MORE MARIJUANA DIALOGUES

I appreciated Armstrong's article "The Price of Prohibition" about the
costs that the state incurs criminalizing marijuana and the revenue it
could generate if it did not. While I agree with the basic tenets of the
article, and strongly believe that marijuana should be decriminalized, Mr.
Armstrong's remarks about TABOR reform are ill-informed. He states that
"Owens, along with many Democrats and some other sellout Republicans, are
asking Colorado taxpayers to fork over an estimated $3.1 billion over the
next five years." The truth is that the proposed reform of TABOR would not
be an involuntary tax hike, but a voter-approved revenue increase for the
state of Colorado, which would greatly benefit our ailing public education
system. It strikes me as odd that Mr. Armstrong is in favor of generating
state revenue through the taxation and decriminalization of marijuana, but
not by foregoing an average of $20 per taxpayer in refunds to help a public
education system that ranks 47th in the nation in K-12 education funding as
a share of income.

While I agree that the state has often spent funds quite frivolously in
past years, it seems important that we increase support for students in
public education in Colorado before "increasing liberty" to allow those
kids to do more of what they do best... smoke weed.

Devon Swezey

Boulder