Posted on 05/31/2019 8:57:24 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer threw down the gauntlet on Thursday for Michigan residents who are both sick of the state’s abysmal road conditions, and also not nearly high enough.
“At its height, the taxes for marijuana will raise about $42 million dollar per year for infrastructure. We have a $2.5 billion dollar problem,” Whitmer said at the Mackinac Policy Conference, referencing the state’s 10% excise tax on its newly legalized recreational weed industry—a portion of which is allotted for infrastructure repairs.
After explaining that she gets asked about using marijuana funds to fix the roads so often, she ordered her staff to crunch the numbers, Whitmer issued her challenge:
Every man, woman, and child would have to smoke about $2,500 of marijuana a year to fix our roads. And let’s be honest, at that level no one’s gonna care about the damn roads.
This is clearly not Whitmer’s preferred outcome, but hey, she’s raising the prospect.
Whitmer’s “pot for potholes” (her line, not mine) comments come at around 25:50 in the video below: (video at link)
In fact, when you factor out underage stoners, that number goes up to $10,000 per year, according to the Metro Times, which also quotes Whitmer using a similar line in a speech to the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce earlier this month.
Instead, Whitmer has proposed a $0.45-per-gallon gas tax to fund her state’s cratered roads—an idea that’s sure to be popular in the heart of America’s automotive industry.
So, there you have it, Michiganians: Either pay much, much more at the pump, or start getting super-duper stoned. It’s a real dilemma, but I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.
“Heck, I did it in the mid-70s easily enough. The stuff is a weed, for crying out loud.”
Yeah but back then everyone was used to smoking crappy weed so you could grow it in a planter pot with some regular sunlight and it would be fine.
Now everyone smokes super-weed and to grow that is a bit more complicated. I had to explain this to my buddy in Canada who is growing his own now that it’s legal there. He was just going to grow it outside, but that is how you get “ditch weed”.
“Government pushing pot, trying to get millions of people hooked on pot...”
Just about everyone in the country has already tried pot at some point and decided whether they like it or not, and the people that like it already smoke it whether it’s legal or not. I doubt the people that don’t like it are suddenly deciding to smoke it even if it is legal.
Didn’t they tell us the state lottery monies were going to fix roads?
Michigan Governor: Smoking Tons of Weed Could Fix Our Terrible Roads, or keep one from noticing them.
The road construction should make summer travel miserable. Those small resort towns are going to suffer.
If I were to go back to it, I would prefer the old stuff. The fact that it was not “hard stuff” was part of the point.
I have no desire to ever touch the stuff again, but if I did, I’d prefer the “weaker” stuff.
I suppose you are saying the new stuff is more like “hash” was back in the day.
How are they going to solve the growing Meth problem?
:: 10% excise tax on its newly legalized recreational weed industry ::
So much for making ganj cheaper than the street market value. Ain’t one Rastafarian entrepreneur going outta bud-niss in the hoods of Mittengan.
Politicians are jokers. They redistribute taxes and fees levied to support infrastructure and then come up with “bone” headed solutions.
Stop making sense.
NOT TRUE.
They will just collect the money and will end up spending it on something else, maybe welfare and healthcare for illegal aliens.
and freepers encouraging them...
YFolks’ll care when a loved one gets slaughtered by a driver high on pot.
Course it’ll be too late for the loved one then.
In before the "it's better than packing bottles of vodka in every pothole" crowd...
lol
Around here, an ounce of good can run you to 200 bucks. That’s 28 grams. A gram a day is a lot for most. It’ll have you high all day.
So yes, $2500 bucks a year is a lot. That would literally give you a gram a day.
face palm
This makes the most sense of anything I have ever read on FR regarding cannabis. Thanks
$0.45 increase is purposely misleading.
Its 45 cents per Gallon. We just had a 6 cents a Gallon forced on us after we rejected it by an almost 80% vote a year prior. Worth noting within a month of putting a Rat Governor in, she proposes a 600% increase in the Sate gas tax.
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