Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Huh? Does someone really believe this?

"It provides tax revenue to the states that the Federal Government doesn't have to contribute to."

The above appeared in a Campfire thread. Am I the only one here whose jaw dropped to his chest after reading it?

Bill Quimby

Without context it's meaningless, but I'm never surprised anymore at anything I read here.

I'm the one who said it.

Check out the amount of tax revenue that Colorado has accumulated from Marijuana sales.

It's not an insignificant number.

Marijuana is a "taxed" billion dollar a year industry in Colorado.

Why is that so hard to believe?

One reason other states are on board with legalizing pot, they want the tax revenue.

Spend a billion to chase Cheech and Chong around, or collect a billion.

How f'n hard is this to comprehend?

BLM, Mexican gang violence, the militarization of our police, the bizarre level of incarceration in this country, the extraordinary level of drug od's : all of it has it's roots in the war on drugs, and it's utter failure.

We're living in a police state, and think nothing of it.

I don't understand the consternation. What exactly about that statement caused your jaw to drop?



In other news, I was reading an article about the effects of legalizing marijuana and despite a fear of possibly increased accidents caused by all of those stoners suddenly driving, there is some indication to show that traffic accidents actually decrease as alcohol use is replaced by marijuana use.

That should cause some jaws to drop or knees to jerk...

It took me a while to come to the realization that pot isn't that great of a danger. Safer than alcohol or tobacco. The government pretends to try to limit use of both but doesn't want to give up the tax money it generates.

These hit and run posts are a PITA,....you'd think the OP would take the time to respond.

GTC

Pot isn't unlike the lottery in that we don't have to participate. Let the suckers pay.

In much of the country a significant percentage of drivers are already driving around stoned every day. We may not notice much difference after legalization.

"some indication"

Such as....those wanting it to be legal???????

He's still runnin'

"Some people worry that legalizing marijuana would cause an increase in car accidents by “stoned drivers”, who, like drunk drivers, have impaired reflexes and poor judgment, and indeed there is a small but real problem of marijuana-induced car accidents. But Chaloukpa and Laixuthai (1994) crunch the numbers and find that decreased price/increased availability of marijuana is actually associated with decreased car accidents, probably because marijuana is substituting for alcohol in the “have impairing substances and then go driving” population. This finding – that marijuana and alcohol substitute for each other – has been spotted again and again. Anderson & Rees (2013) find that states that legalize medical marijuana see a 5% drop in beer sales. There are however a few dissenting opinions: Cameron & Williams (2001), in complex econometric simulations that may or may not resemble the real world in any respect, find that increasing the price of alcohol increases marijuana use, but increasing the price of marijuana does not affect alcohol use, and the same researcher finds that banning alcohol on a college campus also decreases marijuana use. Also, possibly marijuana use increases smoking? This whole area is confusing, but I am most sympathetic to to the Andersen and Rees statistics which say that medical marijuana states are associated with 13% fewer traffic fatalities."

You can find the whole article here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/

The part I quoted and which contains active links to the studies cited is in section III, paragraph 9.

The author really isn't for or against marijuana legalization from what I can read, he presents a fairly balanced blog post citing a lot of sources showing possible pros and cons. This blogger seems to have a fairly erudite readership so the comments are always worth perusing.

More:
"So my actual conclusion is:

There is not a sufficiently obvious order-of-magnitude difference between the costs and benefits of marijuana legalization for a evidence-based utilitarian analysis of costs and benefits to inform the debate. You may return to your regularly scheduled wild speculation and shrill accusations.

But I wouldn’t say this exercise is useless. For example, it suggests that whether marijuana legalization is positive or negative on net depends almost entirely on small changes in the road traffic accident rate. This is something I’ve never heard anyone else mention, but which in retrospect should be obvious; the few debatable health effects and the couple of people given short jail sentences absolutely can’t compare to the potential for thousands more (or fewer) traffic accidents which leave people permanently dead.

So my actual actual conclusion is:

We should probably stop caring about health effects of marijuana and about imprisonment for marijuana-related offenses, and concentrate all of our research and political energy on how marijuana affects driving."


This was written in January 2014 so it doesn't have any evidence based research later than that.

Can anyone from the "legal" states chime in as to whether or not there are more related accidents.
Personally I feel it should be taxed and criminalized just like drinking and driving.

BUT,BUT,BUT, Pot is a gateway drug in that it makes everybody that uses it go directly to Heroin! Everybody knows that!
from 1964 to 1973 i smoked daily(all day) with the heaviest use in 69' and 70.
never used H or any other needle drug. mushrooms yes, coke yes, but just grew out of it. 1973 to 1991 was in a bottle.
worst time of my life. booze caused so much more strife in my life than pot there is no comparison. been clean and sober since 91 but still don't see the claim that pot is evil.

Sweet Louise, it's pretty easy to understood what made the OP's jaw drop.

His point is: States generate more tax income via pot, which means the Federal government needs to give less tax money to said states. Since the states need less money from the FEDS, the FEDS will need to collect less money from you and me.

Does anyone believe that A) the states will want less money from the FEDS? B) That the FEDS will collect less money from us?

I think, as time goes on the states are going to have to come up with some way to pay their debts without putting the pinch on the federal government.

Right now one of the big debts in many states are government pensions.

At some point, the states are going to have to find some way to fund those pensions or tell the people that they're going to have to do without them.

,..and keep in mind,..these are government employees who are going to take the hit.

So,..when the debt problems of a state government starts to directly affect the incomes of the employees of the state government, the state government will look for ways to generate revenue.

Right now, big chunks of revenue are getting sent to the cartels in Mexico.

So a decision has to be made.

Do you want the Mexican cartels to get your pensions and your benefits?,...or do you want to keep them for yourself?

It's a no brainer.

Ok, I don't disagree with that. Still doesn't mean that A)they will want LESS from the FEDS B) that the FEDS will give them less.

And, the Cartels are losing money due to the pot legalizing, so, they are now importing Heroin.

Hmmm--