Pubdate: Thu, 02 May 2013
Source: Republican & Herald (PA)
Copyright: 2013 Creators Syndicate
Contact:  http://republicanherald.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1047
Author: Froma Harrop, Creators Syndicate

LEGAL POT MEANS MORE MONEY FOR STATES

The good things that should happen after marijuana is legalized are 
happening in Colorado. In November, voters in Colorado - and 
Washington state - legalized pot for recreational use. (Many states 
allow medical use of marijuana.) What are the good things? For 
starters, money, money, money for the state coffers. As of last week, 
lawmakers in Denver were still tussling over how heavily to tax 
marijuana sales. A leading plan centers on excise and sales taxes 
totaling 30 percent. The tax can't go so high that it encourages a 
black market.

The first $40 million collected from the excise tax would go to 
schools. And revenues from a 15 percent sales tax on pot plus the 2.9 
percent ordinary state sales tax would be sent to local governments 
and cover the cost of enforcing the new marijuana regulations.

Meanwhile, the state would save money it now spends on arresting, 
prosecuting and jailing citizens caught smoking the stuff. As one 
small example, Washington state no longer trains new police dogs to 
sniff out marijuana.

Some lawmakers say they want "safeguards" in place to ensure that 
marijuana doesn't end up in the hands of kids, criminals and cartels 
- - like it's not happening already.

Speaking of which, turning pot producers and vendors into legitimate 
businesses is perhaps the most welcome outcome of marijuana legalization.

As Elliott Klug, head of Pink House Blooms, a $3-million-a-year 
marijuana business in Denver, told The Wall Street Journal: "We were 
the bad guys. Now we are still the bad guys, but we pay taxes."

What he means is that while the new marijuana operations can operate 
in the open, they are not being treated as leniently as other farming 
ventures. The state is regulating them with a heavy hand, to the 
point of doing background checks on the growers' tattoos.

As more people pile into marijuana merchandizing, prices fall. (Pot 
prices in Denver are already down a third from their levels in 2011.)

Taking the big money out of a formerly illegal but popular product 
dismantles the criminal cartels' business model. That means less 
violence on the streets, less smuggling at the Mexican border. It 
means ordinary citizens can hike in national forests without fear of 
tripping upon some gang-run marijuana operation.

Unfortunately, while Colorado and Washington state are doing their 
bit to end the insanity, the federal government has not. Under 
federal law, marijuana remains an illegal substance.

This means that legitimate pot growers can't borrow money. (Banks 
will not lend to businesses the feds do not consider legal.) If a 
grower develops an especially high-quality plant, the U.S. Patent and 
Trademark Office will not register it.

Marijuana has been a $1.3 billion-a-year business in this country, a 
business largely closed to the law-abiding. And there's a collateral 
lost opportunity caused by our crazy prohibition on hemp farming.

Hemp is an industrial product with many uses. Although it lacks the 
psychoactive properties of marijuana, hemp is a cousin of marijuana 
bearing some family resemblance. That's the only reason American 
farmers are banned from growing it.

The U.S. Department of Justice is currently scratching its head over 
what to do about Colorado and Washington state. Eventually, the feds 
will come around, but how much money must be wasted on prosecution 
and how much tax revenues lost before that happens?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom