Pot Bigger Than Corn

With domestic production valued (conservatively) at just more than $35 billion, marijuana is the largest cash crop in the U.S. – worth more than the nation’s corn and wheat crops, which, combined, are valued at just more than $30 billion, according to a new report by Jon B. Gettman, a public policy and economic development consultant, posted to the nonprofit information site DrugScience.org. According to Gettman – a former national director of NORML, who started the Drug Science Web site to disseminate scientific information about marijuana and to publicize a petition seeking to reschedule marijuana within the Controlled Substances Act – there were some 67 million pot plants grown in the U.S. in 2006, making pot the top cash crop in 12 states.

Domestic pot production is larger than cotton production in Alabama, Gettman reports, larger than peanuts in Georgia, and outpaces the combined production of grapes, vegetables, and hay in California. In part, Gettman has based his estimates on pot plant numbers, and seizure values reported by the DEA as part of their annual marijuana eradication program. In all, Gettman says the growing value of the crop when compared to the government’s pot prohibition policies suggests that the real way to control marijuana cultivation and use is – surprise, surprise – to roll back punitive pot policies and instead enact a legalization scheme. “The ten-fold growth of production over the last 25 years and its proliferation to every part of the country demonstrate the irrefutable reality that marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the economy of the United States,” Gettman writes. “The contribution of this market to the nation’s gross domestic product is overlooked in the debate over effective control and discouragement of use by teenagers and children. Like all profitable agricultural crops, marijuana adds resources and value to the economy,” he continues. “The focus for public policy should be how to effectively control this market through regulation and taxation in order to achieve immediate and realistic goals, such as reducing teenage access, rather than to continue to sacrifice achievable goals in exchange for unachievable long-term goals that have failed to materialize.”