Inflation or marijuana prices...

Prices have been rising steadily here in California. I don't know the latest from this season's harvest yet, but I imagine things are really expensive down south in San Diego & L.A. where they've been shutting down dispensaries like crazy.

It's completely illegal in San Diego now to sell this medicine!

But I think ol' Arnold's gonna do something about that. Either state law trumps the city or not when it comes to regulating health issues.

So you'd think being able to buy it in a dispensary would bring down prices, eh? NOT!

If anything the prices are sky high. Well they do actually have overhead in dispensaries - rent, utilities, labor, taxes, etc. So you end up paying substantially more than if you knew a grower.

What would be really cool is if everyone knew a small-time grower! Then there'd be no need to deal with "dealers" who just act as middlemen.

I could imagine a small-time grower (we call them care-givers here) supplying about a dozen friends with medicine could gross a minimum of $50,000 a year.

If pot were legalized and taxed (lightly, it's medicine!) that would provide a legal income and financial security for at least 2 million people at that scale. I bet there's more than 2 million people who would jump at the chance, people making far less now.

The tax revenues would apply to each sale and on the income of each grower, so that would work out to $100,000 (sales & Income taxable) x say 15% tax x 2,000,000 growers would equal $30 Billion tax dollars.

And of course by ending the WAR ON DRUGS, or at least cutting back on all marijuana eradication efforts and arrests and court time and prison time, we probably save at least another $30 Billion more.

What could we do with $60,0000,000,000?