California's Cash Crop

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Just an article from an independent publication in the city where I live. I thought DU might enjoy the reading.

More than 530 mainstream and conservative economists endorsed the findings of a 2005 report by Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, which found that, “replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.” Others place the savings even higher. The economists—including three Nobel Laureates in economics: the late free market guru Dr. Milton Friedman of the Hoover Institute, Dr. George Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley, and Dr. Vernon Smith of George Mason University—called for “an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition.”

Dr. Miron’s paper, “The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition,” concludes that “replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement—$2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels” and that “revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.”

“Conservatives, especially, are beginning to ask whether we’re getting our money’s worth or simply throwing away billions of tax dollars that might be used to protect America from real threats like those unsecured Soviet-era nukes,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.


http://www.randomlengthsnews.com/images/IssuePDFs/2009-may/rl_05-21-09.pdf

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1. Watch this short television add

by the marijuana policy project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_tTInSQwus

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2. Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States

Read the full report: http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/MironReport.pdf