Montalvo

@jawlaw, I TOTALLY support legalization of marijuana and agree with all your arguments for THAT! But I was responding to your stand on the ISSUE, i.e., would legalization have a positive or negative effect on the ECONOMY. If the question was, "Will legalization have a positive/negative effect on SOCIETY, you and I would be in full agreement..."positive", for sure. But spending money, even foolishly, is stimulative...at least that's what I remember about marcroeconomics from B-school. That was the lesson of how WWII ended the Great Depression. Building planes, ships and tanks, even though they'd get blown to smithereens, was stimulative. Now, if you're proposing that we replace all that wasteful interdiction/incarceration spending on some other, more productive things, then yes, that might mitigate the losses or, if enough spending was done, could actually have a positive effect on the economy. But most of that would require new legislation and wasn't part of the issue question, IMHO.

@jawlaw, how so? OK, sure, maybe we'd see increased sale of munchies. But if you buy Obama's prescription for recovery (i.e., let's spend our way back to prosperity), don't we spend WAY more money on illegal marijuana than we would on legal marijuana? Think of all the things that would slow down spending: 1) don't pay high prices for illegal weed when now you can grow your stash for free, 2) "Wanna go to the mall and shop? Nah, let's just stay home and toke up, dude.", 3) gotta lay off a bunch of cops, DEA agents, prison guards, court officials, etc., 4) more people are competing for jobs (depressing wages) since you can't be turned down for MJ use and users aren't being thrown in the slammer, etc. ad nauseum.

@TJLiberal, how so? Increase in the sale of munchies?