Moonhead
Posts: 16520
Joined: 9/21/2009 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MasterG2kTR Quite right about Steven's comment being spot on. However, you miss a big part of the picture here (bold text). The big win on this is not just the tax revenue, but also the eliminated need for law enforcement, time wasted in the courts, reduced crowding in prisons and the eliminated burden on the taxpayers to house said criminals. Below is an excerpt from a research paper I just finished for school. The data quoted comes from Time Magazine. There are currently approximately 700,000 people in prisons for Marijuana related offenses. The burden to the taxpayer would be alleviated with no need for law enforcement officers time, reduced criminal cases in the courts, and reduced crowding and housing in prisons. The bottom line savings to the taxpayer is staggering. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related. So please tell me again how legalizing marijuana won't raise much money??!! We're talking about approximately $95 billion saved each year (factoring the figures above). I'd call that a HUGE win! Absolutely. I was forgetting the savings in that respect, but my point was just that there's more cokeheads than potheads these days, so there'd be a bigger slice of tax from that, particularly as it tends to go for a bit more. As you say, cutting policing and imprisonment costs would be a huge win in both cases.
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I like to think he was eaten by rats, in the dark, during a fog. It's what he would have wanted... (Simon R Green on the late James Herbert)
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