Some years ago, when George Bush was still president, I did research into inflation of the price of marijuana.
The the time (2006 or 2007, whenever it was), the price of groceries, gasoline, and energy had doubled since 1981.
Much of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush prosperity was helped along by little or no inflation; only 200% in 25+ years.
But to hear the primitives bitch about food and gasoline prices, one would think we were enduring hyperinflation.
In comparison, from 1981 until that one year (again, 2006 or 2007), the price of marijuana had increased 800%.
This, despite that (a) the supply had substantially increased and (b) the risks of doing business had substantially decreased (relaxation and non-enforcement of drug laws, those sorts of things).
Usually when the supply of something increases, and when it becomes easier to supply the market, the price of the item goes down.....and not up, certainly not 800%.
I never heard a peep from any primitive, about the high cost of drugs, about the windfall profits of their drug dealers.
Rolling this about in my memory's of friends in the late 1970's up to the late 1990.
Lets see, back then people bought stamp holders those little paper holders to deal in nickle and dime bags. Just enough plant for one pin joint or two. Then I think a half OZ. went for less then $25.00 bucks. Stuff they were smoking was home grown and skunk stuff, no additives, just pure natural grown stuff.
Then when sometime in the 1980 the government began to become in electric and water consumption, the home growers began to buy from the outside that had amped up the plant with all kinds of hormones and additives. Cost to grow and transport a simple weed doubled.
Daughter house sat for a family for 6 months, the 2 floor she never went into but the upstairs toilet began to run and after 5 months the police showed up at the door with a search warrent to find out why all that water was being used.
When the microwave became normal in homes then the growers cured the plant in them for fast distribution and the buyers could not use any seeds to plant their own in a window as the seeds were sterile.
Some where in there Hydroponics became a fad, just for home growers, and the natural stuff was back on the plate for just family and friends, but people talk, unless one lived out in the country with their own well for water, or a back 40 for corn with a few acres planted in the middle, home grown was dangerous for city or urban growers.
So with anything that has to be imported the price of a plant went sky high, sort of like when home stills for corn liqueur were clamped down on, no PGA in the area, have to buy out of state.
Don't know what the cost is today, and see how the home growers are kept from finding a seed or two that will be viable for a------excuse the pun---a potted plant in the window.
It does make me wonder how our laws have kept people into buying from the blood soaked stuff that comes in from Mexico.
People will drink and brew Booze, people will smoke a natural weed, it is up to the people to decide if they wish to make bath tub Gin or corn squeezing. So I can go dig dandelion greens dry them out and get high.------- this is the choice of the people, If I have no interest in paying Pharmaceutical Company's, will I get arrested for sucking on the bark of a Aspen tree????
Follow the money, who benefits from the illegal drug trade in this country. Not the users or the sellers, it is those in Politics and the law that make a fortune keeping it illegal.
As long as people enjoy something, that is the time to make it illegal so the price to do so goes through the roof.