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Comment by click170 | Hacker News Reader

Looking at how much money Colorado is raking in, I honestly think it's just a matter of time before other states fall in line with legalizing marijuana. Awkward banking situation be damned.

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$52 million revenue for a state with $28500 million in expenditures is a drop in the bucket.

However it looks like they spent $770 million on corrections - probably with a sizable portion spent on drug enforcement. Or would drug related incarceration mostly be paid by the federal government?

https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/revenue/colorado-marijuana-...

http://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_state_budget

Well, and saving money/focusing resources on crimes other than cannabis enforcement compound the economic value of legalized cannabis.

I agree with you that the incentive to tax marijuana is high due to the revenue potential for power groups within the state.

Others suggest that marijuana should be legalized so that the state can reap tax revenues, as if the state is a creature whose feeding is a virtue in and of itself. I find this puzzling, as taxation an entirely independent concept to legalization. Attaching the two issues together seems unnecessary.

The taxes on plants in the various states seem pretty high, and various sources tell me that the retail prices are still not much lower than the previous black market prices. These taxes, especially given how high they are, seem like they are destined to produce the same problems of prohibition.

But vices are usually heavily taxed. (Ok, sure, some of this is medicinal, but let's be frank) So, i don't see much of an issue with it.

Leveraging taxes makes this appealing to people for whom it might not be.

As for the prices being similar to black market, that may be so, for now, but there is one thing which should give it an advantage and that's quality control, aka, branding.

And, as others have pointed out, legalizing it, eliminates the social cost of prosecuting what were once crimes --that's a big advantage.

Why is this so easily accepted?

In Denver, the weed sales tax is upwards of 21% with a previous 15% excise tax from cultivator to retail outlet.

In Colorado, it's less than 8% tax on a 6 pack of beer and the great majority of this is a federal tax.

Weed is demonstrably safer and thus less sinful than alcohol and tobacco. I dislike how easily the tax argument is received. If you can show a relationship that adds to healthcare costs then by all means institute sin taxes, including for soda. But if you are only making a moral judgement about what not to do, then I think the argument is without merit.

More details-

http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/22/whatever-happened-to-treat...

Tobacco (which gets mostly smoked) and liquor can be heavily taxed, depending on jurisdiction, so if AKs want to put 10% or 50% or 120% tax rate and pass that resolution, what's the problem?

As to why beer might be taxed less, I think some of these things are due to history. Beer has been a mainstream vice since prehistory. If you were to introduce "New Vice #47", I'm going to guess, it would get a relatively high tax too, no matter how mild it might be to your health.

By the way, not that it means anything, but I'd be totally for high taxes on beer and sugary drinks.

While the "sin tax" is a philosophy that some people might prescribe to, the main incentive for the tax revenue is mainly the ability for the government to make money and fund whatever the government wants to fund with it. I don't think morality enters into it.

eh, if the argument is go to jail or pay some extra money, I'd rather accept the lesser evil. Even more so if it is helping states pay for socially beneficial programs with lots of positive externalities.

And let's be frank, there's still lots of black market sales in Colorado, for people that want lesser quality marijuana at cheaper prices. Many people don't mind the premium markup and the taxes for the convenience, legality and quality of legalized pot.

It's not an argument from first principles about what weed "should" cost. It's about what people will accept. People are used to weed costing relatively infinite money (i.e. it can cost you your freedom and no amount of money can replace that). Therefore, even expensive weed seems cheap by comparison and feels like a win for consumers.

Likewise, expressways are massively expensive to build and maintain, but we're used to driving on them for free, so charging even a small toll that doesn't fully recover the costs feels expensive and is widely resisted.

Are you saying you don't have an issue with the taxation of vices, or that you do not have an issue with the taxation of marijuana because the taxation of vices is already common?

I agree with both ways of framing it. I don't have a problem with taxing vice --gambling, prostitution, drugs (alcohol, tobacco, MJ), including some goods of dubious utility, sugar, etc. Taxation of such vice being common, makes it an easy sell. There's a frame of reference, precedence.

> as if the state is a creature whose feeding is a virtue in and of itself.

This isn't why people suggest it. People suggest it because they recognize many Americans are incapable of seeing the value of doing something if there is no economic incentive for it. So they come up with an economic incentive.

Adding that high tax was always about winning the support of a broad coalition of interest groups and voters that was necessary to push the bill through, at least that was the case in Washington. There were plenty of people who, while not strongly opposed to marijuana, would have just as soon left it illegal if not for the promise of some sort of broader benefit to non-users in the form of additional tax revenue. Still, I agree with your fundamental point that it is a shame that we feel the need to justify something which just makes good policy sense by using tax dollars as a carrot.

Incidentally, in Seattle at least, the high taxes and difficult restrictions on where marijuana can be sold means that a lot of people there still get there weed the same way they did before: either through the more loosely regulated dispensary system or illegal growers.

Unless it can be shown to have adverse health effects I'm not sure I would agree with taxation either, that said. Baby steps. Taking it from omg-lock-your-doors-theyre-doing-marijuana illegal, to on the same prohibited level as tobacco or alcohol is easier to digest for more conservative people.

Once it's legal and we've aborted this embarrassing War On Drugs, we can begin to address the rationale behind the taxation of harmless vices. It's a little bit of a bait and switch, if you think of it in the long-term, but don't tell them that.

I'm waiting for a marijuana case of some kind to come before the Federal courts.

Already happened, the ruling is going to come within the next three weeks:

http://blog.norml.org/2015/02/12/federal-judge-hears-closing...

> "It is unimaginable to believe that if heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or even over-the-counter medications were being distributed in 23 states and the District of Columbia, Congress and the President would abdicate all regulatory authority to those jurisdictions, and then cut off all funds … to intervene in related distribution activities"

What does this quote mean? I'm having trouble parsing it properly.

Also, in the US, methamphetamine is a legal Schedule II drug for ADHD and obesity.

They're saying that if 23 states had legalized heroin then the government would have intervened to stop them. So the fact that the government hasn't intervened shows that it isn't as dangerous as other schedule I drugs, and therefore shouldn't be schedule I.

(Even though as you say cocaine and methamphetamine are both legal by prescription, and heroin is basically legal as well in the form of morphine, but whatever.)

What does it realistically mean if this judge finds that marijuana is improperly scheduled? Does marijuana become default legal? Does it defer to the state laws? Does the process of re-scheduling start? etc.

IANAL, but I'd be very surprised if this case ends up doing anything. The case is subject to "rational basis" review, the weakest form of review. As is mentioned in the article, the government correctly argues that congress doesn't even have to be right, it just has to have a "rational basis" for its action. In fact, the so long as the court can imagine a rational basis of action, even one that is totally unrelated to the legislative history, the government can prevail.

The government can easily argue a rational basis by saying "Drugs are bad mkay? While there may be some medicinal uses (which we deny), even if they existed we think that there are better substitutes distilled by pharmaceutical companies in each case presented by the plaintiffs. The government has a legitimate interest in promoting the health of the nation. Therefore, by demonstrating a legitimate interest and precluding medicinal uses, schedule I is rational."

Not that I believe this is good policy mind you, just that arguing under these conditions is unlikely to lead to change.

http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/01/challenging-la...

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