Quote:
Originally Posted by DaFace
Even as a big proponent to this whole thing, this stuff worries me. I'm all for pot tourists coming in and spending money in our state, but I don't want the quality of our workforce to suffer in the long run.
On the other hand, I also believe it's a remote possibility that there are a ton of productive pot smokers out there in the world that we've never heard about because of the obvious social stigma associated with it. Who knows - it's not completely out of the question that many perfectly productive people will be attracted to the state too.
Time will tell.
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I wasn't a fan of legalization from a social perspective, but I can see the other side's argument and had moved toward the fence. If 50+ percent of the people in the state want it I'm willing to go along with the experiment. My business thrives on uncertainty and change, so I'll probably come out a winner personally.
And yeah, I'm sure that a majority of the population of smokers are productive people. If 10 percent of the population over 25 smokes marijuana (the latest estimate I've read), the numbers argue for it. And I personally know people that I respect a lot who use it.
My concern is that those people already have jobs in Chicago or Charleston or Boise, and they have actual lives. They're probably not going to say, "Ohhh, weed", and pack up the car and move here. The ones who say, "Ohhh, weed", and pack up and move here are the ones who have nothing else to do and are just watching TV all day. Of course, they're also the group who probably will get distracted or bored halfway through the trip, so they'll all end up living in Kansas or Utah.
As your bit of trivia for the day, I read estimates recently that 2/3 of marijuana consumption by volume is by the 18 percent of users who smoke more than 20 days per month. So if 20 percent of the adult population uses marijuana, 2/3rd of the market volume is being purchased by less than 4 percent of the population.