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Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

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Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#51
post #40
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the concern was that we're just replacing illegal cartels with legal cartels. If that means fewer bear traps and less rat poison in our national parks, it's a win as far as I'm concerned. >Second, vice taxes tend to be regressive, the poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes. Some of the "education lotteries" (state lotteries that benefit education) are basically mechanisms for transferring wealth from…

Am I reading that correctly? You are saying that poor people are stupid?

People who buy lottery tickets specifically

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#52

The "think piece" part of this article, which makes up most of the text, is pretty hilarious: "A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the…

Not saying it does, just "asking the question." Gotta love speculative journalism.

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#53

The "think piece" part of this article, which makes up most of the text, is pretty hilarious: "A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the…

I gotta say, I scrolled up and down a couple of times before I realized there wasn't actually another half to that article I missed. It just stops.

Should have read top comments first ;/

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#54

The "think piece" part of this article, which makes up most of the text, is pretty hilarious: "A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the…

Not saying it does, just "asking the question." Gotta love speculative journalism.

Not only that, but not even explaining how it could be a problem (or not a problem!) with anything specific.

You can take the exact same structure he uses there and apply it to any piece of news.

But you know, pageviews...

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#55

The "think piece" part of this article, which makes up most of the text, is pretty hilarious: "A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the…

It isn't conclusively proven yet, but there is some evidence that marijuana use is correlated with less drinking. It isn't purely hypothetical, and in fact it's an argument I've heard from some legalization advocates in California.

I'm not sure where they came up with the "marijuana causes drinking" scenario, though. I've never heard of such a thing.

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#56

The "think piece" part of this article, which makes up most of the text, is pretty hilarious: "A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the…

Not saying it does, just "asking the question." Gotta love speculative journalism.

A generation ago that paragraph would have been about the "risk "of people starting with pot and moving to heroin/crack/whatever.

Times change, or maybe they don't.

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last statement sounded weird to me. The matching figure from here: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/tobac... would be the volume of smoke inhaled (hookah session = 150 cigarettes). Equivalent is probably the wrong word to describe that.

> Equivalent is probably the wrong word to describe that. This known carcinogen should be treated with respect, even when taken by alternative routes, until there is data demonstrating that the cooling mechanism actually improves safety.

I'm not suggesting otherwise. I have managed to eschew tobacco since forever and plan to continue doing so.

My main intent was to save every other person that did a double take the trouble.

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the health aspects of marijuana, we of course lack the wealth of knowledge that we now have on the detrimental effects of tobacco on pulmonary function and lung cancer risk. The experts with whom I have discussed this (a few pulmonologists) usually ask about marijuana smoke in the same breath as tobacco smoke, and consider it a probable carcinogen. Fun somewhat-related fact that I learned last week: a one h…

The deleterious health effects of cigarette smoke is the burning plant matter and not the nicotine, so it wouldn't be surprising if marijuana were in the same ball park of dangerousness. Related is the danger of smoke from ordinary wood fire, see: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion

>The deleterious health effects of cigarette smoke is the burning plant matter...

I don't think you can say that at all. Of course burning plant matter produces carcinogens, but studies of marijuana smokers haven't found any conclusive evidence of greatly increased cancer risk. There have been some studies that show that smoking tobacco and marijuana together increases cancer risk beyond that of tobacco alone.

Smokeless tobacco causes mouth and throat cancers, so something is going on with tobacco itself (or something else common to cigarettes and smokeless tobacco).

There is some evidence that radioactive carcinogens found in tobacco play a part in cancer risk.

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#59
post #40
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the concern was that we're just replacing illegal cartels with legal cartels. If that means fewer bear traps and less rat poison in our national parks, it's a win as far as I'm concerned. >Second, vice taxes tend to be regressive, the poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes. Some of the "education lotteries" (state lotteries that benefit education) are basically mechanisms for transferring wealth from…

Am I reading that correctly? You are saying that poor people are stupid?

The lottery is a voluntary tax on the numerically illiterate. Think of it this way: they graciously raise their own taxes to make up for the deleterious effect on society of remaining numerically illiterate. The money even goes towards preventing this condition in others.

Re: Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected

#60
post #45

It'll be interesting to see how this windfall tax revenue is actually spent. Under Amendment 64, the Colorado state constitution requires that the first $40MM of revenue each year be allocated towards public schools[0]. To my knowledge, the rest of the tax money has not yet been earmarked, so it's currently up for grabs. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Amendment_64 .

Since money is fungible (a dollar is a dollar no matter from which hand it comes from or pocket it goes into), it doesn't matter. They'll simply have a bit of handwringing the next time the budget gets tight, then offset the education spending by the amount it is increased by the pot tax. This happens with remarkable consistency across the US on earmarked taxes, generally sin taxes or lottery receipts. [+] It also ha…

> Since money is fungible (a dollar is a dollar no matter from which hand it comes from or pocket it goes into), it doesn't matter.

It does matter, not because those recipients will necessarily receive more money as a result, but because they will become beneficiaries of Amendment 64 and the (legal) marijuana trade.

In the case of the schools, this was intentional - in ten years, if someone wants to repeal Amendment 64, they either (1) have to come up with $40MM elsewhere in the budget, or (2) have to face criticism that they are "cutting the public school budget"[0].

The intent of the tax (alongside the stipulation that it be spent on education) was not to raise money for schools; it was to make opposition to the measure less palatable.

[0] Don't underestimate the power of PTAs - in fact, it's the PTAs in rich areas that originally lobbied in the late 1970s to repeal just one part of the Rockefeller drug laws in New York (possession of marijuana under 27 grams). Their children were being convicted of minor possession, and due to the mandatory minimum sentences, judges were powerless to do anything but sentence them to prison.

Of course, these same rich parents did not view (e.g.) the crack cocaine vs. power cocaine sentencing disparity as a problem, so those laws remained in effect.

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