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Bearsy · 10-08-2008, 01:29 PM

Yeah it's the largest, the closest are corn and wheat, but those two combined don't reach the same amount that cannabis brings in. If I'm not mistaken, California's annual income from cannabis($13.8 billion) is more than the annual amount garnered from all the soybeans grown in the US(can't find link to back it up though, so I could be wrong).

ABC News: Marijuana Called Top U.S. Cash Crop

Quote:

The report, "Marijuana Production in the United States," by marijuana policy researcher Jon Gettman, concludes that despite massive eradication efforts at the hands of the federal government, "marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the national economy."

In the report, Gettman, a marijuana-reform activist and leader of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, champions a system of legal regulation.

Contrasting government figures for traditional crops -- like corn and wheat -- against the study's projections for marijuana production, the report cites marijuana as the top cash crop in 12 states and among the top three cash crops in 30.

The study estimates that marijuana production, at a value of $35.8 billion, exceeds the combined value of corn ($23.3 billion) and wheat ($7.5 billion).

To activists for marijuana legalization, the study confirms a position they've held for years, and uses government stats to support their claim.

"The fact that marijuana is America's No. 1 cash crop after more than three decades of governmental eradication efforts is the clearest illustration that our present marijuana laws are a complete failure," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington D.C., a group that focuses on removing criminal penalties for marijuana use.

Kampia, whose comments were included in the study's press release, adds, "Our nation's laws guarantee that 100 percent of the proceeds from marijuana sales go to unregulated criminals rather than to legitimate businesses that pay taxes to support schools, police and roads."

A 2005 analysis by Harvard visiting professor Jeffrey Miron estimates that if the United States legalized marijuana, the country would save $7.7 billion in law enforcement costs and could generate as much as $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like alcohol or tobacco. (My own edit: That's a budget surplus of over $13.9 billion annually)

Miron's report on the costs of marijuana prohibition was signed by more than 500 leading economists, most notably the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, who served as an economist in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

And although the amount of money would go down with legalization because black market prices would no longer be in existence, the amount of growers would probably double. So it would even out quite nicely.