March 31, 2009 07:22 PM UTC

Legalize Weed, Raise Billions?

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• by: Colorado Pols

From Politics West:

Hey, they don’t call it the “Joint” Budget Committee for nothin’.

The six-member panel this year has been doing the legislative equivalent of fishing through couch cushions to find enough money to balance the state’s budget. It’s been an agonizing process that has gored the oxes of many state departments and special interests.

But on Monday, Sen. Al White jokingly suggested that Coloradans’ stashes are where the cash is.

White, R-Hayden, in jest moved that the Joint Budget Committee sponsor legislation to legalize marijuana and impose “a 50 percent tax on it.” That prompted those in the crowded JBC hearing room to burst into laughter.

Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge, deadpanned, “Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. That bill might pass.”

Obviously they were joking, and President Obama recently suggested it wasn’t such a good idea, but think about all the hundreds of thousands of stoners in Colorado (one of the highest rates of pot smoking in America) and the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend every year with no revenue generated for the state. We’re not making a judgment about the significant issue by itself of legalizing such a major vice as smoking pot, except to ask, joking aside, if all that economic activity is worth bringing into the light (enabling us sober people to tax the crap out of it)–vice or no. After all, we let people gamble away their paychecks, buy slowly-lethal products like cigarettes, not to mention enough guns to take over a small Latin American nation on any given day. A poll follows.

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