Curious to know what impact it will have on criminality.
If dealers are making lot of money from cannabis, and the state removes that opportunity from them, then they may switch to more disturbing businesses.
If dealers are making lot of money from cannabis, and the state removes that opportunity from them, then they may switch to more disturbing businesses.
does it though? canabis still cant be sold, legally. from a realistic perspective, this only made the black market more valueable, as the dealers no longer have to worry about prosecution as long as they're carrying <25 grams. The legislation is definitely a step in the right direction, but I dont think that it'll have a significant impact on the black market.
Out of curiosity, what other businesses you had in mind?
Let's say that drugs are illegal and get prosecuted, and are counted as crime in the statistics.
If you legalize them, your amount of crime in your statistics drops, but the actual acts are the same in real world.
You mean the stealing for money for high priced black market drugs?
You mean the shootouts/high speed chases where people run from the cops because they have a bag on them?
Or do you mean lighting up a joint?
The thing is, it's very easy to look at the statistics of violent crimes before and after. Also the vast majority of law enforcement agencies classify their crimes so you get detailed statistics of what kinds of crimes occur on a monthly/yearly basis.
So you can only get it by joining a club or grow it yourself, both are a hassle for most people so the black market will remain, but I expect there to be a lot more competition since not only organized crime is now able to partake but anyone who (legally) grows.
The black market now accounts for only about 60% of the cannabis sales. Hard drug use like crack and fentanyl has become rampant as dealers lace their product to compete on a kick level (the legal stuff is relatively mild).
There's currently a shakeout and consolidation in the legal cannabis industry going on due to overinvestment. The mom-and-pop storefronts that cropped up on seemingly every street corner during the pandemic are starting to disappear. Regulatory charges and overhead eat much of the profit. There is still trouble getting financing for the legal industry because of US legislation preventing banks that do business in that country from lending money to such businessess outside of the USA, legal or not. Black market dealers do not have any of these issues.
Is there less opioid problems where they didn't legalize?
Yeah, there are a million pot stores, and many closing but that's just a bubble for you.
from i've read cannabis is not a money making product for "dealers". cannabis is used to introduce customers to other much more profitable drugs.
As someone who used to deal some every now and then, I think I could count on one hand the amount of people I sold weed to, who would be OK with whatever drug, the rest were only purchasing cannabis and cannabis only.
They didn't reach out to me to "get high no matter what cost" but specifically to "get high by smoking cannabis". If I didn't have cannabis, there was no interest in getting anything.