Posted on 05/31/2016 12:00:11 PM PDT by DenverCossack
Dollar signs are flashing in the eyes of state lawmakers under pressure to legalize marijuana. In Arizona, the state has been told it could make $113 million if it legalizes recreational marijuana; in New Jersey, the financial promise behind a push for legalization is $300 million.
If all 50 states jump on this bandwagon, total revenues could be approximately $5.3 billion at a 15 percent tax rate, a Tax Foundation study found. That number could surge to $8 billion at a 25 percent tax rate.
More money may sound like a win for states. But some officials may be paying too much attention to the potential dollar signs — and not enough to the health and societal ramifications of making marijuana legally available.
“Legislators are being aggressively pressured by an army of lobbyists hired by the marijuana industry, which is motivated by increasing marijuana consumption,” said Henny Lasley, co-founder and project director for Smart Colorado, a nonprofit group aimed at protecting the health, safety, and well-being of children in the state. Lasley said legalization supporters claimed the model would eliminate the black market and generate revenues at the same time but that hasn’t been the case.
The state itself has emerged as a new black market, said Lasley. There are also reports of marijuana from Colorado being found internationally.
“The voters of Colorado were promised that the first $40 million annually of new tax revenue would go to our schools, and yet this annual number has not been achieved,” she said.
The revenue goals were not reached in the first two years and just $27 million has gone to schools, reports have found. A new video circulating — dubbed “How Marijuana Legalization Impacts Denver Public Schools” — aims to educate voters about how state excise taxes on marijuana are used.
(Excerpt) Read more at lifezette.com ...
I’m in the legal camp the government is not my judge and jury
The government always lies. We were told gambling in my county would lower property taxes. The sheeple actually believed it.
Of course the false promise isn’t the tax money, it’s how they’re spending it. The money is coming in (about $150M in 2 years) but, surprise surprise, the government isn’t spending it the way they said they would.
Would federal legalization kill the drug trade? Would drug cartels move to cocaine, heroin, and meth? Would the crime rate drop as marijuana becomes legal?
I could never prove it, but I have always thought that marijuana was a gateway drug, not because of some physical chemical mechanism, but because in order to buy it you have to deal with the criminal element, who can then push you onto other drugs such as heroin or crack.
Limit the exposure to the pushers, limit the opportunities for pushers to push other drugs.
Maybe? Dunno.
Legalizing weed only increases the illegal activity. Few people will buy it from the government at such a high price when they can get it cheaper from their dealer.
I hear you and am generally in your camp.
However, I am concerned about the message that legalization sends to our children.
Now that the FedGov no longer enforces or supports our mainstream value system of norms and beliefs, it’s up to us as parents to double down.
I don’t want to have to explain to my kids that yeah, smoking pot is bad, but that dude walking down the street with a doobie in his pie hole is not doing anything morally wrong because the govt says it’s OK.
Norming the use of pot for recreational purposes is merely a marker of our downward spiral as a culture.
What’s so hard about smoking your pot inside the confines of your home, and keeping it on the down low? You know, like we’ve been doing for the last 40 years. It has certainly worked for me. I use it every day and have had zero police interaction, ever, regarding it.
The most important thing is that we protect the children from the creeping moral failure that is liberalism. I see legalization as just another attack by leftists on our values, so I cannot support it.
I heard one of my State Legislators on the radio last week, supporting the legalizing of it in my state. Pardon the language, but he sounded as if he was about to ‘cream his jeans’ over the tax money he would get to spend.
Bookmark
Did they calculate how much they are going to save from not enforcing these stupid laws? That’s part of the revenue equation too. Probably more would be saved from ending the tyranny than is to be collected in taxes.
I could never prove it, but I have always thought that marijuana was a gateway drug, “
Because it was never true, and still is not true. There have been only a couple studies on the “Gateway Drug”, they stopped doing them entirely 30 years ago after the results showed that
90% of Heroin Addicts NEVER SMOKED POT, but
100% smoked tobacco and drank alcohol
“It’s for the children” is the rallying cry of leftist tyranny.
It’s never about the children. It’s about control.
This is clearly a "puff" piece for the ignorant, low info anti-pot voters out there. I see it worked.
There just isn’t that big a market for the harder drugs. Legalization would decimate the cartels.
Folks are so very gullible.
Sure, land in the desert is cheap. There’s a reason for that.
To grow pot there (indoors) a person would have to run AC 24 hours a day for part of the year. Economically feasible?
And to grow outdoors would also be very difficult, and would result in decreased yields due to the extreme heat.
The government will still be going after illegal(untaxed) marijuana sales. There is no cost savings.
Is there any hard facts on the increase in usage due to pot being legalized? If I had to make a guess, I’d say these people were using it anyway, legal or not.
Whether or not the government says something is OK has very little to do with whether it’s moral. It’s unlikely a guy smoking pot is the only legal but immoral thing you’ll see on the street.
And as for the spiral, remember pot was legal for most of the history of this country. We won some pretty big wars with pot legal.
What was so hard about it was that you could be thrown in jail for the rest of your life for it. The creeping moral failure of liberalism is what decided to make it illegal, liberalism believes in control and making sure you don’t do things they disagree with. Restoring freedom is conservatism.
How about the money saved from all the criminal prosecutions that are no longer happening? There is a monetary benefit from both sides of the equation.
That said, this is about freedom, not money. Oh, and I’ve not touched the stuff since 1997, nor do i intend to.
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