Marijuana a True Green Job

With the slump the economy is in the government has been fighting over how to put people back to work and erase our national debt. There has been talk about creating green jobs to help out, but with solar businesses going under after being given millions of dollars of government support, green jobs look like a waste. However there is one product that the government knows there is a market for. People have been buying it for decades and it is widely used in the United States. There is potential for growth and many small businesses and entrepreneurs will benefit from it. Of course you already know what I’m talking about especially if you have read my blog before. Marijuana can be the biggest “green” job that we can invest in for this country. Will this miraculously pull us out of this economic depression? No, not entirely, but think of one thing that would. We already passed a major stimulus plan which may have slowed the depression down but that didn’t even pull us out. It is going to take more than one plan to get us out of the mess we are in. So let’s use marijuana to help us out rather than drag us down.

                President Obama was asked if marijuana legalization could help us out of the economic downturn that we find ourselves in. He laughed off the question stating that he didn’t think it would help. What a blow to the movement right? If the president who is trying to turn the economy around doesn’t believe marijuana could benefit America then how can we ever convince the public? Well this is also the president who poured half a billion dollars into a solar panel company that spent more to make their product then they were selling it for. Not saying that the president is doing a terrible job, but he is far from a business man. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt however, so I have to believe that the president hasn’t thought of all the possibilities that legal marijuana could bring. He, like most people, is only focusing on the revenue that the purchase and taxation of the plant would bring. Yes it’s true that both of these things can bring in a good amount of money. It is also true that, while it would help, these two things alone would not have a significant effect on the current economy right away. Marijuana goes deeper than just being bought and taxed. There are many more ways that this plant can help.

Creating jobs for Americans is something that the government has been working on for a while but has yet to deliver. Marijuana legalization would help create many different jobs ranging from growing it on farms to selling it at a licensed store. If we break down the process that marijuana would take from the farm to the consumer we can see all the jobs it would take to complete this process. First of all you would have to grow it (obviously). The best place to do this is on farmland like how we grow tobacco today. There are farmers today that are struggling just like the rest of Americans, and the prospect of growing a new crop could greatly help them get back on their feet. Farmers don’t normally run their farm on their own, so many hire workers to help them tend and harvest the crop throughout the year. Starting to see the jobs trickle in? After the crop is harvested it is sold to a buyer whose company processes the plant. There hasn’t ever been a company who has legitimately processed marijuana before, so this leaves room for new entrepreneurs to come into the business and bring the jobs that comes with it. This creates new companies who compete to sell their product. After each company has processed their product they can ship it off to licensed stores. These stores could range from drug stores to a small business. While marijuana sold at a drug store chain wouldn’t necessarily create new jobs, the fact that small businesses would begin to open and profit is a huge upside. We have similar examples with privately owned liquor stores and tobacco shops. Even in hard economic times these businesses continue to stay afloat. I would imagine that marijuana stores would be no different. Not only would marijuana businesses sprout up, but businesses that sold paraphernalia would also become popular. Some of these stores operate today but they a few and far between. If marijuana became legal they would be much more prevalent, and not only would they create more jobs, but they would profit off of a market that associates itself with marijuana. Now we not only have marijuana being bought and sold but also the smoking devices used with marijuana. After all of this we still aren’t done. We all know about the businesses that are popular in Amsterdam. The coffee shops there sell marijuana and allow people to smoke it in the shop. Is there any doubt that businessmen in this country open similar establishments? I would think not.

On top of all of the jobs, businesses, and revenue that would come about with the legalization of marijuana there is still even more that could help the country. Not only would we make money from marijuana legalization we would also save a lot of money. We would no longer need law enforcement to carry out marijuana busts in the country. We would be able to effectively cut back some of the money that we spend on the war on drugs. What’s more, we would no longer send marijuana offenders to jail. The government would be able to save all of the money that is spent to keep these people behind bars. Not only do we create jobs and generate revenue but we also save money in the long run. This is what people don’t understand about the potential revenue that marijuana can bring. They only look at the issue one dimensionally and they are having trouble seeing the bigger picture. We need to be able to convince the public that legalizing marijuana can be a big part in turning around the economy.

                There are many ways marijuana can help the economy. I have listed many examples from revenue, companies, and jobs it would create to the money we would save on law enforcement. There are far more ways that marijuana can help the economy than just the surface. We need to start pushing all of the benefits that marijuana can have for America. The more we do, the more people will see that marijuana can become America’s new cash crop and first real “green” job.