Legalizing Pot Makes Lots of Cents for Our Cash-Starved Government
Belief:
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
Greta Christina
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Labor Against the War Shifting Sights to Afghanistan Occupation
Jane Slaughter
DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower
Environment:
20 Weird, Crazy Ideas for Helping the Earth
Food:
10 Tips for a Sustainable Thanksgiving
Sarah Newman
Health and Wellness:
Is the House's Health Bill Really Worse than Nothing?
Joshua Holland
Immigration:
What Denying Unauthorized Immigrants Health Insurance Will Cost You
Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: 3 Potential Obstacles to Health-Care Reform
Adele M. Stan
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?
Vanessa Richmond
Rights and Liberties:
Feeling Nervous? 3,000 Behavior Detection Officers Will Be Watching You at the Airport This Thanksgiving
Liliana Segura
Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Did American Commandos Slaughter Afghan Civilians in Bala Murghab? Residents Say Yes.
Mustafa Saber
What could you do with an extra $14 billion? Members of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and other like-minded organizations will be asking government officials that very question on April 15 when they present a mock check to the U.S. Treasury.
"We represent the millions of otherwise law-abiding cannabis consumers who are ready, willing, vocal and able to contribute needed tax revenue to America's struggling economy," says Allen St. Pierre, NORML's executive director. "All we ask in exchange for our $14 billion is that our government respects our decision to use marijuana privately and responsibly."
But it's not just NORML calling on lawmakers to tax and regulate marijuana. In today's economic climate, the question is: Who isn't?
Late last month, during President Barack Obama's first-ever Internet town hall, questions pertaining to whether legalizing marijuana like alcohol could help boost the economy received more votes from the public than did any other topic.
The questions' popularity -- and the president's half-hearted reply ("No," he said and laughed.) -- stimulated a torrent of mainstream media attention. In the past two weeks alone, commentators like David Sirota (The Nation), Kathleen Parker (Washington Post), Paul Jacob (TownHall.com), Clarence Page (Chicago Tribune) and Jack Cafferty (CNN) have expressed sympathy for regulating pot. Even Joe Klein at Time magazine weighed in on the issue, writing this month that "legalizing marijuana makes sense."
It makes cents, too.
According to a 2005 analysis by Harvard University senior lecturer Jeffrey Miron -- and endorsed by over 500 distinguished economists -- replacing pot prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcohol would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.
A separate economic analysis conducted by George Mason University professor Jon Gettman in 2007 estimates that the total amount of tax revenue derived from cannabis could be far higher. According to Gettman, the retail value of the total U.S. marijuana market now stands at a whopping $113 billion per year.
See more stories tagged with: marijuana, legalization, legalization, decriminalization, revenues, budgets, governments
Paul Armentano is the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He is the co-author of the forthcoming book, Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2009).
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
You've chosen to turn comments off for the entire site. Would you like to turn them back on?
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.