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Comment by timv | Hacker News Reader

Actually, though the article's summary claimed to find no noticeable change, the section on taxes says:

One area where legal marijuana has reaped unexpectedly large benefits is state tax revenue.

Which means more money to invest in the country fixing issues, hopefully, instead of being wasted on mansions for corrupt politicians or spent recklessly.

For example, issues that cause crime. Wouldn't that be nice? Or at least advancement of science and engineering. Someone gets to fund the space program.

Get high so someone else can go high?

OTOH once marijuana is legal it is just another crop and I would expect to price to drop to near zero. Combined with the fact that you hardly need kilograms of it, I wouldn't get too excited about future tax revenue.

I would argue otherwise.

Alcohol (especially wine) is very easy and cheap to make at home but the Liquor Control Board of Ontario still managed to pull in $1.8 billion last year taxing it.

I don't think it's the home brewing equivalent that is the risk. It's more about the relative profits of corn vs marijuana in the midwest. If we were to fully legalize, I would expect that marijuana would have to get at least as cheap as alternative crops.

Don't ignore the cost of all the regulations marijuana has in addition to regular crops - for growers, transporters, and sellers.

I wouldn't. MJ in a lot of places has gotten like "craft beer": there's an endless number of varieties and strains, growers put a lot of effort into creating new strains and growing them as optimally as possible (like using hydroponics), different varieties are claimed to have different effects, etc. You don't need kilograms of it, but there is every indication that a lot of it will be very valuable, just like many fine wines are very, very expensive per bottle and many fine imported cheeses are extremely expensive.

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