It’s hard to say how much money we could raise by legalizing pot and taxing it. But we can make a back-of-the-envelope guess.
Imagine that 1% of Americans would pay $5 a week in taxes to smoke pot. That would be $15 million a week, or $750 million a year. That doesn’t sound like much, but remember, the structure of modern government is the funded debt, so every year the $750 million in tax revenues would fund a debt of $7.5 billion.
But wait, there’s more- we also avoid the cost of arresting marijuana smokers. Every year a half million people are arrested for simple possession, and each arrest costs about $2500, or, in sum toto, about $1.25 billion for the costs of the booking and overnight jail stay of these prisoners.
With no regard for other savings in this policy, the savings from not arresting pot smokers and the tax revenues from sales would fund $20 billion for transit every year. And remember- if you give the transit agency money from a debt that is already funded, the agency does not need to fund or repay the debt themselves. In such a case, for example, farebox recovery could be spent entirely on current operating expenses, or on service improvements the transit agency would fund themselves.
Considering that every major commission that has examined the marijuana question has recommended legalization, it may be time to rethink our current policies.
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