As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

I mean it is pretty easy to sell gold, especially if you sell it below spot price or melt it. If someone offered me gold at a 10% discount, I would immediately buy it and go sell it at whatever gold dealer for an easy profit. Im sure most gold dealers would do the same thing even if it was obviously stolen spanish gold or something.

If you wanted some sort of legal paper trail to fall back on you can spend a bit of money on a few machines and rights to a gold claim in Alaska, dig some random holes for a few months, then claim you struck it rich.

I don't believe that the taxes on it has that much of an affect on usage and is mostly just a rregressive tax on the already poor and desperate.

I don't think society supports it as much as you are suggesting. Marijuana is still illegal despite 65% of the nation being in favor of rescheduling. Clearly our laws do not easily mirror what the population believes.

If they are paying rent for a house that money is going into property taxes which is paying for their enrollment.