The marijuana industry is on fire right now and just like dominoes, state by state legislators are coming to their senses and passing law that will properly regulate and legalize the use of marijuana in their respective states. Whether you are for it or against it, you can’t deny the huge profit potential for the state and companies that offer products or services in the marijuana industry.
Some might argue that marijuana use will send the wrong message to kids and will advocate the use of other illicit drugs, which is a fair concern. New and unprecedented legislation comes with pros and cons and the responsibility of doing what’s best for the progress of a community. The community, economic and moral effects can be largely influenced by the community members who exercise their lawful rights.
In the case of regulated marijuana use, I think the pros far outweigh the cons. It’s interesting how the law works and how legislation is passed. It’s very similar to a marketing company that is testing a market. The first step is to sample the market by using a small portion of the population. The sample should offer the tester good analytical data reflecting the pros and cons. In the case of regulated marijuana, states such as Colorado and Washington took the lead and passed the use of regulated recreational use of marijuana.
Colorado passed law in 2012 that supported the use of recreational marijuana for people over the age of 21. Since then, the city of Denver, CO has tracked crimes that are related to marijuana so that they could report on the effects legalized marijuana has on crime. In 2012, the city of Denver counted 172 marijuana related offenses. In 2015, the city recorded 183 offenses that were directly related to the medical or recreational marijuana industry. So the number of offenses related to marijuana is slightly up over the 3 year period; however, city officials have been quoted saying that there is no evidence to support that the legalization of marijuana is directly responsible for this slight increase in crime. Sometimes, crime just increases or decreases organically based on many factors, not just one.
So if crime has not gone up at an alarming rate in the test market of Colorado, then what else is there to consider? How about the economic factor! According to the state of Colorado’s website www.colorado.gov , the state generated $72,027,937 in 2015 from all marijuana taxes, licenses and fees. I don’t know about you, but I feel much more comfortable with that tax money being in the hands of the local government than in the hands of black market capitalists.
Of course there are other factors to consider that I wont get into, but I believe the criminal and economic factors are two of the most important. With the economic and criminal factors considered, I’m hoping that you can agree regulating marijuana for medical and recreational use is not such a bad idea.
