Sir Richard Branson believes that the ideal way for Spain to get out of its current morass of national debt, savage austerity cuts, and social turmoil would be to legalize and tax marijuana.
The billionaire founder of the Virgin Group suggested at the opening of the world’s largest cannabis museum in Barcelona on Wednesday that this policy “would help get the country back on its feet.”
Branson is a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a body “which includes five ex-presidents and Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, and which concluded last year that the war on drugs had failed and called for experiments in decriminalisation.”
Other members of the commission includeformer U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Branson was invited to Barcelona to receive the Cannabis Culture Award 2012 on behalf of the commission and in recognition of its ground-breaking report. In his speech, his praised the nearby town of Rasquera, whose inhabitants voted to rent land to a Barcelona cannibis-growers’ society as part of an “anticrisis plan.”
Read it at Raw Story
Richard Branson says Spain can solve its economic problems by legalizing marijuana
By Muriel Kane
Now that is some out of the box thinking about heterodox economics.
15 comments:
Forget the Euro, They can trade in spliffs and joints!
But taxes don't grow the economy.
Perhaps legalizing marijuana would reduce black market imports of the stuff, and encourage domestic production instead, effectively improving the real trade balance ?
I'm pretty sure that would hold true in the US.
Branson: "Taxpayer on the hook!"
In the EZ, under the present rules the taxpayer is on the hook since the EMU countries are currency users. Same with US states and municipalities, which are also currency users, and budgets have to be balanced in a period. Where the federal government doesn't step to relieve them, states have to tax or borrow in a currency they don't control to pay expenses.
And if the funds committed to waging the war on drugs for — how long is it now? — were used to actually improve society, we wouldn't be in half the pickle we are at present, believing we can't afford essentials.
The problem in the Eurozone is structural. If marijuana legalization helped Spain, it would likely be by improving it's current account (mostly intra-EMU).
So… while that might get Spain out of the red, it'll be at the expense of of other Eurozone countries.
This is not a credible solution.
Isn't this completely orthodox economics? Capitalists always want to privatize and deregulate.
This won't solve anything economically but it's good policy prescription.
Both drugs and prostitution have to be legalized and regulated. Pretending it does not exist or that you can eliminate it by forbidding it is clueless and does more harm that good.
The financial effects are secondary and it's not what matters here honestly.
But it won't happen because there are LOTS of vested interests in high spheres of influence that do not want this to happen, politicians banks and narcos.
BTW it already has been semi-legalized in some places and is working fine.
But as I've said, I have a hard time thinking other drugs will be legalized and regulated, same with prostitution (which is an other elephant that should be looked at, instead the a-legal situation right now).
The War on Drugs was started by Nixon as a way to militarize the local law enforcement agencies and to put the "superfluous" population (mostly black and brown) out of the way in prison. It has been very effective. We now have the largest prison-industrial complex in the world and incarcerate more people than were imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag. Our per capita prison population is higher than any other country by an order of magnitude.
Arrayed against any move for legalization are the Big Pharma companies, the chemical companies (DuPont has been fighting any such move for 75 years), and the Big Oil companies among others. They know that legalization would bring interest in researching all the different uses for hemp oil, medical marijuana, etc. They can't stand the idea that a weed that grows almost anywhere (and can't be patented) could replace the petroleum based products and medicines they manufacture.
And, if you read the annual reports of the private prison operators you will find that legalization of marijuana is seen as the single biggest risk to their business model.
@ leverage... hey, it worked for holland, so why can't it work for spain?
@ john zelnicker... excellent comment!!
but you forgot one more industry threatened by hemp: Big Paper!
i read a book a long, long time ago that said it was William Hearst's newspapers printing of salacious articles about mexicans (sound familiar?) coming across the border, stoned on marijuana, to rape white women that turn public opinion against marijuana and, by extension, hemp.
William Hearst (patty hearst's grandfather--remember her?) had apparently just come up with a cheaper process to turn wood pulp into paper, but, back then, most paper was made out of hemp, which was cheaper still, so he had to put the hemp people out of business.
i often wonder what the last 100-and-some-odd years woulda been like the most of us if just a handful of people had just left well enough alone and let things progress as they would have otherwise...
Thanks Anon. Yes, Hearst was a major player in the demonization of marijuana. Much of the early propaganda against pot was based on the fact that its use was mostly confined to the black and brown communities. Harry J. Anslinger, the first head of the Narcotics Bureau was in a race with J. Edgar Hoover to build the largest national police force. By using marijuana as his vehicle he avoided any conflict with the white power structure.
"Harry J. Anslinger, the first head of the Narcotics Bureau was in a race with J. Edgar Hoover to build the largest national police force. By using marijuana as his vehicle he avoided any conflict with the white power structure."
Right. Harry J. and J. Edgar were the predecessors of DHS.
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