For everyone that didn't check out the link from my previous post here's the basics to end the money debate:

-----In "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition" (released June 2, 2005), Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.

Using data from a variety of federal and state government sources, Miron concludes:
Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement -- $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels.
Revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco. -----

So maybe if you follow the old money trail it will lead to continued prohibition, but I don't think a Harvard University professor is going to be ignored especially with this:

-----More than 500 distinguished economists -- led by Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Milton Friedman and two additional Nobel Laureates -- endorsed the report and signed an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods."-----

Our government has kept us in the dark for a long time, but I, for one, am pulling the blindfold off. I would hope that fellow cannabis advocates would do the same, and realize we are the generation that will do this, and we are the generation that will get that $10 to $14 billion a year for our government, and we are the generation that will be running these massive pot fields, not these old jerks, it will be us deciding if we want to produce the best, organic, grade A+ buds, or if we want cannabis to end up like tobacco is now.

We better take hold of the situation now, before all the conservatives get on board and try to legalize cannabis with a system so regulated that it becomes meaningless (Bill O'Rielly is already on his way). That is where the debate needs to go. Not if and when it will happen or not, because it already is, but how to regulate and run a nation wide cannabis system that allows the best buds possible and the most distributed profit for small cannabis businesses, as well as allowing the homegrowing hobbyist to do as they please. We need to look at the strict regulations at the end of alcohol prohibition, some that still exist, and make sure we don't have some of the same limits that happened at the end of that prohibition, at the end of this one.

Chris,
Advocates for Progressive Therapy, [email protected]
www.myspace.com/aptutah www.geocities.com/aptutah