Prohibition doesn't solve problems, it causes them--Measure 80 summary part 5

  The next section of the text of Measure 80 discusses problems caused by cannabis prohibition.

Whereas the people of the State of Oregon find that cannabis does not cause the social ills that its prohibition was intended to guard against; rather, that most of the social ills attributed to cannabis result from its unreasonable prohibition which:

(a) Provides incentives to traffic in marijuana instead of limiting its prevalence, since almost all cannabis users evade the prohibition, even though drastically expanding public safety budgets have reduced funding for other vital services such as education;

(b) Fosters a black market that exploits children, provides an economic subsidy for gangs, and sells cannabis of questionable purity and uncertain potency;

(c) Generates enormous, untaxed, illicit profits that debase our economy and corrupt our justice system; and,

(d) Wastes police resources, clogs our courts, and drains the public budget to no good effect; and,

  This basically means that because of cannabis prohibition, a substance that is relatively cheap to grow can be sold for huge profits through black market trafficking, which leads to several negative effects:

     (a)  Cannabis is only worth a lot of money because it is an illegal substance.  Allowing it to be 

            legal and cheap would remove the economic incentive for illegal trafficking. 

     (b)  In a black market, there is no incentive NOT to sell to minors, the profits are often used for 
            more nefarious purposes, and there is no guarantee that the product sold is what the seller 
            claims.
    

     (c)  Black markets are not subject to taxes

     (d)  Police spend time pursuing nonviolent "offenders" who then clog up the courts.

Vote Yes on Measure 80