Oregon pays out $85 million in pot taxes to school fund, cops, other services

[n2doc]

By Noelle Crombie
The Oregonian | OregonLive


The checks are in the mail.

That's the message the Oregon Department of Revenue sent Friday when it announced it will pay out $85 million in marijuana taxes for schools, public health, police and local governments by next week.

The payouts represent the first distributions of state marijuana tax revenues since Oregon opened its legal recreational cannabis market.

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http://www.oregonlive.com/marijuana/index.ssf/2017/10/oregon_pays_out_85_million_in_1.html#comments

[NNadir]

1. Giving pot revenue to schools sends a bad message.

Pot smoking and education are incompatible.

While I'm not arguing for criminalizing pot, I strongly object to any representation that it is "good" for anything.

It isn't. Its use needs to be strongly discouraged, much as we discourage cigarettes and other legal drugs.

[Voltaire2]

2. So you also think tax revenue from tobacco and alcohol

should never be used for schools?

[NNadir]

3. I believe taxes should be dedicated to the general fund and dispersed as such to public...

...institutions without explicit attachments to this tax and that tax.

And let me be clear: I support taxes. They are the price one pays for living in a civilized society, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it.

Dissent: Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue, (1927)

I also believe that efforts to diminish the use of all psychoactive drugs - I include cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana here - should be publicly funded and if income taxes are used for this purpose, I have no objection.

Identifying pot revenues as a school funding source explicitly is a very, very, very, very bad idea; it sends an awful message.

Most of the stoners I personally knew when I was young were poor performers academically.

My sons, both of whom are high honors students thus far, also knew a fair number of modern stoners in high school. They're going nowhere.

I am aware that there are a few exceptions to this rule. But my experience suggests that pot is bad for one's brain. I can't think of a single stoner I personally knew who was a high achiever. The opposite is true. Even those with the best potential were wasted, literally and figuratively.

Have a nice weekend.