Sean Parker Contributes $9 Million As States Push To Legalize Marijuana (gazettenet.com)

Sean Parker has now donated nearly $9 million in his effort to legalize marijuana in California. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes Billboard: Whether it's founding Napster, guiding Facebook or investing in Spotify, Sean Parker has developed a reputation for pushing change forward, and now he's at the forefront of California's marijuana legalization movement... [A] competing proposal from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform was folded into Parker's, making his the leading ballot measure, by default, for 2016 in a state with the largest medical marijuana market in the country.
The U.S currently has a hodgepodge of legislation, with marijuana entirely legal only in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, as well as in the District of Columbia, and in individual cities in Michigan and Maine. But with five more states now voting on legalization, pro-marijuana campaign ads are being broadcast in Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada, California and Arizona. ("You decide who wins -- criminals and cartels, or Arizona schools?") And meanwhile, Slashdot reader schwit1 has identified one voter who's definitely opposing police efforts to hunt down marijuana growers: All that remains of the solitary marijuana plant an 81-year-old grandmother had been growing behind her South Amherst home is a stump and a ragged hole in the ground... Tucked away in a raspberry patch and separated by a fence from any neighbors, the [medicinal] plant was nearly ready for harvest when a military-style helicopter and police descended on Sept. 21...

Comments

This is the problem

[houghi]

I am all for legalizing it.The issue I have is that people buy the laws. Because that way you end up in a pissing contest where only the rich decide what becomes law.

Re:Good for him

[kilfarsnar]

He's putting his money where his mouth is. However I would be more sympathetic to the pot movement in general if they were at least demonstrably more honest than the people who want to keep it outlawed. The notion that schools will benefit immensely seems to be a slightly more realistic version of the old claim that legalized sale of pot would generate $599 godzillion in tax revenue per picosecond to the end of eternity. The problem with either claim is that it assumes that legalization would cause people to want to buy at retail what they and their friends could grow in their backyard. (there are other dishonest claims from the pro-pot camp but this one directly ties to the summary)

It's happening right now:

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/05/26/marijuana-sales-tax-revenue-huge-boon-for-colorado-cities/

People buy beer even though they can brew it at home.

Re:Good for him

[swb]

Have you ever tried "wild" marijuana? It's truly only useful as a fiber source.

A friend has a wild marijuana plant in his back yard that comes up every year -- he does nothing to cultivate it, it just reseeds itself every year. One year I tried what looked like the best part of it and it was awful. Not even remotely stoned. It can be relatively easy to grow moderately good marijuana, but it requires active cultivation -- you can't dump the seeds in the ground and come back 3 months later and expect anything useful for smoking.

And in terms of tax revenue, you have to remember the best government spending benefit of marijuana is from not enforcing marijuana prohibition. Billions of dollars are spent specifically on marijuana enforcement, especially in places with widespread outdoor cultivation.

Every dollar *not* spent on marijuana enforcement has a benefit greater than the equivalent tax increase resulting in an addition of a dollar of revenue. For one, there's zero economic penalty from repurposing existing tax revenue -- a tax increase has an additional drag on the economy greater than the additional revenue raised. It's like suddenly not having to pay your utilities anymore -- you didn't get a raise or incur the costs of taking a more demanding job, but you suddenly have more money to spend without working any harder to do it.

Look at Denver -- $29 million in tax revenue from marijuana -- positive revenue that they would have never collected in addition to the significant amount of tax revenue they would already collect that they no longer need to spend on marijuana prohibition enforcement.

I hope someone is working hard on actually quantifying the cost savings from not enforcing marijuana prohibition, although I suspect law enforcement probably doesn't want it known. If it was a *really* large number, they look bad for opposing legalization and essentially wasting money on a hopeless cause. Even a semi-large number could invite people to ask questions about law enforcement effectiveness. If your boss removed 5 hours of work from your responsibilities per week but your net productivity on other tasks didn't improve, it could prove embarrassing.