The Life and Times of Bryan Sr. and Family

A quick recap of the first post that I made entitled, Legalize Marijuana stated the effects that I have personally dealt with during my law enforcement career. I briefly discussed how marijuana negatively affects a person’s body.

I knew that I would be talking about the potential tax revenue from legalizing marijuana. Since I have received several comments about the potential revenue that the legalization of marijuana would bring in, I will start that discussion in this post. There has been a long standing debate that a great deal of money would be brought into the government through the legalization of marijuana. I shake my head as I type this and think, here comes another generalization. Do we really expect the government to handle more money in an efficient and effective way? Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that the government will be totally, fiscally responsible with all the revenue that would be brought in through the taxation of legalized marijuana. Now we need to look at some projected figures of the amount of money that could be collected through the taxation of legalized marijuana.

One story from Bloomberg Businessweek attempts to show a correlation of the taxes that are collected through alcohol sales. It says there are an estimated $8 billion in taxes collected every year through the sale of alcohol. Then the story goes on to say what I believe many do not think about:  the social costs of alcohol use. “The total cost to the U.S. in 2008 due to alcohol-related problems was $185 billion, and the government pays about 38% of that cost (approximately $72 billion), all due to consequences of alcohol consumption, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism.” That, my friends, is not a good investment.

Another source, The Tax Foundationstates“revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year, if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods, to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco. Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement — $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels”. One thing this particular article does not address is the potential cost associated with the potential increase in treatment that will be needed as a result of legalizing marijuana. I am sure that you will agree with me there will be a significant number of people that will not use marijuana in a “responsible manner,”  just like we have so many people that cannot drink responsibly. There will be an increase in property damage, hospitalization and lives lost as a result of relaxing the laws on marijuana use.

Tax Forms

I wish to leave you with a quote I am taking from a story in  CNBC, Marijuana & Money, “Even with the U.S. economy struggling, we should not buy into the argument that vices should be legalized, taxed and regulated—no matter how much revenue we think it may generate. Some things just aren’t worth the costs.” I must say that I agree with CNBC on this one.