Legalizing Pot

While Colorado’s legalization initiative made personal use and possession of pot legal statewide, it also let counties and municipalities to opt out of allowing pot sales. Over 100 towns and cities across Colorado have voted to ban outright or delay the opening of retail shops selling recreational pot. And it turns out that some of the counties that have banned the sale of recreational marijuana nonetheless want their share of sales taxes collected by the state. When asked whether such a position is hypocritical, a commissioner from Douglas County, which opted out of allowing pot sales, told the Denver CBS affiliate, “The answer is going to be then, why was my county not able to opt out of allowing the smoking of it at all?”

The upshot of such actions is predictable and depressing. Colorado lawmakers are banking on about $70 million a year (PDF) in taxes from pot and their Washington counterparts have projected new revenues of $1.9 billion over the first five years of legalization. There’s just no way that’s going to happen if a legal ounce of pot is double the price or more of back-alley weed. Even the most stoned pothead isn’t that easy to scam.

If the experience of state cigarette taxes teaches us anything, it’s that draconian levies allow black markets to flourish. After raising its per-pack tax by a dollar this year, Massachusetts is now grappling with somewhere between $74 million and $295 million in lost revenue. Most people are happy to pay taxes that they think are fair—and most people will avoid taxes they think are extortionary. Combine that with the widespread NIMBYism at work in Colorado and it’s a recipe for clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The past several decades haven’t been kind to the nation’s drug warriors, especially when it comes to marijuana, the only illegal drug that is used on a monthly basis by more than 1 percent of Americans. In 1996, California passed a medical marijuana law and was soon followed by 19 other states and the District of Columbia. Crime—whether drug-related or not—didn’t go up, kids didn’t start toking up in droves, the heavens didn’t fall.

Instead, a record number of people—58 percent, according to Gallup—have come to embrace pot legalization as a smart and proper idea and The Marijuana Policy Project identifies no fewer than 10 states it expects to legalize weed in the next couple of years.

It’ll be an ironic buzzkill if it ends up that folks in places such as Maine, California, and Hawaii have an easier time firing up a state-sanctioned joint and enjoying the economic and social benefits of legalization long before the trailblazing residents of Colorado and Washington.