Tuesday, April 17, 2012



Legalizing Pot Would Raise More Revenue Than Buffett Rule

Posted by majestic on April 17, 2012
Medical-marijuana-signPhilip Klein makes a good economic case for legalization of marijuana, writing for the Washington Examiner:
Over the past week, President Obama spent time promoting the Buffett Rule surtax on millionaires and paid a visit to Colombia in which he reiterated his opposition to legalizing drugs. Though the two issues were unrelated, it’s worth remarking that legalizing drugs would actually do more to reduce deficits than implementing the Buffett Rule.
The Buffett tax, which failed to advance in the Senate last night, would have raised $5.1 billion in 2013 (theoretically its first full year of implementation), according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Yet a 2010 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that legalizing marijuana alone would save the federal government $3.3 billion in reduced enforcement expenditures per year and raise an additional $5.8 billion in revenue assuming it would be taxed. If all drugs were legalized, the study estimated it…

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