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Can Pot Help California’s Budget Woes? If It’s Legal, Will Addiction Rise?
Pointing to the question posed by Time Friday, Can Marijuana Help Rescue California’s Economy?, Gregor Macdonald says try it:
By some estimates marijuana crop production in California accounts for roughly 14 billion in gross sales. That would make marijuana the states largest single cash crop. One has to believe that current growers would happily trade the costs and risks of concealment for the visibility of taxation. Which would also afford property protection. The current estimate is that taxation could start to yield over 1 billion for the state annually. That’s not going to close either the budget gap of 26 billion, or, make a dent in a 100 billion annual budget. But legalization could bring some efficiencies and perhaps became the basis for an expansion of the marijuana economy. [...]
The potential legalization of marijuana in California should be embraced, if only as a sign of a cultural shift from an era of fantasy-based debt creation to a reality-based era of resource maximization. In order to more firmly reinforce such a paradigm shift in the minds of the electorate, Sacramento would be well advised in addition to track on open websites the transparent utilization of marijuana taxation–say, to fund state health programs.
AP has a long and interesting piece on the ‘green rush’ in CA:
More and more, having premium pot delivered to your door in California is not a crime. It is a legitimate business.
Marijuana has transformed California. Since the state became the first to legalize the drug for medicinal use, the weed the federal government puts in the same category as heroin and cocaine has become a major economic force.
No longer relegated to the underground, pot in California these days props up local economies, mints millionaires and feeds a thriving industry of startups designed to grow, market and distribute the drug.
And CNet looks at a new iPhone app called “Cannabis” that allows you to locate the nearest medical marijuana doctor, the nearest medical marijuana supplier, and, just in case, the nearest attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases.
Meanwhile, in response to the Sunday NYTimes piece on the debate over whether more and more potent types of cannabis affect the levels of addiction, the editors today have pulled together a group of policy thinkers to ponder the question, If Marijuana Is Legal, Will Addiction Rise?
For the record, I believe cigarettes are the real gateway drug and alcohol the worst addiction in our culture. (Remember, Dr. George Vaillant’s 72-year-long study at Harvard about how different experiences affect the health and happiness of people found that alcohol is “probably the horse, and not the cart, of pathology.”) I have advocated parity for pot and booze in legal and disciplinary actions and would decriminalize, tax and treat!
As is endorsed in the editors introduction to the Mother Jones’ drug issue on newsstands now:
[T]he drug war has never been about facts—about, dare we say, soberly weighing which policies might alleviate suffering, save taxpayers money, rob the cartels of revenue. Instead, we’ve been stuck in a cycle of prohibition, failure, and counterfactual claims of success. (To wit: Since 1998, the ONDCP has spent $1.4 billion on youth anti-pot ads. It also spent $43 million to study their effectiveness. When the study found that kids who’ve seen the ads are more likely to smoke pot, the ONDCP buried the evidence, choosing to spend hundreds of millions more on the counterproductive ads.)
What would a fact-based drug policy look like? It would put considerably more money into treatment, the method proven to best reduce use. It would likely leave in place the prohibition on “hard” drugs, but make enforcement fair (no more traffickers rolling on hapless girlfriends to cut a deal. No more Tulias). And it would likely decriminalize but tightly regulate marijuana, which study after study shows is less dangerous or addictive than cigarettes or alcohol, has undeniable medicinal properties, and isn’t a gateway drug to anything harder than Doritos.
That via Patrick Appel.
Here’s the Esquire interview with Barney Frank about his Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009. And, yes, I’m aware that pot smoke causes cancer.
13 Responses to “Can Pot Help California’s Budget Woes? If It’s Legal, Will Addiction Rise?”
From CEO's of Fortune 500 hundred companies to homeless people to world class athletes to world leaders….every type of person out there smokes weed.
It can be managed like any other over the counter drug in America
Legalize weed so the DEA can focus on “one and done” drugs like meth and crack.
One thing ignored is how much of that 14 bill is transported over state lines. If this is a states rights issue allowing Cali to legalize pot then you must also allow for other states to have other standards.
(??? Cali is a city in Colombia, headquarters of a well-known drug cartel. The state is _California_.)
It is a large move, possibly larger than warranted, toward reform of the worst of the Drug War, but no panacea.
It will lead to some increase in drug abuse.
It will _not_ be a fiscal savior for over-spending, lib-idiotic-policy-based Sacramento. (If anything, it will lead Sacramento to _expect_ vastly greater revenue than legalized and taxed marijuana would ever give the state, as an excuse for Sacramento to buy more votes and please more interest groups more, and lead the state toward bankruptcy once more.)
Other states have the right to be tough, and if drug transport became a problem, would have the right (which the facts as well as the law obviously would support) to erect border controls and aircraft passenger searches, and to expose people to different, possibly much harsher laws, even as strict as in Malaysia and Singapore if that's what those states want — that is legitimate under constitutional federalism.
(Example – Placard handed to air travelers and sign as the California boundary is approached: “WARNING DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING UNDER ARIZONA LAW”)
Well one of the reasons the feds have, backed by SCOTUS decisions, for maintaining the illegality of pot is that “CALIFORNIA” (Hey I feel like abbreviating I will do so if you dislike it don't respond because god knows California has never been referred to as Cali before right?) would be unable to restrict distribution to just themselves which would place a heavy burden, a much increased burden, on any other state that dose not chose to legalize pot as well as for federal enforcement.
If California or any other state chooses to be the first to legalize marijuana, you'll instantly see a “drug tourism” industry emerge and problems in the other states. They would have the right to regulate entry into them, search the belongings and vehicles of those entering from California, and so on.
FYI
I believe Alaska allows for the personal cultivation of pot, just not the sale. Anyway, legalizing it nationally even makes sense to help break the import drug trade as pot finances small time dealers so they can move up to the big time cash outlays required for cocaine trafficking. If you want to break the Columbian cartels, start by removing the foundation of drug capitalization.
Drive into Arizona from California along I-10 or I-8 and you are already subject to “border type” searches, care of the Border Patrol. The positions of the checkpoints is random but they question every car, along with canine searches.
“Will addiction rise?”
Addiction to what, taxes?
Republicans are against legalizing marijuana because the Democrats want to tax it.
Maybe the stoners can support the Dems to get it passed. Then once it's passed the stoners can support the GOP to do away with the taxes.
If only the stoners had an attention span that long.
Why not legalize it. I saw a story on a medical marijuana doctor who admitted giving pot to children as young has 6 years old….. His name Dr Jean Talleyrand of MediCann Inc. What type of horridness is that. When a doctor can legally give a young child pot and not be punished for it. Well I should not say that since he is now under investigation by the medical board and DEA. We should not need a doctors permission to smoke just like we dont need one for alcohol or cigaretts. Vote to legalize!
“If California or any other state chooses to be the first to legalize marijuana, you'll instantly see a “drug tourism” industry emerge” (@DLS)
Super! That's more money for the state by legalizing the ganja. Heaven knows that gay marriage tourism helped the state for those few months it was legal, and heaven knows we could use it.
There are some really good points in all directions on whether to legalize marijuana or not legalize the plant for public consumption. Some good could come from taxing revenue from sales to the public and law enforcement personnel could protect and serve communities in many other areas thus saving manpower resources and reducing expenditures to exclude policing marijuana.
Now, when someone lights up inside a domicile smoking cannibis usually is not punished by law. If smoking were viewed in public, those persons would be taken into custody for violating a law. The public knows that possessing marijuana in many circumstances is an illegal act so if someone wants to use marijuana for personal use, that person knows that it is illegal and all consequences of that person's use of the drug rest upon the user not anyone else.
Legalization of marijuana is a huge step to take with the public's health, safety and welfare. Our youth today have enough struggles already. Addiction to new users is a reality for which we are not yet prepared. How many traffic violations would incur as a result from use? Injuries from the operation of machinery? How can health care absorb the legalization of smoking pot?
Maybe establishing an minimum age like with alcohol consumption and printing warning labels about smoking could curb some of the problems. I do think that the drug cartels below our borders would be affected if we had our own weed and there would be more revenue from sales to tax to help our economy and better yet…there would be soooo many happy pot smokers out there who could finally get some pure bud at a decent price! I would really like to talk about this more before we decide to legalize it. Our public welfare could possibly be at stake if we don't do this right.