XPost: talk.politics.guns, oh.general, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: drooler@gmail.com   
      
   John Cranley, a Democrat candidate for governor, announced with a flourish   
   recently that he intends to rebuild Ohio’s roads and broadband with the   
   gusher of tax revenues that surely will arrive if Ohio voters legalize the   
   sale of recreational marijuana this fall.   
      
   Ah, the good old days!   
      
   I lived through the same fuzzy era of warm promises when Colorado became   
   the first state to open its doors to retail pot in 2014, and I watched as   
   the reality simply did not match the hype. Now back home in Ohio I’m   
   thinking, here we go again.   
      
   In Colorado, one of the first people to be disappointed in legalized pot   
   was Colorado’s own governor (and now Senator) John Hickenlooper.   
      
   He was never a fan but he dutifully implemented the law when the voters   
   passed it on his watch in 2012, and he had two years to prepare the state.   
      
   Those tax revenues are “…a drop in the bucket,” he said ruefully after   
   observing the first four years of the Colorado recreational pot era. “It’s   
   not going to pay for early childhood education or solve any big social   
   ill…”   
      
   When Hickenlooper made that comment, in 2018, tax revenues from pot were   
   just under one percent of the state’s budget. Today that number is still   
   small — just over one percent.   
      
   Politicians often claim that not only will legalized pot kill the black   
   market but, by reaping tax revenue, the public will benefit.   
   Unfortunately, this is a scheme that works against itself and it is not   
   hard to understand why. Because legal pot is highly taxed the black market   
   always undercuts it and this simple fact helps it flourish. In Colorado   
   this has been grotesquely so.   
      
   On a bright May morning three years ago residents in suburban homes   
   throughout the Denver metro area awakened to hordes of local police and   
   state and federal agents scurrying through their neighborhoods. It was the   
   largest black-market marijuana bust in the state’s history.   
      
   Organized criminal gangs had quietly moved into upscale homes and hid   
   their indoor grow operations. Police seized 80,000 illegal plants and   
   4,500 pounds of finished marijuana, and they arrested 42 people.   
      
   Colorado had become “the epicenter of black-market marijuana in the United   
   States,” intoned a somber U.S. Attorney, Jason Dunn.   
      
   And this was five years after legalized pot was supposed to be eradicating   
   the black market for marijuana.   
      
   Over the years smaller illegal grow operations in homes around Colorado   
   have bedeviled local prosecutors and police agencies as people   
   persistently try to undercut the high prices of legalized pot and sell   
   directly to the growing customer base.   
      
   States that more recently legalized recreational pot, such as New York and   
   California, have come under pressure to lower pot taxes in the face of   
   aggressive and sophisticated black market sellers.   
      
   Legalizing pot, it seems, has had an unintended effect of allowing the   
   black market to flourish, not diminish.   
      
   More: Letters: Medical marijuana too costly to be truly effective   
      
   And, of course, the black market is only one problem brought on by   
   legalized marijuana. There are high social costs as well, such as   
   ingestion by children, lowered performance in school, lost jobs,   
   evictions, and the need for more addiction rehab.   
      
   As these problems began to manifest themselves in Colorado, a Denver think   
   tank, the Centennial Institute, tried to wrap its arms around the real   
   cost of legalizing marijuana in its first few years.   
      
   More: Bill to legalize marijuana in Ohio heads to lawmakers after hitting   
   signature requirements   
      
   Its study, “Economic and Social Costs of Legalized Marijuana,” was   
   released in 2018, and it concluded that for every dollar of tax income in   
   these first years, the state spent an astonishing $4.51 to rescue people   
   from the ill effects of legalized pot. The researchers acknowledged this   
   was an estimate only, but even if they are off the mark, the toll, when   
   fully counted, will be costly.   
      
   There is no tax bonanza here.   
      
   As Cranley announced his grandiose plan for spending pot revenues, he said   
   that “trying to criminalize and outlaw marijuana causes more harm than   
   good.”   
      
   Perhaps it does.   
      
   Just not for the criminals and the outlaws.   
      
   Tom Minnery is a board member of the Center for Christian Virtue in Ohio   
   and formerly senior vice president of public policy at Focus on the   
   Family, headquartered in Colorado .   
      
   This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Has marijuana   
   worked for Colorado? Will John Cranley's pot plan work for Ohio   
      
   https://news.yahoo.com/smoke-pouring-holes-cranleys-plans-093801533.html   
      
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