[subscribe2]I used to be broadly in favor of drug legalization. I never thought about it too much. Smart people seemed to think legalizing drugs made sense so I went along with it. My view of government says we should have a very small state controlled by the nation’s wealthy, leaving most things up to citizens to work out for themselves. At the same time, I knew that legalization was not a panacea. Life is nothing but trade-offs. Fewer drug laws may mean fewer cops chasing drug dealers, but it also means more drug addicts. They have a cost too. That’s an easy one to tease out right from the start, but there are always unexpected or hidden trade-offs. We’re just not very good at thinking through all of the possibilities. It’s why chess is not our national past time.

According to this story, one such unexpected trade-off is the use of EBT cards for buying weed.

The “Preserving Welfare for Needs Not Weed Act,” is expected to be introduced on Monday by Colorado Republican Reps. Dave Reichert, Scott Tipton and Cory Gardner, KDVR.com reported.

The bill would add pot dispensaries to the current list of locations where states must block welfare electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards from being used for purchases or ATM withdrawals, Reichert’s office told the station.

KDVR.com reported last week that at least 19 different dispensaries allowed electronic benefits transfer withdrawals inside their pot shops in January. Public records obtained by the station showed 56 transactions, totaling nearly $4,000.

One of the only things John Edwards said worth remembering is the line about two Americas. There’s actually more than two. If you are black, you live in an America very different from that of white people. If you are a member of the ruling class, you live a life nothing like the rest of us. If you are in the underclass, you live a different life than most people. We spend a lot of time talking about blacks, the rich and middle America. Americans, particularly the ruling class, know little to nothing about the under class. A good primer is a documentary called The Wild Whites of West Virginia.

Anyway, this law will do nothing to curtail the use of EBT cards for buying weed. The underclass figured out long ago how to turn welfare benefits into cash. EBT cards are traded like any other commodity. Of course, the easiest trick is to use the card to buy a bunch of easily salable food, like canned goods or soda. Then you sell those to a small restaurant or market at a discount. Magically, the card was converted into cash. It is what funds the Oxycontin Express. This new law will do nothing to slow the conversion of EBT cards to cash used to buy booze and drugs.

People in the under-class are stupid, but they are clever. They know how to work a scam. Not all are without morality, but one reason the poor are poor is they lack social competence. Getting over on the government is not a moral question for them. It is a matter of impulse control. They can so they do. Of course, the under-class is at it full-time while the agents of the state administering these programs are part-timers. Just as prisoners know a lot more about the prison than the guards, the poor know more about the ghetto than the social workers and case officers from the state. The politicians know nothing about the poor, which why we got a welfare state in the first place.

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