Search Results: fiscal impact (18)

Last week we gave you several headlines about a recent ACLU survey which showed that statistics covering marijuana arrests across the nation were falling along strict, and disturbing, racial lines.
According to the report, on the national level blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for a weed-related crime, despite the fact that blacks and whites use marijuana at relatively equal rates. That disparity in arrest rates jumps as high as 18 to 1 in cities like St. Louis where local Metro Police Chief Sam Dotson dismisses accusations of racial profiling with blockhead quotes like, “Law enforcement is not…black and white.”

~ alapoet ~

New Report Documents Fiscal Impact of Amendment 64, the Initiative to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol
Nearly $60 Million Saved and Generated for Colorado in First Year; Up to $120 Million in New Revenue and Savings Projected after 2017 
A new report released Thursday by the Colorado Center on Law and Policy (CCLP) documents that Amendment 64, the Initiative to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, would provide the state savings and tax revenue of nearly $60 million in its first year. According to the report, the state is conservatively projected to save and earn up to $120 million annually after 2017. 
Amendment 64 proposes a system to regulate and tax marijuana in Colorado similarly to alcohol. In addition to state and local sales taxes, the initiative directs the General Assembly to enact an excise tax of up to 15 percent on wholesale sales of non-medical marijuana.

Photo: News Junkie Post
Speaker of the House Mike Milburn (R-Cascade) preens as he prepares to accept his nomination as Speaker in the Montana Legislature. One of Milburn’s first acts as Speaker was to call for the repeal of Montana’s medical marijuana law, which would end safe access for patients.

​On an almost entirely party-line vote with Republicans in favor, the Montana House voted again on Saturday to repeal the state’s medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 2004, after a House panel supposedly looked at the repeal measure’s fiscal impacts.

House Bill 161, sponsored by Speaker Mike Milburn (R-Cascade), now faces a final house vote, probably on Monday, before heading to the Montana Senate, reports Charles S. Johnson at the Missoulian.

The House once again voted 63-37 to pass HB 161, with all 63 votes in favor coming from Republicans. All 32 House Democrats and five Republicans voted against repeal.

Yesterday, the Obama Administration, by way of Attorney General Eric Holder, reaffirmed its support for a current proposal that, if passed, would nudge our nation’s legal system a step in a more civil direction. Mr. Holder spoke Thursday before the U.S. Sentencing Commission, whose duty it is to vote annually on what sort of instructions need to be updated for federal judges to reference when handing down sentences on all of the various cases they see.
This April, the Sentencing Commission is considering a vote to overhaul the current recommended sentences for all federal nonviolent drug-related offenses.

The Marijuana Project

By John Novak
The Washington State Office of Financial Management has finally released its much anticipated report on the marijuana “legalization” initiative, I-502. (See link to the report at the end of this article)
While it claims that the state could see a financial windfall in the billions from the taxation and regulation of cannabis, it also warns of some very serious consequences and the possibility of zero revenue.
Steve Sarich, a well known Seattle area medical marijuana personality and anti-I-502 activist, sued the Office last month, stating the early numbers being used “are so far off it’s incredulous.”
He and the other activists that joined the lawsuit demanding a new report that included all the risks, including possible results from federal lawsuits.

Photo: Flickr / Westword
New Mexico: Land of Enchantment. And, well, taxing the sick.

​New Mexico’s Legislature has been looking mighty hungrily at the state’s medical marijuana program as a source of tax revenue. But according the state’s Tax and Revenue Department, such a tax could cause patients to turn to the black market.

A 25 percent excise tax on medical marijuana could potentially raise about $1.2 million for the state, according to the Legislative Finance Committee’s fiscal impact report on Sen. John Sapien’s bill, SB 56, reports Marjorie Childress at The New Mexico Independent.
The analysis estimated a typical patient spends $6,256 annually on medical marijuana, and would pay about $1,564 in excise tax per year.

This week, the Colorado Department of Human Services, in conjunction with Governor John Hickenlooper’s office, formally requested that the General Assembly allocate more than $6 million annually from the state’s marijuana-tax cash fund for a new program that would offer help to chronic drug users as opposed to criminalizing them. Art Way, senior director for criminal-justice reform and Colorado director with the national Drug Policy Alliance, which worked closely with state agencies in crafting the proposal (it’s on view below), sees the impact of this approach as potentially revolutionary for those struggling with addictions to heroin and other heavy narcotics.

If approved, Way says, “marijuana tax revenue and marijuana legalization will fund broader drug-policy purposes and drug-policy concerns that have long had more of an impact on society, both from a human perspective and a fiscal perspective. We’re talking about other substances on which users become truly dependent, and people who are on the chaotic end of the use spectrum. So for marijuana legalization to fund this is a game-changer.”


While Coloradans did legalize limited amounts of pot for adults 21 and up in 2012, we didn’t make all cannabis possession legal and, in fact, you can still be fined and even arrested for having more than one ounce on you at any given time.
One Colorado activist is trying to change that with a ballot initiative that would remove pot penalties from the books. Proposed ballot initiative #3 would eradicate all fines and sentences for the possession of cannabis, and guaranteeing that in the Colorado Constitution.
But its proponents have just one more week to collect the required signatures, and efforts are lagging.

Legalize it.


What would marijuana legalization look like in Vermont? We know the answer is “awesome” but state leaders want to examine the fiscal, social and health impacts that legalizing even limited amounts of cannabis for adults would bring. So the state is pairing up with the Rand Corporation to study those questions and have an answer by next fall so lawmakers can begin discussing the issue.
“In conjunction with the team from Rand, and our internal system we’re going to really try to put together a really high quality report,” said Jeb Spaulding, administration secretary for the governor’s office. “That addresses all of the issues that are related to the legalization of marijuana use.”

Flickr.com/sarahakabmg

As we reported here last week, lawmakers in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica, citing progressive new pot laws in states like Colorado and Washington here in the U.S., will begin to move forward with talks regarding the decriminalization of marijuana on the irie isle.
The potentially good news out of Jamaica came hot on the heels of an announcement out of Switzerland, where as of October 1st, adults over the age of 18 who have been accused of small-scale possession will face a misdemeanor and a fine of 110 Swiss Francs – or about $100 U.S. – rather than the standard court appearance and possible ding on their criminal record.

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