A recent article on RasmussenReports.com entertained the idea that legalizing marijuana might actually do some good for the struggling economy. While the main focus of the piece is a recent poll stating that 40% of Americans favor legalization, it was the following excerpt that was the most interesting nugget of information in the article:
The World Health Organization estimates that 42% of Americans have tried marijuana, the highest usage level in the 17 countries it profiled. Some researchers contend that marijuana is the number one cash crop in the United States.
Three Nobel Prize winners including Milton Friedman were among the more than 500 economists who endorsed a 2005 Harvard study that concluded that legalization of marijuana “would save $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures on prohibition enforcement and produce tax revenues of at least $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like most consumer goods. If, however, marijuana were taxed similarly to alcohol or tobacco, it might generate as much as $6.2 billion annually.”
Given Obama’s public support for decriminalization in 2004 as well as his appointment of former Seattle police chief, Gil Kerlikowske, as drug czar, there is hope that rational thought rather than demented ideology will dictate America’s drug policy in the future.
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