Black-market pot, job rules collide
IN THE MIDST of New Mexico’s first responders already being overwhelmed with the highest per capita property crime rate in the nation, (and) persistent DUI and indigency from the homeless camps overwhelming societal safety nets, the N.M. Democratic Party leadership now shamelessly tries to energize their progressive base in legalizing recreational pot. The moderates in the N.M. Democratic Party need to step up now to squash this and prevent their party from becoming the “Pothead Party.”
The governor’s legalization group’s overly optimist(ic) projections of new funds raised from legal recreational pot dispensaries will actually turn out to be a farce since the existing black market and its associated crime will increase, as it has in other states with legal recreational pot. This is because all the extra added costs to legal dispensaries to fund other government programs will make legal pot much more expensive than black-market pot. Recreational pot users will need only to buy legal pot once and keep their receipt to enable them to continue to buy/possess cheaper black-market pot into the future. Once in a user’s possession, there is no way to distinguish legal from black-market pot.
The last thing New Mexico needs at this point is another legalized vice to degenerate its struggling culture and economy. Regardless of new legal status, nearly all good jobs will continue to involve drug testing for pot. This will eliminate legal pot users from getting or keeping good employment. So the increase in N.M. potheads on welfare and in under-employment will swell the needs for government assistance and our state taxes. Perhaps that is what the N.M. Democratic Party leadership wants — more voters hooked on government assistance to vote Democrat. The best employers with higher paying jobs will need to move to other states to get the more motivated and safer drug-free workforce that they need.
Let’s not open another Pandora’s Box of vice that will ultimately hurt our good state in too many ways.