Now, five days into the new year, it is a waiting game.
As of Jan. 1 the sale of recreational marijuana is officially legal in the state of California. Depending on which side of the debate you’re on, our society will start its mellow, stuporous, dopey decline into chaos and oblivion or it will carry on with business as usual, perhaps with fewer minor drug offenses and the accompanying incarceration and jail overcrowding.
It’s not as if Californians are blazing a trail regarding cannabis consumption. On the West Coast they are stragglers just catching up with residents of Washington and Oregon, who for a few years have been free to smoke and use the plant and its by-products however they see fit.
(Incidentally, some Oregonians are now lawfully allowed to pump their own gas so, as a Californian and by way of reciprocation, I welcome anyone from that fine state to use us as case studies in the practice of automotive self-service.)
In 2015 the use of recreational marijuana in the Beaver State was no longer illegal and sales of the substance was also legitimized by the state.
In October last year the Oregonian reported that between Jan. 4, 2016, and Aug. 31, 2017, the state collected $108.6 million in state and local taxes. Of that, school programs received about $34 million and $17 million went to mental health, drug services and alcoholism services. Other agencies, including law enforcement, benefitted from an influx of weed money.
In a separate story the newspaper also reported that police found more people with marijuana and other drugs in their systems when they were stopped, though it was not clear if they were impaired.
In Washington state, residents paid about $730 million in local and state taxes related to legalized marijuana use. More than half of that amount was expected to find its way into public health programs.
Surely these and similar figures have been heard and used as reasons for welcoming the legalization of pot.
When state and local agencies claim poverty and hardship when it comes time for funding needed social programs like health care, and basic services like education and law enforcement, it is difficult to turn away from a revenue source that, in it early stages does not appear to have any significant, broad detrimental affects. (Those who worry that marijuana is a gateway drug to harder substances could also make the same claim about any mood altering vehicle, from alcohol to prescription pills.)
National City and Chula Vista have, as is their right under state law, refused to allow the sales of marijuana within their jurisdictions, but residents can still use it. It will be interesting to see how much, if any, money municipalities leave on the table by not imposing a local sales tax on a product that is now easily bought elsewhere.
