[Nuke]

Alaska, where I am temporarily living, has the loosest laws on marijuana in the USA. I could possess 1 oz of marijuana with no penalty whatsoever (in my experience that is more than enough).  4 oz is only a misdemeanor with a fine up to 1,000 dollars.  The enforcement agencies in my area don't bother with marijuana because meth is a much bigger problem up here.  Hell, now that I think of it, Ive only seen one police car in the 3 months I've been here.

I am still very puzzled as to why this drug is almost unilaterally considered illegal across the globe? What is so nefarious about weed that it requires the strictest punishment?  Why dont most of the countries around the world ban alcohol as well?  It cannot solely be the dangers of the drug. There must be an explanation more complicated than that...

Want an explanation?  It's very hard to tax.

Anyone can grow weed in large quantities quite easily with few or no special tools required.  That means most marijuana will be sold by off-the-books dealers and the government won't get its cut.

wrong

weed is a 10 hour job from what i hear. always changing bulbs and maintaining tempuratue, dipping the plants several times a week, to kill mites. keeping the plants from becoming hermaphroditic. few people know you can only smoke female plants. once you got  a good strain then you clone it. then you got to make sure it doesnt gender bend. weed is a very difficult plant. i know a grower you see. he has a masters degree in horticulture and was an award winning grower. he stopped growing when laws changed making it easyer for cops to do unexpected search and seizure.  oh yes did i mention dodging the police? monitoring scanners, keeping a truck on standby to haul off the plants should your adress flash over. granted you can grow skunk weed with a fraction of the work.

[highwayman]

Alaska, where I am temporarily living, has the loosest laws on marijuana in the USA. I could possess 1 oz of marijuana with no penalty whatsoever (in my experience that is more than enough).  4 oz is only a misdemeanor with a fine up to 1,000 dollars.  The enforcement agencies in my area don't bother with marijuana because meth is a much bigger problem up here.  Hell, now that I think of it, Ive only seen one police car in the 3 months I've been here.

I am still very puzzled as to why this drug is almost unilaterally considered illegal across the globe? What is so nefarious about weed that it requires the strictest punishment?  Why dont most of the countries around the world ban alcohol as well?  It cannot solely be the dangers of the drug. There must be an explanation more complicated than that...

Want an explanation?  It's very hard to tax.

Anyone can grow weed in large quantities quite easily with few or no special tools required.  That means most marijuana will be sold by off-the-books dealers and the government won't get its cut.

wrong

weed is a 10 hour job from what i hear. always changing bulbs and maintaining tempuratue, dipping the plants several times a week, to kill mites. keeping the plants from becoming hermaphroditic. few people know you can only smoke female plants. once you got  a good strain then you clone it. then you got to make sure it doesnt gender bend. weed is a very difficult plant. i know a grower you see. he has a masters degree in horticulture and was an award winning grower. he stopped growing when laws changed making it easyer for cops to do unexpected search and seizure.  oh yes did i mention dodging the police?

Plus if you grow it outside, you have to worry about people stealing it or wildlife eating it. Deer love eating pot plants. It might not be hard to just chuck a bunch of seeds out and have plants sprout, but to get a smokeable product, it requires a lot of care, just like any other farmed product.

I read a pretty good book about some guys who are recruited into the weed farming business in a remote California location with very high expectations and see it all go tragicomically wrong. Book is Budding Prospects by TC Boyle.

[Mars]

It doesn't change the fact that average joe can buy a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff and have a good chance of being able to grow a fair amount of weed.

[S-99]

Best place i've seen for the stuff so far was a trapdoor in the kitchen of my friends house leading to a room that goes under their house. It's insulated, kept warm, has a fan, and 4 gigantic plants. It was a great place to keep the stuff. My friends family then gave away all the cats that kept making kittens frequently. That's how i found the pot room, i walked into the kitchen and saw a bunch of kitties sleeping on top of a doormat. I went to pet one and found that the doormat was warm. No wonder the cats were sleeping right there in an otherwise pretty cold house. My friends dad showed me what was under the doormat the next day. It was one of those things where your eyes say holy **** rather than  your mouth.