After seeing how much money Colorado made in just the first week of implementing its law allowing the use of recreational marijuana, New Hampshire is hurrying through legislation of its own with a vote scheduled today.
With a hefty 25% state tax, coupled with the usual 2.9% state sales tax on recreational marijuana, Colorado is finally looking at enough money to re-vamp its entire educational system. Washington state will follow later this year, and now several other states are hurrying through legislation to legalize recreational marijuana to attain the same goal.
The latest to vote on making recreational marijuana legal in their state is New Hampshire. A hastily put-together bill is scheduled to take place today, where it is expected to eke by, but still pass. At that point, New Hampshire will be the third state to make up to an ounce of recreational marijuana legal to possess.
That is, unless the Governor of New Hampshire makes good on her promise. Governor Maggie Hassan has vowed to veto the bill if it passes the Senate and House. New Hampshire may be in for a long legal battle as a goodly portion of the citizens of New Hampshire see a way out of educational poverty for their state.
The irony in all this is the fact that all the new marijuana laws hitting the books have strong language in them prohibiting the sale or use of marijuana in and around public school facilities, and excludes anyone under the age of 21 from purchasing marijuana.
So what we’re seeing is a rush to make the recreational use of marijuana legal in this country so that the money made on the sales can go directly toward making our schools some of the top learning institutions in the world.
Yet, anyone caught with the substance within a specified area of a public school can still be arrested for possession, and, I suppose, this is supposed to ensure that our children won’t become potheads. Wild, no?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the state and around the country as more and more states and cities look to marijuana as the single-most important commodity to bring them out of the red and into the green.
I'm wondering what they are teaching in Colorado and Washington State about Pot? Schools have been the worst at teaching our kids the lies about Marijuana. Now they want the money they had better change their tune, I'd say.
When you come up with a plan to make those rich so-and-so’s in Colorado turn loose of some of them bucks, let us know and there won’t be pot or a heavy tax on it to help pay for public works.
Au contraire, rfreed. I love coffee, but have no problem with making it to noon without it. Caffeine is not the problem. It’s the person who can’t handle their coffee. This is a capitalist society fueled by demand like it’s always been, so tax the product and there’s no legitimate gripe from the people who don’t buy it. But they still get to drive on the roads that Jack built on their way to church.
If pot is what it takes to pull us out of economic doldrums then we should just pack up and go back to living in caves.
Pot and any form of drug has a detrimental effect on the user and on the society the user lives in. Take a look at heavy pot users and one can see for himself what those side effects are. We in this country have too many vices and addictions that have bad effects on the body and mind as it is without adding marijuana to our systems.
How many people can make it to noon without coffee? How many people drink more soda in a day than water? Cigarettes? Prescription and non-prescription medicine that despite expensive testing still has unseen side effects on the user.
Colorado already had all the money in the world. Too much in fact. One quarter of the housing in Breckenridge has no occupants at any given time of year because they are all second, third and fourth homes. Having seen and experienced the self-centeredness and decadent lifestyles of a large portion of the population I can say that adding pot to their intake won’t be making them any better. Colorado ranks high on the shithead list already.
Any state that feels it needs pot revenue to better their economy has other problems already that need to be worked on. Read about what qat, a similar drug, has done to people and villages in the Arabian Peninsula.
A state that evens considers passing marijuana laws to better itself should look back to the real basics of what it takes to survive in life- hard work, focus, goals, and determination rather than a substance known to destroy all those qualities.