Chicken Little Was Wrong

Hi Everyone,

This past election day, the citizens of Colorado did something that no other state has ever, ever done. Who would have thought that a mid-western state would be the first? All I can say is, what took so long? I even blogged about this back on 10/16/11. In a million years, I never would have guessed back then that it would happen so quickly. Are the voters in Colorado just plain crazy? I think not.

What am I talking about? The legalization of marijuana. On November 6, 2012, Colorado voters approved a change to their state's constitution that legalized pot for personal use. Yes it is true. The personal use of pot is no longer illegal there. FYI, Colorado approved medical marijuana with a doctor's prescription, three years ago. And guess what happened with medical marijuana? Nothing bad happened and the sky didn't fall, as some prominent politicians had predicted. Instead of something bad happening, something good actually happened. A new, high revenue source was discovered. Somehow the lawmakers in Colorado managed to agree to put the legalization question to the voters; and vote they did. More people voted to legalize pot then voted for either President Obama or Mitt Romney. It is apparent that the citizens saw a great opportunity to increase their tax base from just medicinal use to now include personal use. It will be very interesting to see just how much more tax revenue they take in.

I know that there are a lot of people who are totally against legalizing pot. But maybe now is the time to seriously think way outside of the box in order to find new tax revenue sources that people will approve. Alcohol prohibition didn't work in the 1920's and early 1930's and marijuana prohibition is not working today. In addition to the new tax revenues that Colorado will now receive, think about all of the cost savings from all of the law enforcement agencies used to enforce the old laws. There will be less prisoners also. It is a win-win situation for everyone, isn't it? Maybe states with huge deficits should consider this option.

Unfortunately I did think of a potential speed bump for Colorado. The federal government still says that marijuana is still illegal. I sense a U.S. Supreme Court date looming. As always, time will tell what will happen.

Til next week.

Peter