Texas Could Bring In $166 Million from Legalizing Marijuana, Man

Colorado didn't legalize marijuana, they COMMERCIALIZED it while maintaining CRIMINAL Prohibition -- not a single Felony statute against marijuana was repealed, not a single Misdemeanor statute against marijuana was repealed.

Colorado even recently INCREASED some marijuana criminal penalties to Class 1 -- the same as Rape and Homicide -- punishable by 32 years in prison.

Colorado was LIED TO by the Pro Pot Pimps as to how much revenue marijuana would generate, and their wildly inflated tax fantasies are so disappointing that politicians and citizens are grumbling about needing to raise the tax rates and to further restrict and eliminate -- criminalize -- the ability of individual patients / caregivers / users to legally grow their own sustainable supplies.

Colorado marijuana sales taxes don't even reach 1/2 of 1% of overall sales tax revenues. The liars behind Amendment 64 promised the State a minimum of $40 million per year for School construction via a special pot excise tax. Current collections place that tax to only make  $12 million -- not enough to build a single school.

It's a LIE to claim that Colorado legalized marijuana. It's foolish to believe that lie.

As someone who is 100% for legalization (not just decriminalization), take these numbers with a grain of salt.  First, the black market won't go away.  Alcohol is legal and taxed, but there are still bootleggers and moonshiners.  That's what has happened in Colorado, and if we sell this as a revenue solution rather than a freedom solution, we are setting ourselves up for re-regulation pretty quickly.  (See: Red light cameras.)

When it's a revenue issue, .gov has an incentive to set the tax too high, which just continues the black market.  Our goal should really be to get the market into the open (even if that means lower taxes and less revenue) and run the black market out of business.  If it's really about revenue, jack the taxes up once the (illegal) drug cartels are broken.

You want to start that ball rolling?  Take the jurisdiction away from the FDA, and give it to the USDA, where it belongs.  (Marijuana is a weed, not a drug.  Coffee is as much a drug as marijuana.)

Rather than make promises of increased tax collections, better to note the huge decrease in tax expenditure if weed were legal.

Police, SWAT, Lawyers, Courts, Jails, and all the other prison-industrial complex participants would no longer be feeding at the publicly funded trough. All those current tax dollars wasted on chasing Cheech and Chong could be used for pie in the sky dreams like roads (the non-tolled variety) and maintenance and libraries and schools and traffic signals and streetcars and maybe even a few drug treatment centers for the true addicts.

To a clueless stoner, $166 million sounds like a big number, to the State of Texas with an annual budget of $92 BILLION! ... the pathetic pot revenue is barely 1/10th of 1% of the operating expenses, and not worth the hassle of the invading Greedy Big $$ Dispensary Cartels and the Cannabis Clown Circus that accompanies them.

It'd be wiser to DE-criminalize marijuana first before rushing in to commercialize it.

Goodbye Eric Holder. Moment of silence please.

@rubbbrduky Well its still not ok to come to work drunk, and some places ban smoking, and sometimes cigarette smokers all together, so they still have the choice to not hire weed smokers.  You see, weed smoking is a choice, therefore none of your rights as a human are being violated.  You can choose to smoke, you cant choose to be white, black, asian, etc.

@rubbbrduky ... the prohibitionists who wrote Colorado's phony "legalization" amendment -- and the precedent medical amendment --explicitly granted Employers, Insurers and the Government the power to continue to discriminate against all marijuana users, whether medical or recreational.

Colorado's amendment was so biased toward maintaining criminal prohibition and police / government power and control that it failed to establish what most constitutional amendments set out to do -- it failed to create a Personal Right to use marijuana.

Colorado's idiotic amendment explicitly declared that "Driving under the INFLUENCE of Marijuana shall REMAIN ILLEGAL' without defining that or setting any objective scientific standards, which left the interpretation and standard setting up to the prohibitionist politicians who set the limit so low -- 5ng/ml -- that almost every regular patient/user would always be in violation if they ever drove a vehicle.

Not surprising that NORML supported this absurdity, being that NORML is the lobbying arm of the Marijuana McShyster Lawyers who will reap windfalls of $$ from every new DUI-marijuana fool who gets arrested.

@everlastingphelps " if we sell this as a revenue solution rather than a freedom solution, we are setting ourselves up for re-regulation pretty quickly. "

Exactly!

It's a LIE to claim the Colorado "legalized" marijuana -- they COMMERCIALIZED it, while maintaining FELONY CRIMINAL PROHIBITIONS against private individuals who'd dare compete with their greedy revenue generation schemes or interfere with the profits of the Greedy Big $$ Dispensary Cartels that have overrun the state.

If it's about FREEDOM, then DE-Criminalize it completely, remove ALL Felonies and Misdemeanor statutes from the books.

If it's about Government Controlled COMMERCIALIZATION ... go fuck yourselves.

@Montemalone You want them to do something useful and beneficial with that money?  Graft and greed have such a hollow ring when they produce anything other than scandal.

@Voot

Legalize and Tax ALL Drugs, Prostitution and Gambling! ... imagine the revenue $$$ it would bring!

@TheRuddSki One of the worst AGs ever

@bvckvs "simple-minded people" ... the target demographic for "playing" the Lottery.

@ScottsMerkin ... many would argue that possessing a Firearm is a choice too.

@bvckvs ... Little People of Little Minds beg for Little Freedoms.

NewsFlash -- in Colorado, PRIOR to the fake "legalization" amendment, under State law, ANYONE of ANY AGE could use or possess up to 2 (two) ounces of pot and not go to jail -- it was only a $100 petty offense fine *if* caught. That law had been on the books for DECADES.

The bullshit "legalization" Amendment 64 only allows 1 (one) pathetic ounce, and EXCLUDES everyone -- ADULTS included -- under 21 years old from any legal access.

Does it hurt to be so ignorant?

@NightSand @everlastingphelps The black market in CO is competing on price.  The price for legal weed is at the high end of street price, according to the articles I've read.  CO's tax rate on it is only about 15%, which should eventually be low enough to drive the black market out.  (Unlike NYC's 100% cigarette tax rate, which has a thriving black market.)

@NightSand "166 mil of revenue that was otherwise not there"

Same could be said of legalizing ALL drugs, prostitution and gambling ... if you blindly ignore the direct and indirect social costs.

@NightSand " In addition savings on the Justice System would probably be more."

That would only happen if it were ACTUALLY LEGALIZED -- i.e. ALL Criminal Statutes against marijuana repealed. 

No state has done this. Colorado did NOT repeal a single Felony marijuana statute. 

Colorado did NOT repeal a single Misdemeanor marijuana statute. 

Colorado ONLY eliminated a petty offense $100 / fine for simple possession of 1 pathetic ounce or less. 

Private sales between consenting adults are still illegal -- a FELONY for even a single joint.

ALL Adults under 21 were completely EXCLUDED from any legal access to rec. marijuana, not a single gram are they allowed.

Growing 7 plants -- or even sprouting 7 seeds or rooting 7 clones is still a FELONY.

The Dept. of Revenue created 1000s of pages of new Regulations, Rules and Laws regarding marijuana.

Colorado's A64 mandates that DUI-marijuana shall REMAIN ILLEGAL, and foolishly allowed the prohibitionist legislature to set the standard of 5ng/ml -- so low that nearly every regular user / patient would always exceed this level whenever they drive a vehicle, guaranteeing 1000s of fools will be sucked into the vortex of the Court System and the for-profit drug "rehab" industry.

The Legislature just last year INCREASED one of the penalties for Marijuana to a Class 1 Felony -- equivalent to Rape and Homicide, with a 32 year prison sentence!

The Prohibitionist Law Enforcers and the Justice System in Colorado haven't missed a beat, in spite of the BLATANTLY FALSE Headlines that lazy incompetent media spew about Colorado "Legalizing" pot.

hth

@dingo

...the Justice Department must finally cough up documents about how Holder’s Justice Department lied to Congress and the American people...

You can hear the hard drives crashing in the distance.

@Sotiredofitall

Few can top Janet, but Eric was wonderfully protective of federal malfeasance, and of course his "people".

Another former radical nutter gone.

@Sotiredofitall One of the best AGs ever.

@DonkeyHotay @ScottsMerkin It is a choice and a right to possess a firearm.  Marijuana should have gotten the same treatment. If an establishment, employer or government entity decides to not allow that possession on their property, they are not violating that right.

If I follow your comments here correctly, you and I are on the same page with Colorado's botched 'legalization' of marijuana.  I don't see the DUI-marijuana element as a mistake in and of itself, but the setting of the limit so low is idiotic.  And the penalties defy any sense of reason and decency.

@everlastingphelps ... the "black market" for pot -- the same Friends, Family and Associates that stoners have always scored their weed from -- will ALWAYS exist, and will ALWAYS be able to out-compete the over-regulated, overtaxed, greedy big $$ dispensary cartels.

Retail Dispensaries are for Tourists, Newbies and Suckers who don't have any private connections.

In the U$A, the "black markets" for Alcohol and Tobacco are BILLIONS! of $$$ every year ... each!

And Tobacco is only worth $2.00 /lb wholesale ... or less than 1/1000th of the wholesale pot market in Colorado.

Until marijuana gets down to $2.00 / POUND, and only suffers normal sales taxes -- FULL LEGALIZATION / DECRIMINALIZATION -- there will always be a thriving "black market".

Now ask yourself, what's the size of the "black market" for tomatoes or oregano?

@TheRuddSki 

John Mitchell tops them all as the worst.

Ed Meese and Alberto Gonzales surely are higher on the list.

Don't forget Harry Daugherty

@Myrna.Minkoff-Katz 

" But it’s not just right-wingers who are up in arms over Holder. Apart from his casual approach to civil liberties and the First Amendment, folks on the left are livid that the attorney general can find no one on Wall Street to perp-walk directly from the corner offices of JPMorgan into federal prison. Progressive senators such as Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are asking the DOJ exactly when “too big to fail” morphed into “too big to jail.” "

@bvckvs It's actually very pig-ignorant of you to deny the reality of the primary demographic of lottery "players".

@RTGolden1 "If an establishment, employer or government entity decides to not allow that possession on their property, they are not violating that right."

Doesn't Texas law allow gun nuts the right to carry on OTHER PEOPLE's property -- businesses -- even if the business owner doesn't want it?

@mavdog

Holder learned from Mitchell just like Obama learned from Nixon.

@Sotiredofitall @Myrna.Minkoff-Katz JPMorgan pays over $25 Billion in fines to the government, and somehow Jamie Dimon is not only not in jail, but still runs the fucking company.  Splain that shit

@DonkeyHotay No, they don't.  If the property owner or establishment posts something to the effect of "no firearms allowed", it will be treated as trespassing.

@TheRuddSki 

if you mean they learned how not to be criminals and violate the law like Mitchell and Nixon, yes you are right.

@bvckvs <== one of the clueless fools who thinks "playing" the lottery is a way to "get money".

LOL!

@RTGolden1 ... so what was all that idiocy of Gun Loons carrying their rifles into random businesses as protest?

"The poll asked respondents their opinions about 10 different national political officials, ranging from Bill Clinton to President Obama to Eric Holder, as well as the Democratic and Republican parties.

They were given choices of very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative, very negative and “don’t know the name.” About a third of respondents didn’t know who Mr. Holder is (37 percent). However, those Americans who knew Mr. Holder gave him the second-lowest “positive” rating of anyone or any organization on the survey at a mere 15 percent. Only Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio had a lower “positive” rating than Mr. Holder.

The attorney general’s “positive” rating was less than half of the positive rating of the Republican Party and 27 points behind that of his boss, Mr. Obama, who was rated favorably by only 42 percent of respondents."

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/16/fund-von-spakovsky-the-injustice-of-eric-holder/#ixzz3ELzwb0YN

Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

@mavdog

Maybe the rogue IRS democrat party operatives have reason to worry now.

@DonkeyHotay @RTGolden1 those businesses allowed open carry.  Some still do.  As a result of said Gun Loons, others no longer allow it.

From what I can tell, the objective of the loons was to extend open carry in TX to handguns as well as long guns.  Apparently it is difficult for Arlingtonites to find suitable long gun accessories for their Cubavera shirts, cargo shorts, flip flops and fedoras

@TheRuddSki No need to worry, Al Sharpton says he's helping the White House pick the next attorney general   Our elected overlords have it covered.

@Sotiredofitall 

Update (3:17 p.m.): Sharpton sent a statement to Business Insider clarifying that he is not involved in the "decision making."

"We did not say we are in the decision making. We are in conversation to reach out to them to have meetings about what we want to see in a successor," said Sharpton. "I have personally spoken to Attorney General Eric Holder today to express my views that he was the best civil rights Attorney General in history."

Al Sharpton engaging in self-promotion, making himself appear to be important.

who would have thought? I mean heck, have we ever seen this from him before?

@Sotiredofitall

Having read that a semi-literate race hustler is advising the worst president ever, I became encouraged that finally, this Nation of Cowards might just find the courage to laugh their asses off.

What a clown show.