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View Full Version : Drug Legalization Gone Global - A Massive Wealth Generating Opportunity




Origanalist
07-21-2014, 08:41 PM
[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

Adapting to massive paradigm shifts before most even notice is how generational fortunes are made.

How many look back to when alcohol prohibition ceased in 1933 in the US, after having been deemed illegal by the federal government since 1920, and wished they could have invested and profited like Joseph Kennedy, father of John F Kennedy, who amassed a fortune when he travelled to Scotland with Franklin Delanor Roosevelt's son, James Roosevelt, to buy distribution rights for Scotch whisky.

Even though the global alcohol market is expanding at staggering speed - the global alcoholic drinks industry is expected to reach $1 trillion in 2014, while the market volume will top 210 billion litres in 2014 - the global marijuana industry will likely increase faster in coming years and decades. Currently estimated at around $140 billion, the marijuana market is poised to grow faster than smartphones.

We first began talking about this shift a year ago and really began talking about it in January of this year when Colorado, alongside Washington, became the first state to legalize marijuana. Countless people called us crazy and said that they were just isolated instances and it would never happen elsewhere. From the Americas to Europe, Africa to South America, the marijuana-legalization movement is gaining momentum. Counties, states - even the District of Criminals (DC) - are moving towards legalizing marijuana. This graph details the change in American drug policy:

http://dollarvigilante.com/sites/default/files/images/533-0822060336-a-foto.png

Then, on July 8, I wrote "The End Of The War On Drugs" and even then some, like this commentator, stated:

It's hardly a victory. This is just marijuana. Nobody is talking about heroin, cocaine, and all the other drugs out there.

So this has nothing to do with libertarianism at all. There are no principles involved.

My guess it's 95% liberals (of whom many happen to agree with libertarians on this particular marijuana issue) and maybe 5% libertarians but even that is too optimistic.

I personally responded to him with this:

Once marijuana becomes decriminalized across the world and people see the fallacy in prohibiting that substance and all the wealth and prosperity it brings the rest will fall.

Then, just a few weeks later, in the words of The Economist, this happened:

The WHO calls for decriminalisation ... Uruguay, Colorado, Washington—more and more places are rebelling against the UN conventions that established the criminalisation of narcotics half a century ago. But the latest organisation to weigh in against the UN's line is rather surprising. It is a branch of the UN itself. A report just published by the World Health Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, makes a discreet but clear call to decriminalise drugs. And not just cannabis—the report goes as far as recommending the decriminalisation of injecting drugs, which implies the harder sort. The call comes in a new report on how to prevent, diagnose and treat HIV among "key populations", including drug users.

The UN, according to a 1998 report, knows the sheer size of the global drug market:

"With estimates of $100 billion to $110 billion for heroin, $110 billion to $130 billion for cocaine, $75 billion for cannabis and $60 billion for synthetic drugs, the probable global figure for the total illicit drug industry would be approximately $360 billion. Given the conservative bias in some of the estimates for individual substances, a turnover of around $400 billion per annum is considered realistic."

Why the move towards legalized drugs? To put it shortly, people are waking up. Like some weird mental aberration, too many people believed that plants (drugs) are bad and that real drugs (pharmaceuticals) were good. After decades of propaganda reinstituting those fears the internet has finally enabled an awakening.

continued at...http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2014/7/21/drug-legalization-gone-global-a-massive-wealth-generating-op.html#6444