A Harvard University professor of economics, Jeffrey Miron, has crunched the numbers, and he's determined that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion annually in money spent on enforcing dope laws.
That breaks down to $5.3 billion in savings for state and local governments, and $2.4 billion in cost reductions at the federal level.
This is noteworthy because the FBI reported the other day that more Americans were arrested for pot last year than at any time in U.S. history. And of the more than 770,000 people cited for dope-related offenses, nearly 90 percent were charged only with possession.
Those are hundreds of thousands of criminal cases that didn't have to be taking up the time and resources of our cops and courts.
Meanwhile, Harvard's Miron estimates that tax revenue for legalized pot would run about $2.4 billion annually if it were taxed like all other goods.
Yet if marijuana were taxed at rates comparable to the aggressive levies placed on alcohol and tobacco -- and it should be -- Miron determined that it would yield $6.2 billion in annual revenue.
"It's kind of small potatoes compared to the ($319 billion) federal budget deficit," he told me. "But it's not nothing."
For the record, Miron says he isn't a pot smoker. His interest in the subject comes instead from a desire to address what he sees as a failed public policy.
California would do especially well if marijuana were legalized. As it stands, pot is already the state's largest cash crop, with annual sales estimated to be about $4 billion.
Miron figures that decriminalizing marijuana would result in about $1 billion in law-enforcement-related savings for California, plus about $100 million in additional tax revenue.
"That would certainly put a significant dent in a budget deficit of $2 billion or $3 billion," he said.
Wow, that's good shit, man. With the savings and revenue maybe we could afford to hire a good Governor.
No comments:
Post a Comment