Economics: USA: Marijuana leads farm commodities corn and wheat as major cash crop
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According to a report in Reuters, journalist David Aledander has got the goods in his article "Marijuana top U.S. cash crop, policy analyst says" (Dec19,2k6):
WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters Life!) - U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country's largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday.Anyone interested in this topic will want to click up the article and read its lengthy continuation. While these findings are mostly estimates by an apparently interested party, there's little doubt, with margins for error, that the US is playing a game of prohibition with marijuana, yet favouring its chief competitor as drug of choice--namely, alcoholic beverages. Why alcohol producers are given a privileged position on the market for so-called leisure drugs, is scandalous initself. In that alcohol triggers far more violence than does marijuana (which induces sleep, not drunken violence), it seems clear that the entire pro-alcohol policy needs to be questioned. What's more, alocohol is far more addictive than is marijuana, and claims to the contrary are spurious.
The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also concluded that five U.S. states produce more than $1 billion worth of marijuana apiece: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington.
California's production alone was about $13.8 billion, according to Gettman, who waged an unsuccessful six-year legal battle to force the government to remove marijuana from a list of drugs deemed to have no medical value.
Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he could not confirm the report's conclusions on the size of the country's marijuana crop. But he said the government estimated overall U.S. illegal drug use at $200 billion annually.
Gettman's figures were based on several government reports between 2002 and 2005 estimating the United States produced more than 10,000 metric tons of marijuana annually.
He calculated the producer price per pound of marijuana at $1,606 based on national survey data showing retail prices of between $2,400 and $3,000 between 2001 and 2005.
The total value of 10,000 metric tons of marijuana at $1,606 per pound would be $35.8 billion.
--Owlb
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