Re:Malawi legalises the growing, selling and export of cannabis
by munk-a on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:15PM
(#22487568)
The world produces more than enough food to feed everyone so this isn't a simple zero sum game. Individuals deciding to grow khat are, in theory, exchanging their grown goods for food to feed themselves (or else they are quite poor at planning for the future). Let's say the khat grower switched to corn, now the farmer just has a bunch of corn - does this somehow benefit his starving neighbors? If he can afford to share his corn with his neighbors he could afford to share even more food when growing khat.
So the question here isn't whether a farmer should grow khat or corn and how that effects the food supply - it's whether land distribution, the opportunity to chose what to farm, is distributed in a fair enough manner that everyone has the opportunity to avoid starvation.
It is extremely likely that a corrupt country doesn't have a decent allocation of land and has favored designating a lot of land to specific influential people, but whether those people grow khat or corn doesn't matter at all except in terms of further securing their influence.
If it's more lucrative to grow cannabis than growing cannabis means you've produced more food - the only issues arise when the supply of food is artificially limited (for instance due to import sanctions) and the value of that cannabis isn't convertible into food - in this scenario, then, the value of cannabis would tank and it'd become nearly worthless - or we'd have a scenario of uneven enforcement where an external to the country entity (like a drug cartel) is funding the farming and removing the product from the local market for re-sale elsewhere where the value hasn't tanked and, in this scenario, the best response is for the government to legalize the substance so that the market can equalize the value of the cash crop toward an actual value in terms of food.
Honestly, most of these weird market effects is because the US absolutely hates drug production and has a "war on drugs" that they actively export... All while constantly consuming truckloads of the stuff. If things were legalized in the US a lot of these problems would just naturally correct themselves - barring that legalizing them overseas removes a lot of the power that cartels have. This is since, if the product is illegal, only the large criminal organizations can afford the distribution network - if it's legal then a drug cartel can just purchase the drugs on an open market and allow farmers to individually make the choice of which crop to grow without worrying about people with guns.
So the question here isn't whether a farmer should grow khat or corn and how that effects the food supply - it's whether land distribution, the opportunity to chose what to farm, is distributed in a fair enough manner that everyone has the opportunity to avoid starvation.
It is extremely likely that a corrupt country doesn't have a decent allocation of land and has favored designating a lot of land to specific influential people, but whether those people grow khat or corn doesn't matter at all except in terms of further securing their influence.
If it's more lucrative to grow cannabis than growing cannabis means you've produced more food - the only issues arise when the supply of food is artificially limited (for instance due to import sanctions) and the value of that cannabis isn't convertible into food - in this scenario, then, the value of cannabis would tank and it'd become nearly worthless - or we'd have a scenario of uneven enforcement where an external to the country entity (like a drug cartel) is funding the farming and removing the product from the local market for re-sale elsewhere where the value hasn't tanked and, in this scenario, the best response is for the government to legalize the substance so that the market can equalize the value of the cash crop toward an actual value in terms of food.
Honestly, most of these weird market effects is because the US absolutely hates drug production and has a "war on drugs" that they actively export... All while constantly consuming truckloads of the stuff. If things were legalized in the US a lot of these problems would just naturally correct themselves - barring that legalizing them overseas removes a lot of the power that cartels have. This is since, if the product is illegal, only the large criminal organizations can afford the distribution network - if it's legal then a drug cartel can just purchase the drugs on an open market and allow farmers to individually make the choice of which crop to grow without worrying about people with guns.