Legalise pot to pack Budget cone?

Advertisement
ScreenHunter_1830 Mar. 27 13.10

By Leith van Onselen

The 7.30 Report ran an interesting segment last night on the legalisation of marajuana in Colorado, which has won widespread community support and is expected to raise between $60 and $100 million in taxes for the state government this year:

Earlier this year, Colorado became the first state in the US to allow fully-legalised marijuana to be sold over the counter. It’s the culmination of a massive shift in public attitudes and for the first time polls show a majority of Americans are now in favour of legalisation…

It was three months ago that Colorado’s medical marijuana stores got the green light to start selling to any adult who walked in…

And already, the legal industry here is huge. In the first month, $14 million worth of recreational marijuana was sold in Colorado…

Colorado is reaping the benefits of legalising marijuana first. There were predictions that this year the state will take in somewhere between $60 and $100 million in marijuana taxes. Four other American states are expected to follow soon..

If you’re 21 years old, you can go and get it and you can use it. Now there are some restrictions of course. You can’t smoke in public, you have to do it a home, you certainly can’t drive under the influence and if you turn up to work stoned, you’re going to be in just as much trouble as you were before.

So, what does a big modern city with legal marijuana look like? Well, pretty much the same as it did before… The sky didn’t fall… There wasn’t 1,000 people in the ER. There wasn’t accidents all over the streets…

Today, more than 20 US states allow medical marijuana and public support for legalisation is closer to 60 per cent…

Personally, I think legalising marajuana makes a lot of sense. Sure, while it isn’t exactly be healthy, it has less harmful effects than alcohol. On any given Friday or Saturday night, the nation’s emergency wards are loaded full of people with alcohol related injuries, often through alcohol-related violence. By contrast, how often do you see or hear of stoners getting into fights or acting like louts? And yet alcohol is legal and pot isn’t. Inconsistent much?

Advertisement

Moreover, legalising and regulating marajuana sales could provide a nice new revenue source for the government, whilst ensuring purity of supply. It would also reduce profits to organised crime, which currently supplies a lot of the illegal drugs.

So what is Australia waiting for?

[email protected]

www.twitter.com/leithvo

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.