Colorado’s marijuana experiment was designed to raise revenue for the state and its schools, but a state law may put some of the tax money directly into residents’ pockets, causing quite a headache for lawmakers…
Read More At:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/04/colorado-pot-taxes-back-to-residents_n_6612292.html
Clip from the Wednesday, February 4th 2015 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday – friday 4-6pm Eastern.
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Comments
To be fair, an argument can be made for long-term health effects of smoking marijuana. Regardless of what some people say, inhaling a burned substance does have a negative impact on the health of your lungs (though to be fair, it is still better than cigarettes). In addition, with crime rates down (especially on possession offences) there is a monetary impact on private sector jobs in the corrections industry.
However, from a numbers standpoint, both of those costs are easily dwarfed by the revenue that taxing marijuana generates. In addition, the benefit of not turning people into criminals for possession of marijuana can only have a better long-term effect.
Of course, it is still only one year, and we should keep an eye open for more numbers over time – especially non-drug related crime rates. While the crime rate drop is excellent, if it goes back up to regular levels (not accounting for marijuana-related offences), than it may have just been a small downturn in crime, on the other hand, if they stay down, it puts alot of pressure on others to justify not legalizing marijuana (ie. legalizing has shown to reduce crime rates, if you don’t want to legalize it, are you for crime?)
I do think time will tell, but I imagine that legalization of pot will become more and more appealing to governments as revenue streams.