckians had been arrested on marijuana-related crimes just last year, Edelen is proposing a 15 million dollar plan to decriminalize marijuana and help to better the lives of non-violent marijuana-related prisoners (Schriner). Edelen and many others recognize that some politicians against legalized recreational marijuana efforts use statistics to attempt to plump up their narrative that marijuana correlates to crime and use this notion to essentially attempt to curb the expanding consensus of pro-legal recreational marijuana. These same lawmakers are part of the reason why these increased “crime” rates occur, because as opposed to simply legalizing recreational marijuana and enjoying the benefits it, they actively seek to incarcerate anyone who so much as appears to have marijuana; further contributing to these rising “crime” rates anti-recreational marijuana politicians harp on.
Conclusively it appears that the benefits of legalizing recreational marijuana far outweigh the fallacious and falsely perceived “negatives” of doing so. From a politician’s point of view, the simple implications of legalizing not only marijuana throughout the United States, but recreational marijuana nationally would yield benefits for the country as a whole. Progressive politicians would have finally won over one of the issues they’ve been fighting for, for a long time. Pro-business politicians would be able to expand on policies toward enriching the nation’s GPD. Consumers would be satisfied with not only the fact that they can use marijuana recreationally but also the fact that for every purchase they make, the tax revenue from that purchase would eventually make its way back around. Corporations both old and new would be able to tap into the spoils and immense pool of cash that could and would be generated by the newly legal status of recreational marijuana. Scientists as a whole would be able to experiment and study marijuana in a new way that could conceivably change the way we understand the drug, and most importantly America’s economy and the country itself would benefit from the many advantages that come with legalizing recreational marijuana in a capitalist society.
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