LEGALIZING POT MAKES LOTS OF CENTS FOR OUR CASH-STARVED GOVERNMENT

What could you do with an extra $14 billion dollars? Members of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and
other likeminded organizations will be asking government officials
that very question on Wednesday, April 15th, when they present a mock
check to the U.S. Treasury Office.

"We represent the millions of otherwise law-abiding cannabis
consumers who are ready, willing, vocal and able to contribute needed
tax revenue to America's struggling economy," says Allen St. Pierre,
NORML's Executive Director. "All we ask in exchange for our $14
billion is that our government respects our decision to use marijuana
privately and responsibly."

But it's not just NORML calling on lawmakers to tax and regulate
marijuana. In today's economic climate, the question is: who isn't?

Late last month, during President Barack Obama's first-ever Internet
Town Hall, questions pertaining to whether legalizing marijuana like
alcohol could help boost the economy received more votes from the
public than did any other topic. The questions' popularity -- and the
President's half-hearted reply ("No," he laughed.) -- stimulated a
torrent of mainstream media attention. In the past two weeks alone,
commentators like David Sirota (The Nation), Kathleen Parker
(Washington Post), Paul Jacob (TownHall.com), Clarence Page (Chicago
Tribune), and Jack Cafferty (CNN) have all expressed sympathy for
regulating pot. Even Joe Klein at Time Magazine weighed in on the
issue, writing this month that "legalizing marijuana makes sense."

It makes cents too.

According to a 2005 analysis by Harvard University senior lecturer
Jeffrey Miron -- and endorsed by over 500 distinguished economists --
replacing pot prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation
similar to that used for alcohol would produce combined savings and
tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.

A separate economic analysis, conducted by George Mason University
professor Jon Gettman in 2007, estimates that the total amount of tax
revenue derived from cannabis could be far higher. According to
Gettman, the retail value of the total U.S. marijuana market now
stands at a whopping $113 billion per year. Using standard tax
percentages obtained from the Office of Management and Budget, he
calculates that the diversion of this market from the taxable economy
deprives taxpayers of $31.1 billion annually.

For local and state governments, taxing and regulating pot could help
reduce growing deficits. For instance, in Oakland, California the
City Council gave preliminary approval last week to a proposal to
raise the business tax paid by city-licensed medical marijuana
dispensary operators. Council members estimate that the new tax will
raise anywhere from $400,000 to a "couple million" dollars annually.

Likewise, lawmakers in Massachusetts and California are debating
statewide measures to tax and regulate the production and sale of
cannabis to adults. Both state proposals would impose a fixed excise
tax on the retail production of marijuana -- non-retail cultivation
would remain untaxed -- as well as sales taxes on the commercial sale
of the drug to anyone 21 years and older.

"The revenue effect of the proposed Act is an estimated annual
revenue gain of $1.339 billion," says the California State Board of
Equalization and Taxation, which is backing the measure. A more
liberal economic assessment performed by California NORML's Dr. Dale
Gieringer estimates that the annual revenues raised via the advent of
a legal cannabis industry in California could be far higher.

"A comparable example would be California's wine industry," Gieringer
wrote in a 2009 report. "With $12.3 billion in retail sales, the wine
industry generates 309,000 jobs, $10.1 billion in wages, and $2
billion in tourist expenditures. Extrapolating these figures to a
legal marijuana market, ... one might expect $12 to $18 billion in
total economic activity, with 60,000 to 110,000 new jobs created, and
$2.5 to $3.5 billion in legal wages, which would generate additional
income and business taxes for the state."

Finally, taxing and regulating cannabis would have the added bonus of
taking the production and trafficking of pot out of the hands of
criminal enterprises and, increasingly, drug gangs. According to the
Associated Press, marijuana is the "biggest source of income" for
Mexican drug cartels. Legalizing pot would eliminate this primary
income source for these cartels and, in turn, eliminate much of the
growing violence and turf battles that currently surround the drug's
illegal importation from Mexico.

Any way you look at it, legalizing cannabis just makes sense. So why
aren't we doing it?