I'd wondered for a while what it was going to take to get most drugs legalized in the US. NPR today mentioned that 70 years ago, the legal prohibition on alcohol was lifted, and really for two reasons; create jobs and raise money from taxes. This was one of many government efforts that helped lift the nation out of the last Depression.
A side benefit was the loss of funding and power for a generation of gamblers and reduced costs for chasing and imprisoning bootleggers and moonshiners. Later in the same show, they mentioned that Texas and other states are looking at releasing prisoners early as a means of reducing costs. Texas voters declined to fund 8 new prisons, so early release is getting a long hard look.
The current $9,000,000,000,000.00 federal budget deficit is going to be a bear to pay off. But as we've learned with the near ubiquitous state lotteries, scratch cards and casinos and the enormous tax revenues they bring in, we can look the other way in the case of vice if government takes it over and taxes the hell out of it.
What would happen if we legalized and taxed marijuana, cocaine and heroin? Tomorrow, we'll take a back of the envelope look.
1 comments:
The public won't find legalization palatable unless there is some sort of 'event' to make a broad emotional impact.
Maybe a movie or something.
Then pressured lawmakers might act.
Widescale immunity to numbers-based reasoning is the order of the day.
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