Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

The moral debates over the legalization of marijuana are quickly disappearing as legislators look at the results of excise taxes in Colorado. As reported in Britain’s Daily Mail tabloid and the US magazine The Week, Colorado’s taxes on marijuana have increased tenfold bringing in $2.3 million in revenues. Most states I’ve worked in dedicate gambling revenues and/or alcohol revenues to schools and when it is necessary to find new revenues the solution invariably is to raise “sin taxes”. Given that there is diminishing evidence that marijuana in and of itself is a “gateway drug” and given the lack of political courage on the part of many legislators as evidenced by their unwillingness to raise broad based taxes to fund schools, it seems likely that more and more states will look at the revenues garnered by Colorado and follow suit.

I am in favor of legalization for four major reasons. First, it will end the real gateway element of marijuana use, which is breaking the law. Marijuana use requires the buyer to break the law in order to make a purchase and, consequently, the widespread use of marijuana makes lawlessness acceptable.   Secondly, given the fact that lawless people are dealing the drug, it increases the probability that the “sales personnel” will market higher potency drugs that are for more dangerous and addictive than the lower grade marijuana that a regulated marketplace would make available. It is the sale of drugs by lawless marketeers that makes marijuana into a “gateway drug”, not the drug itself. This leads to the third reason I am in support of legalization: doing so would ensure that the THC dosages are lower and less addictive. Fourth, and of greatest interest to legislators, it would bring new revenues to state coffers while arguably diminishing costs for law enforcement and prisons. The additional revenues could be earmarked for schools, drug treatment, early childhood education, or the general coffers. Legal marijuana will feed legislators’ addictions to quick and painless fixes to revenue gaps… expect to see it spread rapidly in the coming decade.